Alex Haley
Residential Retreat Teacher
Alex Haley, PhD, teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Minneapolis Insight Meditation Community and online through Dharma Ground, where he currently serves as a core teacher. Alex completed Spirit Rock's Community Dharma Leader program in 2012 and graduated from the SRMC/IMS/IRC four-year teacher training in 2016. Beginning in his high school calculus class, Alex has studied and practiced meditation for more than 25 years, including many multi-month retreats of intensive practice.
Alex was previously the mindfulness faculty lead at the University of Minnesota's Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing. He has researched mindfulness, interoceptive awareness as well as pain and wellbeing behaviors through his work on clinical trials with the Integrative Health and Wellbeing Research Program. He is also a member of the Interactive Visualization Lab at the University of Minnesota, which focuses on data visualization, computer graphics, and human-computer interaction through XR.
Alex holds a PhD in Cognitive Science, and is also a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, trained Co-Active coach, and certified Myers-Briggs practitioner. He also previously worked in legal and business roles both domestically and internationally. Alex is a parent of a rambunctious elementary school kid and loves to play (and practice meditation) outside in the heart of frigid Minnesota winters. Alex is passionate about community-based healing and technology for wellbeing.
Alex Haley's Upcoming Programs
Retreat | On-Land
June 7 - June 14, 2024 | Friday - Friday | 7 nights
Insight, Awareness, and the Nine Bodies of Consciousness
This retreat offers a new style of Insight Meditation that employs the “Nine Bodies of Consciousness” map. The focus of this practice is on developing mindfulness of the felt sense of embodied experience, and directly experiencing the various capacities of consciousness, including intuitive awareness, which fosters the natural arising of insight. This distinct teaching style will be unfamiliar to first-time “Nine Bodies Insight” practitioners, and potential participants are strongly encouraged to listen to guided meditations beforehand.
Retreat | On-Land
June 22 - June 27, 2024 | Saturday - Thursday | 5 nights
Mindfulness for Everyone
8 CE Credits. Mindfulness offers us tools to develop our capacity to pay attention, regulate emotions, and cultivate states of lovingkindness, compassion, and even-mindedness. Mindfulness can be practiced in a variety of ways—from focused attention to wide open, spacious, natural awareness. Over time, one can access states of profound well-being in both silent meditation and everyday life. Rooted in the Buddhist practice of mindfulness, this retreat focuses on practical applications of mindfulness and is open to people of all experience levels and backgrounds.
Retreat | On-Land
August 11 - August 18, 2024 | Sunday - Sunday | 7 nights
The Elements: Cultivating an Embodied Experience of Emptiness and Fullness
A fundamental aspect of establishing embodied mindfulness involves contemplations of the elements—earth, water, fire, air, and space. These five elements are universal, and when we contemplate them in relation to the body, they may bring a cooling of the grasping mind and profound realizations of emptiness and fullness. In contemplating the elements and their interrelationship, we will allow them to support the non-conceptual knowing from which insights naturally arise. This retreat includes guided and silent meditations, movement, and teacher meetings.
Retreat | On-Land
October 1 - October 10, 2024 | Tuesday - Thursday | 9 nights
Naturally Arising Samādhi [Concentration]
This retreat develops concentration through specific meditative practices that utilize the mind’s natural capacity to become collected and unified. Our focus will be on developing concentration; exploring the experience of a concentrated and contented mind as a natural, mysterious, and beneficial phenomena; and utilizing concentration during Insight practice. The primary teaching method will be two daily guided 45-60 minute meditations, and participants are strongly encouraged to listen to guided meditations ahead of time to experience this style of practice.