Mindful Speech as a Spiritual Practice
Words create worlds. Learn to use yours wisely.Practice with Rebecca Schisler and Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife
And Guest Teacher Danny Cohen
Weekly Live Sessions on Mondays, June 1 – 29
3:00-4:30pm ET / 12:00-1:30pm PT
(all sessions will be recorded)
This course is for all experience levels, from beginner to advanced. Newcomers welcome!
Find your voice in a noisy world through the timeless Jewish wisdom of sacred speech.
We’ve all said things in the heat of the moment and wished we could have been more thoughtful about our words. What does it mean to be a shomer lashon—a guardian of speech—in times of great polarization, when so much meaning gets lost in translation? This five-week course journeys into the heart of Jewish spiritual practice and wisdom on the power of our words.
Grounded in mindfulness and deep listening, we will explore how to bring consciousness to four dimensions of speech:
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- Our inner dialogue
- Our conversations with others
- Our prayers to the Divine, and
- The mystery of becoming available for the Divine to speak through us.
Find true expression through the sacred practice of speaking with clarity and care
Join us on a journey that helps us learn to speak with intention and compassion in an age when words have never mattered more.
Whether you are seeking to heal a fractured relationship, find more meaning in your prayers, quiet the harsh inner critic, or simply speak with greater care and presence, this course meets you where you are. You don’t need to be a scholar or a seasoned practitioner, you only need to be open and willing to reflect and practice.
Participants will leave with new tools and a renewed sense of the sacred potential woven into how they express themselves. Together we will:
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- Cultivate compassion to ensure that your inner dialogue is affirming and supportive.
- Learn skills to support your discernment about how and when to speak.
- Develop the ability to speak from the heart in ways that are honest and true.
- Deepen your capacity to be fully expressed, for the sake of yourself and our world.
Curriculum Overview
This course will include partner and small group exercises to practice speaking with intentionality, authenticity, compassion, and aliveness.
Week 1: Cultivating compassionate inner dialogue
Week 2: Strengthening relationships through mindful speech
Week 3: Strengthening relationships through mindful speech, continued
Week 4: Expressing our authentic hearts through prayer
Week 5: Becoming a vessel for divine inspiration
Register Now
IJS is pleased to offer this course at three tuition levels.
We encourage you to pay at the highest level you can, which will enable more students to participate.
Abundance Level
$299
Basic Level
$199
Reduced Level
$99
Meet Your Instructors:
Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife
Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife (she/they) sprinkles sparkles, disrupts expectations, and offers blessings wherever she goes. She serves as Founding Kohenet of Kesher Pittsburgh and Core Faculty Member with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and also enjoys working with beloved, The Jewish Studio Project, Kirva, the Avodah Institute for Social Change, and the Jewish Learning Collaborative, among other national Jewish organisations. Additionally, she delights in serving as a shlichat tzibbur, life spiral ceremony/ritual creatrix, consultant, facilitator, teacher, liturgist and songstress. Her work in these realms is informed by her lived experience as a queer, bi-racial, child-free Jewish person, her belief that Book, Body and Earth are equal sources of wisdom, the quandaries she has encountered as a scholar of the Orphan Wisdom School, and her deep commitment to a thriving, liberatory Jewish future. Keshira received Kohenet smicha in 2017 and earned her BS (2000) and MS (2001) at Carnegie Mellon University. Though both the lands of the Osage & Haudenosaunee people (aka Pittsburgh, PA) and the Gadigal people (Sydney, AUS) feel like home, Keshira and her beloved have been in an extended period of travel since January 2023.
Rebecca Schisler
Rebecca is a core faculty member at IJS, where she directs young adult programming and created and steers the Shevet Jewish Mindfulness Community, a space for folks in or near their twenties and thirties to dive deep into Jewish spirituality and mindfulness practice in online and virtual spaces. Additionally, she creates and curates content for IJS social media and frequently teaches on retreats and multi-week online programs.
Rebecca is honored to serve on this faculty after years of leading groups and teaching classes and retreats with Or HaLev, Pardes, Wilderness Torah, Stanford School of Medicine, Hillel at Stanford, Urban Adamah, Hamakom, and the Awakened Heart Project. A student rabbi at ALEPH, Rebecca is passionate about integrating ancestral wisdom traditions with innovative approaches to personal and collective healing and liberation. She teaches Jewish spirituality as an embodied, holistic, and accessible path, with relevant and timely wisdom for all.
Danny Cohen
Danny graduated from the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania and has pursued the study of Torah and wisdom in a variety of yeshivot and institutions in Israel, the U.S., India, Nepal, and Mexico. He has trained across a variety of modalities of psychotherapy (Hakomi, Organic Intelligence, AEDP, Primary Attachment Therapy, and currently NARM) and transformative change work, and has been practicing meditation since 2009. Danny has been exploring and practicing Nonviolent Communication since 2010, training with some of the leaders in the field- Yoram Mosenzon, Miki Kashtan, and the late Robert Gonzales and Robert Maoz Krzisnik. Danny is a long time student of mystic and trauma healing pioneer, Thomas Hübl, and graduate of his Timeless Wisdom Training.