Our Mission
The mission of Mindful Heart Programs is to provide a safe refuge for meditation practice, and to provide educational programs in mindfulness, compassion, nature connection, and awake awareness practices, to enable us to care for ourselves, others, and our world by transforming suffering, building resilience, and deepening our capacity for serving and training others.
Since 2017
Mindful Heart Programs began in the Fall of 2017. As founding members, we (Radhule Weininger, Michael Kearney, Connie Glazer, and Lynn Alexander) wanted to be able to fundraise to offer scholarships for the retreats and other teaching programs we were offering at La Casa de Maria, in Montecito, California. With the damage and destruction of La Casa de Maria in the mudslide of January 2018, this was no longer possible.
Together we are creating a community with the shared goal of transforming suffering, supporting self care, and building resilience.
A space for discovery
Giving ourselves space to grow can be difficult at times, as well as maintaining our practices throughout our busy lives. We bring together teachers to hold meditations and talks at various times of day to ensure that you can participate and grow with our community. Our teachers integrate a variety of Buddhist traditions and practices, ranging from Theravadin inspired meditations to the deepest levels of learning, growing and awakening through Bon inspired pointing-out instructions.
Strength in community
Together we believe we can change the world. Tying the historic and current communities in Tibet and India and beyond in with wester culture, as well as creating spaces for interconnection between meditators brings us closer to an awakened world. In this time of challenge and change, we are striving to bring our offerings to diverse and marginalized aspects of our society. We believe that an understanding of our interdependence and interconnectedness leads to radical compassion and inclusiveness.
Improve ourselves for the greater good
Making meaningful changes in our lives and the lives of others starts within. With MHP teachers combined centuries of experience and millennia of knowledge passed down through various traditions, we offer the tools and facilitate inner-awakening – always for free. Then this inner transformations can help us to be more resilient, secure in ourselves as well as rest in a field quality of awareness that is always there. Embodying this level of awareness allows us to be meaningfully engaged and in service to others and our world.
We were lucky to find other venues in Santa Barbara to offer the programs that had already been planned, including a teacher training program in mindfulness, compassion, and nature connection practices. We also continued to offer regular meditation sessions, residential retreats, including a popular one with Zen Buddhist monk, Souken Danjo from Japan. Following the November elections in 2016, we began monthly Solidarity and Compassion town hall meetings, which brought together spiritual teachers, social and environmental activists, artists and poets in discussion with a sometimes large and diverse audience.
We began teaching mindfulness, compassion, and nature connection in schools throughout the Santa Barbara school district. This became a successful program called Kind Mind which has since been umbrellaed by the Santa Barbara Education Foundation. We received a grant from the Mind and Life Institute to hold a 3 day Think Tank on Sacred Activism and Wise Climate Action, which was held in January 2021. With the COVID pandemic our programs went online with an increased range of offerings, thanks to a group of dedicated teachers.
As of 2023, we are offering our programs online and in person.