In-Person and Online: Rediscovering Your Super Powers – Cultivating the 5 Spiritual Faculties
with Leslie Booker and David Grogan
Thursdays, April 10th – May 15th, 2025 | 6:30pm – 8:30pm ET
In-Person Location: New York Insight at 115 West 29th Street, 12th Floor
As a global community we face tumultuous political and cultural changes that can trigger a range of mixed emotions. You might feel overwhelmed, stuck, angry, or fearful, as well as a sense of urgency to move into action.
The good news is that you already have within you the capacity to empower your practice. The Buddha identified five innate human faculties that can be developed and strengthened into transformative powers for personal and collective liberation from suffering; faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration and wisdom.
Balancing the powers to ensure they work as a cohesive system is essential and involves an ongoing process of adjusting and readjusting, much like fine-tuning an instrument.
Faith gives us trust and confidence in the Dharma, dispelling doubt—and inspires the energy needed to move forward. When energy has found its equilibrium, then there is much more ease in the body. And from that ease, there can be continuity of mindfulness, and when there is steadiness of mind, concentration grows. As concentration deepens, in the stillness of an attentive mind, wisdom emerges. It’s the wisdom of emptiness, of letting go of all that is not true, that brings about our liberation.
Throughout the course, we’ll explore each of these powers in practical, grounded ways—through guided meditation, relational practice, and weekly reflection prompts that support integration both on and off the cushion.
In-Person Registration:
Please register below. If you are able, registering at the “Supporter” level enables others to attend at the “Subsidized” level. Thank you for your generosity! (Please note that the registration price includes a base level of teacher support, and you will have the opportunity to donate more after the program.)
If you are registering via a mobile device such as a phone or tablet, you can scroll right and left and up and down within the below form if it is partially obscured or cut off.
CLICK HERE to open the registration form in a new browser window.
Online Registration:
Please register below. If you are able, registering at the “Supporter” level enables others to attend at the “Subsidized” level. Thank you for your generosity! (Please note that the registration price includes a base level of teacher support, and you will have the opportunity to donate more after the program.)
If you are registering via a mobile device such as a phone or tablet, you can scroll right and left and up and down within the below form if it is partially obscured or cut off.
CLICK HERE to open the registration form in a new browser window.
Volunteering
All of our programs rely on volunteers to support our teachers and staff with various tasks and responsibilities. Volunteering allows you to participate in our programs at no cost. To inquire about volunteering opportunities, please fill out our inquiry form, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
Teacher(s)
Leslie Booker
Booker is a heart – centered, spirit – driven activist and meditation teacher committed to creating a culture of belonging through her teaching and writing. She completed Spirit Rock’s 4 year Retreat Teacher Training in 2020, and shared the practices of yoga and mindfulness with New York City’s most vulnerable populations for over a decade. Booker has co – authored and contributed to several publications including the trauma – informed anthology Practicing Liberation and its accompanying workbook, for folks working towards social justice. She is a co-founder of the Yoga Service Council at Omega Institute and the Meditation Working Group of Occupy Wall Street. In 2020 she was invited to be a Sojourner Truth Leadership Fellow through Auburn Seminary and was voted by her peers as one of the 12 Powerful Women in the Mindfulness Movement.
Booker moved to Philadelphia in August of 2020 to vote in a swing state, and currently serves as the Guiding Teacher of New York Insight.
W | LeslieBooker.com
IG | TheRealBookerProject
FB | LeslieBooker
David Grogan
David Grogan joined the New York Insight Teachers Council in 2023 after a decade of service as a practice leader with the Brooklyn Sangha and the Aging as a Spiritual Practice Sangha. He is also a member of the teaching team for Space2Meditate.com, an online community of dedicated practitioners co-founded by one of his longtime mentors, Jon Aaron. David is a qualified Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) instructor and he completed a yearlong Mindfulness Training Institute (MTI) teacher training program under the guidance of Mark Coleman and Martin Aylward.
Insatiable curiosity is a catalyst in his life and practice, and he delights in accompanying others in the process of discovery. During a long career as a journalist, which included a decade as the primary story editor for a popular science magazine and another decade editing various history magazines, he had the privilege of learning something new every day and sharing those nuggets of insight. He is currently a member of the CUNY Graduate Center Lifelong Peer Learning Program (LP 2), where he facilitates workshops in meditation and guided autobiography. His personal passions include jazz and poetry and the wondrous potential the art of deep listening reveals for people to open their hearts and minds and connect with each other through the sound of surprise.