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Citta101
Insight & Mindfulness/Mary Rees
Insight & Mindfulness/Mary Rees
Insight and Mindfulness
Biography Brief ~
Biography
History ~ of Citta 101 ~ of Conscious Dynamics
Publications:
Professional ~ Trade ~ Flash Blog
History ~ of Citta 101 ~ of Conscious Dynamics
Publications:
Professional ~ Trade ~ Flash Blog
Mary Rees, MS has been integrating contemplative practice, especially a non-sectarian presentation of Buddhist practice, into western settings in both professional and spiritual venues since 1985. Current courses offered have grown directly from her long-term meditation practice, teaching meditation since 1989, and 20 years of professional experience in public schools as a Specialist in Specific Learning Disabilities.
Contact Information and Websites
Mary Rees, MS is a Meditation Teacher and Dharma Leader in the lineage of the Thai Forest and Burmese monks. She is also a Spiritual Director trained (1988-1990) in a program offered through the University of St. Thomas and the Cenacle Retreat House, both in Houston, Texas. She is a graduate of the Community Dharma Leader Training program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California and has training to teach specific programs: MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) and Robert Fritz's Creating Your Life Mary has been teaching meditation since 1989, helping adults recognize and expand cognitive skills. She has extensive meditation teaching and practice experience and has worked with teachers from many traditions. Rodney Smith was her primary meditation teacher for sixteen years. She is currently working most closely with Marcia Rose and Sr. Mary Dennison.
Sr. Mary Dennison
(near right)
Marcia Rose (far right)
Mary Rees met Gregory Kramer at Spirit Rock in September 2001. She immediately began integrating his teachings on relational meditation in all her work. In 2009 she started teaching in Gregory's Whole Life Program.
1970-1984
Mary has been teaching professionally since 1970, twenty of those years in public schools of Iowa and Texas as diagnostic teacher, educational diagnostician, and consultant. In these situations she created state of the art programs fostering student capacity through development of perceptual, cognitive, and meta-cognitive skills as well as creating realistically high expectations for students within the system. She holds a Master of Science degree in Specific Learning Disabilities, certification as an Educational Diagnostician (formal assessment), and has additional graduate hours in Christian Spirituality and Buddhist Meditation Theory.
Father Ed Abell and Sister Mary Dennison were Mary's first physical spiritual teachers They helped her understand contemplative experience from a Catholic Christian perspective and foster openness to its presence in daily life.
Mary: Ed and Alice were critical transformational teachers and uncommonly precious friends. Before them, between 1975 and 1980, I relied on writings of Thomas Merton and Ernesto Cardenal and trusted a personal sense of being safe and loved.
1984-1995
These were years Mary turned from training in teaching methods and formal assessment to various spiritual interests including working formally with Sr. Alice as her Spiritual Director, vipassana meditation instruction in weekly sessions and retreats (weekend and 10 day) with Rodney Smith and teachers he recommneded, Spiritual Direction training including 12 hours of graduate hours in Christian Spirituality, graduate courses in Buddhist Meditation Theory with Anne Klein at Rice University, creating and sturctural analysis with Robert Fritz, and creating 2D art at Glassel in Houston. She began teaching meditation in 1989.
Citta 101 was founded to promote contemplative awareness and compassionate behavior within our culture through the teachings of Insight and Mindfulness meditation. Mary began teaching at the request of her lineage teacher Rodney Smith, now a Senior Teacher of the Insight Meditation Society, who taught in Houston between 1984 and 1989. Between Mary and Rodney there has been a constant presence of the teachings of Insight and Mindfulness in Houston since 1984.
1995-2001
Mary taught beginning instruction and coordinated Insight Meditation Houston when Rodney was Guiding Teacher. She organized and managed retreats with visiting teachers, taught her first residential retreat (1999) and initiated the process of creating a regional retreat center, the Margaret Austin Center. Mary started Citta 101 in 1998 and in 2000 left IMH to begin teaching full time. She participated in the Community Dharma Leader Training at Spirit Rock beginning in 2001.
2002-present
Through Insight and Mindfulness programs Mary began more intentional integration of insight and mindfulness with professional skills, bridging secular and spiritual teachings to bring contemplative awareness and spiritual practices deeper into our culture. Steps in this process included trainings specifically designed to transfer her skill clusters into the world of work.
Nutshell Publications®, a further development, offers materials for supporting a beginning and maturing meditation practice. A community site Insight Meditation Community Houston was established in 2007 providing a local Insight Meditation group that has a Guiding Teacher, Mary.
Conscious Dynamics offers means for successful living that may seem radically new to contemporary culture yet which have been used since ancient times. Through these teachings it is possible for both individuals and organizations to break through apparent limitations and assumed boundaries into a wholesome alignment with reality and unlimited potentiality.
In 2003 Mary did training in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and learned ways Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli successfully integrated meditation instruction into professional settings. The same year she intensified her focus on consciousness training as a means of professional (and personal) development by deepening her experience with teachings of Robert Fritz, training to teach his Creating Your Life course.
Mary Rees became a certified consultant in the Birkman Method® in 2006 and created a separate corporate website under the name Conscious Dynamics. She began promoting the concept of consciousness training as a valuable and critical executive skill. In 2008 she increased credibility of this concept by offering continuing education for courses in consciousness and in 2009 received approval to sponsor continuing education for PhD level psychologists.
Professional Publications and Presentations:
God and Constructions, Women's Journal (Publication of Brigid's Place, Christ Church Cathedral, Houston, TX). Fall 2007, pp. 11-12.
Why I wrote a book titled Being Prayer. Women's Journal (Publication of Brigid's Place, Christ Church Cathedral, Houston, TX). Summer/Fall 2006, pp. 8-9.
Transforming Consciousness, Becoming Prayer, Presence (Journal of Spiritual Directors International). June 2005, pp. 39-48.
Transforming Consciousness: Spiritual Practices for Transforming Afflictive Emotions and Manifesting Wholesome Qualities of Mind. Presentation, Conference for Spiritual Directors International, April, 2004.
Self-knowledge as a Path to Justice and Compassion, Presentation, Conference for Spiritual Directors International, April, 2001.
Trade Publications
2006
Award winning book:
Being Prayer - Transforming Consciousness: Good News of Buddhist Practice
Purchase this book online. 2007
Meditation Course on Media CD:
Going Beyond what you Believe to be True - First Steps.
Available online. 2009
Practice Books:
Transforming Consciousness Series
© 1998 - 2010 Mary Rees