Planetary Dharma - 2025
200 Hour Apprentice Training Year 1
A Bodhisattva Training
with Dr. John Churchill, Nicole Churchill, and Guest Teachers
Registration opens Summer 2024
200 Hour Meditation Apprentice Training
March - December 2025
This 200 hour apprentice level training focuses on the path of Maitreya’s Nine Stages of Calm Staying; a contemplative immersion cultivating the cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, attentional, and psychological capacities of students for peak performance, engaged joy, happiness, personal integration and equanimity.
Our system of training offers an initiatory distillation of the contemplative arts and sciences - a Planetary Dharma - for the emerging contemporary bodhisattva.
The Planetary Dharma Initiate Apprentice Program curriculum provides an in depth understanding of the principles underlying meditation, exploring the interface of meditation with Western psychology and neuroscience, cultivating teaching skills, and more. As a student, you will:
Learn Maitreya’s Nine Stages of Calm Staying.
Acquire skills that apply Calm Staying and self-compassion to relationships, conflict resolution, healing trauma, organizational wisdom, and planetary evolution.
Cultivate skills related to human development, diversity, ethics, and addressing the global crisis we are facing in order to facilitate groups and offer these teachings to a wide range of practitioners with diverse needs.
Commit with new resolution and depth to your spiritual unfolding.
Contribute to the Karuna Mandala’s projects (Karuna School, Dharma Army, Planetary Dharma) through your practicum participation.
Join us for this extraordinary program that highlights the connection between psychological and spiritual depth.
Planetary Dharma
Year 1
Personal Vehicle: Dharma Foundations in the Nine Stages
This year’s curriculum teaches the foundations of self-healing in the Planetary Dharma system: the approaches of the integral Fourth-Turning, the understanding of multigenerational trauma, the importance of the insights of the four noble truths, learning to relate to suffering, karma and taking the personal responsibility to heal through the eight-fold path, and the meditation practice of Maitreya’s nine stages.
Students will be contributing to, and helping to create the Karuna Mandala and forward all of its projects. This training will allow students the benefits of strengthening their commitment to personal and group practice, social action, and to pave the way towards becoming a Facilitator-in-Training.
Your educational journey will support:
healing personal developmental trauma,
awakening to the unbounded loving openness of your essential nature,
owning within yourself the “heroic altruist” archetype,
discovering your innate capacity for vital energy and bliss,
engaging in community with like-minded souls to build a new deliberately developmental culture of sacred sangha.
We are accepting applications for the Initiate Apprentice Level training beginning January 2025.
Training Format, Dates, and Hours
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Bi-Weekly Planetary Dharma Class
Held on the 1st & 3rd Tuesday of Month
5pm - 7pm Mountain Time
In this class we will be exploring the theory and practice of Maitreya’s Nine Stages of Calm/Staying within the fourth-turning teachings that synthesizes Buddhist contemplative science, psychodynamic integration, embodiment, adult ego-development, and esotericism. Each class consists of a dharma talk, Q&A, and a guided meditation.
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Monthly Practice Days
Practice weekends are an opportunity for a 7 hour day of dharma practice giving students the opportunity to learn the path, benefit from the group field, rebuild karmic momentum in your personal practice, and refine your experience through nuanced guided meditation from the teacher.
Schedule for Practice Days (US Mountain Time):
Practice Session 1: 7:00am - 10:30am US Mountain Time
Meal Break: 10:30am - 11:30am US Mountain Time
Practice Session 2: 11:30am - 3:00pm US Mountain Time
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Biannual Retreats (Online or In Person)
Retreats are an opportunity to take a deeper dive into your personal practice, benefit from the group field, and receive guidance from the teacher. They focus on a particular dimension of dharma practice such as staying calm practice, insight meditation, Open Ground essence practice, and alchemical energy practices.
Schedule for Retreat Days (US Mountain Time):
Practice Session 1: 7:00am - 10:30am US Mountain Time
Meal Break: 10:30am - 11:30am US Mountain Time
Practice Session 2: 11:30am - 3:00pm US Mountain Time
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Bi-Weekly Peer Led Sangha Sessions
Held on the 2nd & 4th Tuesday of the Month.
5pm - 7pm Mountain Time & in Europe 6pm Central European Time
Students will be assigned a circle of peers led by senior sangha members to share personal process related to the journey, the contemplative learning, and to practice facilitating group meditation.
Learn at your own pace…
Recordings will be available in our membership library for all classes, weekends, and retreats. Please note: The library of recordings expire upon the conclusion of the course. If you sign up for the following Year 2, you will continue to have access to the library of recordings for Y1.
Meet Your Instructors:
Dr. John Churchill
CONTEMPLATIVE DOCTOR OF PSYCHOLOGY | DHARMA TEACHER | TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE PRACTITIONER | AUTHOR
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Born in London, Dr. Churchill's interest in psycho-spiritual development, Integral theory, Contemplative studies, Western Esotericism, and Mahayana Buddhism began in his adolescence, eventually leading him to spend several years as a Buddhist monk at Samye Ling Monastery in Scotland. During this time, John received the esoteric Planetary Dharma transmissions that would in time unfold as his contribution to a planetary fourth turning teaching.
Dr. Churchill spent 15 years training and teaching “Great Seal” meditation in an Indo-Tibetan Mahayana lineage under the mentorship of the late senior Western teacher, translator, respected author, and clinical psychologist Dr. Daniel P. Brown.
He is also a founding member of the Integral Institute led by esteemed Transpersonal/Integral philosopher, Ken Wilber.
John has received advanced training in: attachment therapy, hypnosis, positive psychology for peak performance, and the “Pointing Out” style of Mahamudra meditation.
For the last 25 years, John has developed a a Fourth Turning Planetary Dharma practice which includes the somatically based contemplative practice path; Embodying the Open Ground, that integrates psychodynamic healing, adult development and meditation.
John holds a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from William James College, and is a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Married to his partner, Nicole since 2000, they share two teen-agers together - Trinity and Bodhi, and are Co-Founders of Samadhi Integral, and Co-Directors of Karuna Mandala.
Nicole Churchill
MASTERS IN TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY | CREDENTIALED MINDFULNESS BASED PSYCHEDELIC THERAPIST | BORAD CERTIFIED MUSIC THERAPIST | KUNDALINI YOGA INSTRUCTOR |
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Nicole is a psychedelic therapist with advanced training and credentialing in Mindfulness-Based Psychedelic Therapy through the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness where she is on staff. She has extensive training in the healing arts and is a board certified Music Therapist, Transpersonal Counselor, Certified Kundalini Yoga Instructor, and an Expressive Movement Facilitator.
She is a founding member of the Integral Institute led by esteemed Transpersonal/Integral philosopher, Ken Wilber, and was mentored for 15 years by respected author and clinical psychologist Dr. Daniel P. Brown. She has completed advanced training in the following areas: attachment therapy, hypnosis, gestalt, addictions, anxiety disorders, depression, conflict resolution, positive psychology for peak performance, CCRT (Core Conflict Relational Themes), and the “Pointing Out” style of Mahamudra meditation.
Nicole earned her BA from Boston’s world renowned Berklee College of Music (1993), where she majored in voice and songwriting. She was awarded a dual Masters from Naropa University in Boulder, CO, where she studied Transpersonal Psychology and Music Therapy (2001).
In addition to her clinical work, Nicole is the Co-Founder of Samadhi Integral and is the Executive Director of the Karuna Mandala Initiative, a 501 (c) (3) umbrella organization that nurtures, cross-pollinates, and actualizes projects that aim to raise human consciousness and develop wisdom culture in support of a good, true, beautiful, and sustainable future for our planet.
Married to her partner, John since 2000 they share two teen-agers together - Trinity and Bodhi. Tending to the Churchill family temple and raising their children has been a sacred journey of Karma yoga for Nicole. The lessons of motherhood have been immense and inform her approach to teaching the dharma of sacred world in everyday life.
She and John are the Co-Founders of Samadhi Integral, and the Co-Directors of their non-profit, Karuna Mandala.
