Holding Ground
Inner Resilience for Environmental Changemakers
with Mark Coleman, Kirsten Rudestam, and Yong Oh
Begins February 13, 2026
A 5-month intensive to nourish the inner ground from which meaningful action can grow.
This 5-month journey weaves mindfulness, compassion, and nature-based practice with the real challenges of our time—grief, burnout, and the overwhelm of intersecting crises. Through contemplative practice and community support, you’ll develop the inner steadiness needed for long-term engagement. Here, we cultivate a spiritual infrastructure that can hold our ecological activism. We will explore how belonging to the Earth and to each other becomes the ground for sustained, creative action.
Enjoy A Free Meditation With Mark Coleman
Download Chapter Sixteen: Standing with Trees from Mark Coleman’s A Field Guide to Nature Meditation: 52 Mindfulness Practices for Joy, Wisdom and Wonder.
What You’ll Practice
- Cultivate Inner Resilience: Develop mindfulness, compassion, and emotional balance to support well-being and prevent burnout.
- Deepen Connection to Earth and Kin: Build kinship with nature through contemplative, sensory, and place-based practices.
- Foster Joy and Collective Care: Tap into joy, gratitude, and shared meaning as lasting sources of strength.
- Navigate Challenging Emotions: Learn tools to meet grief, uncertainty, and change with grace and creativity.
- Strengthen Relational Capacities: Grow in deep listening, compassionate dialogue, and collaborative action.
- Sustain Long-Term Engagement: Envision and embody long-term, collective commitments to transformative change.
This Course Is Designed For You If…
- You work for ecological integrity, environmental justice, or collective well-being
- You experience burnout, grief, or overwhelm in your activism
- You seek practices that integrate spiritual depth with engaged action
- You want to sustain your commitment for the long term
- You feel called to remember your belonging within the larger web of life
- You want to build community with others who share your values and struggles
What You Receive
Live Immersive Sessions
Two monthly live sessions with the teachers and guest speakers.
Community Connections
Build meaningful relationships through small peer groups and our online forum.
Practices Between Sessions
Tools and practices to help you integrate learning into everyday life.
Lifetime Access to Course
Revisit the teachings, practices at any time at your own pace.
Course Schedule & Outline
Love and compassion form the foundation of sustainable activism. Through heart-based and nature-based meditations, you’ll explore what truly motivates your work and establish grounding practices. You’ll create a daily sit spot practice, articulate your deeper purpose within small groups, and identify sources of support for times of difficulty. This module invites you to root your activism in care rather than urgency alone.
February
• Fri, Feb 13, 9 am–12 pm PT
• Fri, Feb 27, 9 am–11 am PT
This module offers tools for meeting grief, anger, and other challenging emotions with skill and tenderness. You’ll learn the RAIN technique for working with difficulty, hold space for learning from grief and anger, and engage practices that reveal interconnection and reciprocity. Through deep listening and relational presence, you’ll discover that belonging—to each other and the Earth—holds us through descent.
March
• Fri, Mar 13, 9 am–12 pm PT
• Fri, Mar 27, 9 am–11 am PT
Joy is not a luxury but a necessity for sustained engagement. Here you’ll identify personal sources of pleasure and delight, practice muditā (empathic joy) through meditation and movement, and create practices that foster celebration and community. You’ll explore how joy strengthens resilience and deepens your connection to the vitality of life itself, even amid difficulty.
April
• Fri, Apr 10, 9 am–12 pm PT
• Fri, Apr 24, 9 am–11 am PT
Equanimity allows us to stay present with what is, responding wisely rather than reactively. You’ll explore upekkhā (equanimity) practice, identify personal challenges to maintaining balance, and develop an action plan addressing: “What is mine to do? With whom? What vision and resources do I need?” This module supports you in finding sustainable rhythms for your work.
May
• Fri, May 8, 9 am–12 pm PT
• Fri, May 22, 9 am–11 am PT
The journey integrates as you reflect on growth and insight gained over five months. You’ll articulate a vision for continued spiritual activism and community engagement, identifying and embodying the relationships and practices that will sustain you. This module honors what has shifted and supports your return to the world with renewed commitment, clarity, and care.
All sessions are on Fridays.
June
• Fri, Jun 5, 9 am–12 pm PT
• Fri, Jun 19, 9 am–11 am PT
• Fri, Jun 26, 9 am–12 pm PT
Meet The Teachers
Mark Coleman, MA
Mark has a master’s in Clinical Psychology and has trained extensively in the Buddhist tradition, both in the Insight meditation and in the Dzogchen tradition. He is a senior teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and has taught insight meditation retreats since 1997. Mark is a life-long nature lover and is passionate about guiding people into the beauty of meditation and nature. He has led wilderness nature retreats worldwide for over twenty years. Through his organization Awake in the Wild Mark leads year long nature meditation teacher trainings in the US and Europe.
Co-founder of the Mindfulness Training Institute Mark also leads year long professional mindfulness teacher trainings in Europe and the US. He is author of Awake in the Wild: Mindfulness in Nature as a Path to Self-discovery, Make Peace With Your Mind, From Suffering to Peace, and his recent book A Field Guide to Nature Meditation. He lives in Sausalito, Marin and likes nothing more than hiking, biking and kayaking in the outdoors.
Kirsten Rudestam, PhD
A dedicated meditation practitioner since 1997, Kirsten has been authorized and trained to teach in the Theravādan tradition by her mentors, Gil Fronsdal and Andrea Fella. Kirsten holds a PhD in environmental sociology, is a trained vision fast guide through the School of Lost Borders, and is a facilitator of Joanna Macy’s “Work That Reconnects.” She believes that practices of (re)connection are vital for cultivating the resilience needed to face ecological loss and embrace our inherent interdependence. She has been teaching meditation in the Theravādan tradition since 2002, and co-founded and co-teaches the Sati Center’s Buddhist Eco-Chaplaincy Training Program.
Yong Oh
Yong is a Dharma Council teacher at the Durango Dharma Center and a core teacher for Sacred Mountain Saṅgha, and is also a visiting teacher for other community centers across North America. He teaches retreats at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Insight Meditation Society, Big Bear Retreat Center, and Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center. He is a graduate of the 4-year Insight Meditation Society Retreat Teacher Training program, Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s 2-year Community Dharma Leaders program, the 2-year Nature Dharma Teacher Training, and the Sacred Mountain Saṅgha 2-year Dharmapala training, taught by his primary teachers Kittisaro and Thanissara.
Yong is also a retired acupuncturist, and he deeply loves mountains and forests and bringing the practice of meditation into nature. Nature and Dharma are at the heart of his path. He also has a particular interest in devotional expression and supporting caregivers as well as communities of color in the Dharma. For his full schedule, visit yongoh.com.
Join Us!
- 5-Month Online Learning Journey
- Supportive Online Community
- Weekly Guided Practices
- Lifetime access to the content
- Grow Together Through Dialogue and Reflection
Free - $0
Course Schedule
All sessions are held on Fridays
February • Feb 13, 9 am–12 pm PT • Feb 27, 9 am–11 am PT
March • Mar 13, 9 am–12 pm PT • Mar 27, 9 am–11 am PT
April • Apr 10, 9 am–12 pm PT • Apr 24, 9 am–11 am PT
May • May 8, 9 am–12 pm PT • May 22, 9 am–11 am PT
June • Jun 5, 9 am–12 pm PT • Jun 19, 9 am–11 am PT • Jun 26, 9 am–12 pm PT
About the EcoDharma Program
Spirit Rock’s EcoDharma & Transformational Culture Program (ETCP) brings together Buddhist teachers, activists, and community partners to nurture resilience, deepen climate awareness, and inspire compassionate action.
If you’d like to explore the full vision, upcoming offerings, partners, and ways to get involved, visit the ETCP page below.
