Holding Ground: Inner Resilience for Environmental Changemakers

Holding Ground: Inner Resilience for Environmental Changemakers is a five-month online meditation course from Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. It is led by Mark Coleman, Kirsten Rudestam and Yong Oh, and it is made for people working for ecological integrity, environmental justice or collective well-being who are meeting burnout, grief or overwhelm. The practice is rooted in Buddhist Insight meditation, mindfulness, compassion and nature-based contemplation. The aim is an inner steadiness that can support long-term engagement.

The course does not treat inner work as a way to endure business-as-usual activism. It explores contemplative and nature-oriented practice as a quiet challenge to the culture's insistence on speed, productivity and control, and as a way to restore a sense of enoughness and belonging. It honors pausing as much as doing, and stillness as a companion to movement.

What to Expect

The course unfolds in five modules, each with live sessions on Friday mornings Pacific time. Most sessions run three hours or two hours, alternating through each module, and the final module has three meetings. Teachers and guest speakers lead the sessions, and small peer groups and an online forum carry the connection between them.

- Grounding in Love: heart-based and nature-based meditations, a daily sit spot practice, and time in small groups to name what motivates your work.
- Descent and Belonging: tools for meeting grief, anger and other hard emotions, including the RAIN technique, along with practices of deep listening and interconnection.
- Awakening Joy: identifying your own sources of delight and practicing muditā, or empathic joy, through meditation and movement.
- Practicing Balance: upekkhā, or equanimity, practice, and an action plan built around the questions "What is mine to do? With whom? What vision and resources do I need?"
- Return and Seeing with New Eyes: reflection on five months of practice and a vision for continued spiritual activism and community engagement.

Practices between sessions help you bring the teachings into daily life, and recordings and course materials stay available for lifetime access.

About Mark Coleman

Mark Coleman holds a master's in Clinical Psychology and has trained extensively in the Buddhist tradition, in both Insight meditation and Dzogchen. A senior teacher at Spirit Rock, he has taught insight meditation retreats since 1997 and has led wilderness nature retreats worldwide for over twenty years. He leads year-long nature meditation teacher trainings through Awake in the Wild, co-founded the Mindfulness Training Institute, and wrote Awake in the Wild, Make Peace With Your Mind, From Suffering to Peace and A Field Guide to Nature Meditation.

About Kirsten Rudestam

Kirsten Rudestam has practiced meditation since 1997 and was authorized to teach in the Theravādan tradition by her mentors Gil Fronsdal and Andrea Fella. She holds a PhD in environmental sociology, is a trained vision fast guide through the School of Lost Borders, and facilitates Joanna Macy's Work That Reconnects. She has taught since 2002 and co-founded the Sati Center's Buddhist Eco-Chaplaincy Training Program.

About Yong Oh

Yong Oh is a Dharma Council teacher at the Durango Dharma Center and a core teacher for Sacred Mountain Saṅgha. He teaches at Spirit Rock, Insight Meditation Society and other retreat centers. His training includes the four-year Insight Meditation Society Retreat Teacher Training and Spirit Rock's Community Dharma Leaders and Nature Dharma Teacher Training programs, with Kittisaro and Thanissara as his primary teachers. A retired acupuncturist, he brings particular interest to devotional expression and to supporting caregivers and communities of color in the Dharma.

Guest Speakers

Guest presenters include Leah Penniman, co-founder and farm director of Soul Fire Farm; Sheryl Petty, founder of Ocha Dharma and Movement Tapestries, ordained in Yoruba/Lucumi and Nyingma Vajrayana Buddhism; Dr. Lyla June Johnston, an Indigenous musician, author and community organizer; and Kazu Haga, a nonviolence and restorative justice trainer and author of Healing Resistance.

Before You Go

The course is held entirely online in English, so there is no travel, and it includes no in-person retreat component, meals or accommodation. No prior meditation experience is stated as a requirement. Spirit Rock welcomes people of all cultures, genders, orientations, abilities, ages and economic circumstances. Grant funding covers most of the cost, and scholarships are available for anyone for whom the fee would be a barrier. One-on-one mentoring or coaching is not part of the course.