Presentations at Fluidity Forum 2025
The sessions and exhibits listed on this page are subject to potential change if necessary. Some cancellations will inevitably occur. We have finished assigning rooms and time slots, although they may change.
You may also see our 2023 session list, and our 2024 session list. You can see some videos of past sessions on this playlist on our YouTube channel.
Please email us at our contact@ email address, or through our Contact Page, if you catch anything that seems mistaken or unlikely!
Thursday
Thursday 1pm: Thursday Lunch (Irish), Bree Bartholomew
Thursday 6pm: Opening Ceremonies, everyone
Thursday 7pm: Intro to Fluidity Forum, Matt Arnold
Thursday 8pm: Thursday Dinner (Mexican), Bree Bartholomew
Thursday 9pm to end of night: Singing Circle, Eileen Martz
Thursday 10pm to end of night: Mystery Character Experience, Neight Love
Friday
Friday 9am: Friday Continental Breakfast
Friday 10am: The Yin and Yang of Partner Dance, Harry Gao
Friday 11am: Rethinking Self Enquiry, Patrick Day
Friday 11am: Building Healthy Habits for the Long Term (Sleep, Nutrition, and Exercise), Norman Perlmutter
Friday 12pm: Slay the Princess from a Vajrayana Perspective, Joe Cecil
Friday 1pm: Friday Lunch (Greek), Bree Bartholomew
Friday 2pm: How Sound Becomes Music, David Fine
Friday 2pm: Discussion Group: Most Interesting Thoughts Right Now, Ann Gemlich
Friday 3:30pm (80 minutes): Competitive-rules Five in a Row Is Pretty Hardcore, Alexis Wu
Friday 4pm: What Dissociative Identity Disorder Teaches Us about the Self, Laura Pearl
Friday 5pm: Cacophony Society: You May Already Be a Member, David Fine
Friday 6pm: Life Hack Your Energy, Jane Pierce
Friday 7pm: Vibration Recalibration (Sound Healing Workshop), Carrie Day
Friday 8pm: Friday Dinner (Polish), Bree Bartholomew
Friday 9pm to end of night: Somatic Pulse (High-Frequency Dance Activation), Carrie Day
Saturday
Saturday 9am: Saturday Continental Breakfast
Saturday 10am: The Creativity Revolution, Phil Goetz
Saturday 11am: How to Talk about Woo without Losing Credibility, Eileen Martz
Saturday 11pm: Managing Team Building and Company Culture as CEO of a 4th-generation Family Business, Norman Perlmutter
Saturday 12pm: How FIRST Robotics Helps Create a Better Tomorrow, Peter Mueller
Saturday 1pm: Saturday Lunch (Arabic), Bree Bartholomew
Saturday 2pm: Perspectives and Purposes, Brandon Watson
Saturday 3pm: General Semantics, Bruce Webber
Saturday 4pm: Is Transhumanism Necessary for a Positive Future Between Humans and Machines?, Blake Elias
Saturday 5pm: Romanticism and Decadence during the Long 19th Century, Alex Cesarz
Saturday 6pm: Lightning Talks, anyone
Saturday 7pm: Turing and Tabletops, Josh Brulé
Saturday 8pm: Saturday Dinner (Italian), Bree Bartholomew
Saturday 9:30pm to end of night: Karaoke, Bree Bartholomew
Sunday
Sunday 11am: Coffee Ritual, Matt Arnold
Sunday 12pm: Sunday Brunch, Bree Bartholomew
Sunday 1pm: Arm Yourself 101, Alexis Wu
Sunday 2pm: The Comfort Cocoon, Matt Arnold
Sunday 3pm: Closing Reflections, everyone
Items and Exhibits
“K” Artwork, Kara Bradley
Popcorn Machine and Home-made Popcorn Seasoning Blends, Jamie Finerman
Hi-fi Headphones, Norman Perlmutter
Yunzi Go Stones, Jujube Wood Bowls, and Spruce Renju Board, Alexis Wu
Canceled
What is Mindfulness? A Discussion and Workshop on Meditation Techniques from a Secular Lens, Srikar Pamidimukkala
Thursday
Thursday Lunch (Irish)
Thursday, 1:00pm to 1:50pm, First-floor Dining Room, Bree Bartholomew
Irish stew
vegetarian shepherd’s pie
Irish soda bread
Opening Ceremonies
Thursday, 6:00pm to 6:50pm, Game Room, everyone
The intention is to cohere as a group, and set the norms of the weekend. We will gather in the enclosed parking lot in the back, and process together to be seated. Bring an object to present to the group and place on the table for the weekend; there are more instructions in the email you received.
Intro to Fluidity Forum
Thursday, 7:00pm to 7:50pm, Game Room, Matt Arnold
A survey of ideas that combined to inform the design of Fluidity Forum.
Thursday Dinner (Mexican)
Thursday, 8:00pm to 8:50pm, First-floor Dining Room, Bree Bartholomew
street tacos (steak, chicken, and portobello mushroom fillings)
cheese enchiladas
guacamole
Singing Circle
Thursday, 9:00pm to the end of the night, First-floor Living Room, Eileen Martz
Come sing your favorite sea shanty, comedy song, ballad about a spaceship, or whatever else you like! It’s in the “bardic” format, which means we go around the circle and each person has the option to sing a song, request a song, or pass.
Mystery Character Experience
Thursday, 10:00pm to the end of the night, Second-floor dining room, Neight Love
WHO ARE YOU?
A TTRPG One Shot of Mystery and Discovery
No stats. No class. No race. No sheet.
Just you, some dice, a pencil and friends.
You awaken in a strange world with no memory of who or what you are. As you roleplay, you’ll piece together your character’s identity, abilities, and purpose from the clues around you.
Never played a TTRPG? Perfect.
Don’t know the rules or options? No one at the table does.
Worried about mistakes? There are none, only discoveries.
This is a story of identity revealed through play, made for the curious, the bold, the lost, and the weird.
Will you accept the mission to uncover yourself?
(Note: ambient sound is used during this event.)
Friday
Friday Continental Breakfast
Friday, 9:00am to 9:50am, First- and Second-floor Kitchens
Serve yourself from the fridge. We will have a continental breakfast of yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, cereal with milk and non-dairy milk, fruit, bagels with cream cheese, and coffee.
The Yin and Yang of Partner Dance
Friday, 10:00am to 10:50am, Game Room, Harry Gao
Contemporary discourse about yin and yang often focuses on describing their differing traits, like yielding vs. exertion. But this misses out on their most useful aspect: how their mutual interaction drives action and change.
In this workshop I will use partner dance as an example to illustrate the interaction between yin and yang, and how viewing yin-yang as an interactive process can provide insights towards dating, personal motivation, and agency in general.
No experience or even desire to dance needed—this will be a mostly philosophical discussion with some physical demonstrations, but it does not focus on any specific dance steps at all.
Rethinking Self Enquiry
Friday, 11:00am to 11:50am, Game Room, Patrick Day
Self-enquiry is a practice of deep, reflective questioning aimed at understanding the nature of the self, the mind, and the source of one’s experiences, often used in spiritual traditions like Advaita Vedanta. I will be examining the practice through the lens of the work of ex-spiritual guru John Sherman, the psychotherapy of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) developed by Steven C. Hayes and several experts in Brain Lateralization Theory. I will argue that it can be more accessible and effective than mindfulness practices, provide a theory as to how it addresses the root cause of human suffering and give instructions on how to practice it.
Building Healthy Habits for the Long Term (Sleep, Nutrition, and Exercise)
Friday, 11:00pm to 11:50pm, First-floor Living Room, Norman Perlmutter
Over the past two years, I have managed to achieve fairly robust success (so far…) in an area of my life that has been a challenge for decades—establishing better habits in support of my health. Over the years of my adult life, I had taken up various diets and exercise regimes. They had short-term benefits, but I never maintained any diet or exercise regime for a full year. 2–3 years ago, I was in some of the worst health of my life. I was on the verge of obesity, dealing with long-ish COVID, high blood pressure, acid reflux, and more.
Beginning in November of 2023, I started making improvements to my health, focusing on the three core areas of sleep, nutrition, and exercise. I have lost 15 pounds, and I have developed a passion for trail running, after hating running for most of my life ever since being forced to run a mile in high school. I expect to run my first half marathon soon at the age of 41.
Some keys to achieving these improvements were first learning in depth about these three key areas of health, and then aligning my incentives so that I could establish healthy habits that I felt the appropriate motivation to continue in the long term. I focused on pull factors rather than push factors (carrots rather than sticks) and on the synergystic interactions between the different healthy habits. Extensive journaling, detailed fitness tracking, extensive discussions with friends, and using ChatGPT as a health coach and information resource have all played large roles in helping me to maintain my healthy habits.
I will give more details about this story, and also review some of the books that were influential to me on this journey, including Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, Eat, Drink, and be Healthy by Walter Willett, The Joy of Movement by Kelly McGonigal, Run to the Finish by Amanda Brooks, Science of Running by Chris Napier, Immune by Philipp Dettmer, and What is Health by Peter Sterling.
Slay the Princess from a Vajrayana Perspective
Friday, 12:00pm to 12:50pm, Game Room, Joe Cecil
What can Slay the Princess, a 2023 horror video game, have to do with vajrayana? A surprising amount! In this talk, I will review the game’s plot and experience and how both the plot and experience of the game connect to vajrayana. This talk will have full spoilers for Slay the Princess; it is strongly recommended that you have played the game before attending. I’ll tell you all about how the game connects to vajrayana and why that’s meaningful.
Friday Lunch (Greek)
Friday, 1:00pm to 1:50pm, First-floor Dining Room, Bree Bartholomew
Greek salad
avgolemono (chicken lemon rice soup)
vegetarian chili
Coney dogs (with bean-free chili on side for topping)
How Sound Becomes Music
Friday, 2:00pm to 2:50pm, Game Room, David Fine
A big-picture journey through the foundations of music theory perfect for beginners or enthusiasts. Learn how various musical instruments produce fixed pitches, how cultures around the world arrange those pitches into scales and harmony, and discover a practical approach to complex rhythm.
Discussion Group: Most Interesting Thoughts Right Now
Friday, 2:00pm to 2:50pm, First-floor Living Room, Ann Gemlich
An interlude to talk together about the ideas that each of us present are engaging with the most during an event that is likely to be full of ideas to engage with. Structurally similar to just the circling part of authentic relating and circling. An intentional moment to consider together a few of the thoughts that we were already considering semi-separately.
Competitive-rules Five in a Row Is Pretty Hardcore
Friday, 3:30pm to 4:50pm, First-floor Living Room, Alexis Wu
Go players may think of gomoku as not much besides a simple and shallow kids’ game that happens to be played with Go equipment, and this reputation is not exactly undeserved. After all, vanilla-rules gomoku, just like Connect Four, is a solved PSPACE-complete m,n,k-game in which, provided optimal play from both players, the first player always wins. But did you know that a society of enthusiasts in Japan have been patching the rules of gomoku since 1892, introducing handicaps for the first player and devising opening constraints that balance the game to the point that contemporary AI can’t solve it? Did you know that the resulting professional, competitive-rules variant of this silly little game, which can be played with paper and pencil if you wanted to, is as strategically complex and dynamic as chess? Let’s play some renju. After all, it’s still nowhere near as daunting as Go.
What Dissociative Identity Disorder Teaches Us about the Self
Friday, 4:00pm to 4:50pm, Game Room, Laura Pearl
The fluidity of the self is both important and difficult to comprehend. We know that the self has both pattern and nebulosity, but what does this mean? A number of psychological theories posit that the self has parts, and my therapeutic work with both myself and others bears this out. But what does it mean for the parts of self to have both pattern and nebulosity, in the context of a larger self that also displays pattern and nebulosity? In this talk I will discuss how my work with people with dissociative identity disorder has helped me to understand this phenomenon more concretely.
Cacophony Society: You May Already Be a Member
Friday, 5:00pm to 5:50pm, Game Room, David Fine
History and analysis of a counter culture anti-organization started in 1990s San Francisco. They directly spawned cultural mainstays such as Santacon, Burning Man, and Fight Club. It could hypothetically happen here.
Life Hack Your Energy
Friday, 6:00pm to 6:50pm, Game Room, Jane Pierce
Ever feel completely wiped out after a tough conversation or even just from overthinking? You’re not alone—and you don’t have to stay stuck in that drained state. This workshop is designed for anyone who wants to take charge of their energy, boost their focus, and learn practical techniques to reset and recharge.
Vibration Recalibration (Sound Healing Workshop)
Friday, 7:00pm to 7:50pm, Game Room, Carrie Day
Tuning your system from static to sacred.
Drop into a sound-powered reset with bells, tuning forks, and vibrational medicine that realigns your system on a cellular level. “Vibration Recalibration” bridges science and spirit to bring you back into harmonic flow.
Gimme a high vibe? This is it.
Friday Dinner (Polish)
Friday, 8:00pm to 8:50pm, First-floor Dining Room, Bree Bartholomew
city chicken
pierogi
cucumbers in sour cream
Somatic Pulse (High-Frequency Dance Activation)
Friday, 9:00pm to the end of the night, Game Room, Carrie Day
Feel the frequency. Move the energy. Raise the vibe.
Let your body become the instrument. “Somatic Pulse” is a high-frequency movement experience where you’ll tune inward, feel the rhythm of your own energy, and dance your way into alignment.
Saturday
Saturday Continental Breakfast
Saturday, 9:00am to 9:50am, First- and Second-floor Kitchens
Serve yourself from the fridge. We will have a continental breakfast of yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, cereal with milk and non-dairy milk, fruit, bagels with cream cheese, and coffee.
The Creativity Revolution
Saturday, 10:00am to 10:50am, Game Room, Phil Goetz
Plato insisted that artists could only imitate and never create. 600 years later, St. Augustine concurred. Later Christians condemned the notion of human creativity as impious. Westerners had only two notions of creativity: imagination, the rearranging of familiar things into new configurations; and inspiration, which attributed inventions to gods or spirits.
The idea resurfaced shortly after 1800, partly thanks to the new science of chemistry. The Romantic painter Delacroix was the first to suggest that painters could tell new stories. The first such painting I’ve found was made in Poland in 1862. But creativity had barely been introduced into painting before it was crushed by the counter-revolution of modern artists and French post-modern theorists. That’s why Norman Rockwell is a pariah of the art world today. But the notion survived in literature, perhaps because copyright and patent law protects ideas in text, but only style in visual art.
How to Talk about Woo without Losing Credibility
Saturday, 11:00am to 11:50am, Game Room, Eileen Martz
How both the woo and materialist sides can have better conversations. From someone who wanted to be able to talk about her weird experiences with her rationalist friends, and who has noticed people talking about woo publicly getting bad results.
Managing Team Building and Company Culture as CEO of a 4th-generation Family Business
Saturday, 11:00pm to 11:50pm, First-floor Living Room, Norman Perlmutter
In 2016, I gave up a tenure-track academic career at a community college in New York City and returned to my birthplace of Toledo to join my father in the family business. Our business operates watch repair departments inside of major departments stores.
Coming out of a union job in a large bureaucratic university, I welcomed the opportunity to work in a more practical environment with stronger financial incentives. On the other hand, I knew that one of the things I would miss most about academia was my summer breaks, and I was concerned about my ability and interest to keep up a regular work schedule in the long term.
I knew that to make this job work for me in the long term, I had to develop the business and my leadership skills in such a way that I could delegate more and work less, and eventually reclaim a lifestyle closer to my academic lifestyle as a grad student and professor. I’m currently on that path. Whether I will continue to succeed remains to be seen, but I’m loving the journey.
As a math professor, I typically flunked more than half of each class. I was actually encouraged to do this as a graduate student teaching assistant in my first orientation session, and that style stuck with me. Coming into the family business, the attitude persisted, but I figured that rather than engaging in the futile task of trying to help poorly performing students to improve all semester long, I could terminate poorly performing salespeople and replace them with stronger salespeople, who, with proper financial incentives, would build our business enormously. I eventually learned that this strategy was missing some key ideas, to say the least.
In order to achieve my goals and build my team, I had to learn to entrust my employees with more responsibility, embrace growth mindset and fallibility, and focus more on my employees’ attitude, culture fit, humility, and ability to work cooperatively. Some of the specific tools that I have used and continue to use include building an explicit company culture statement, making rules about what to delegate, and holding more group meetings.
I will flesh out the details of this story, and I will review three books that have influenced me strongly in this journey: Built to Scale by Lex Sisney, Permission to Screw Up by Kristen Hadeed, and The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni.
How FIRST Robotics Helps Create a Better Tomorrow
Saturday, 12:00pm to 12:50pm, Game Room, Peter Mueller
FIRST Robotics is an international robotics competition for children grades K–12. It was created by inventor Dean Kamen and MIT Professor Woodie Flowers. What they buried in the design of this innocuous new sport is the seeds of making the world a better place.
Saturday Lunch (Arabic)
Saturday, 1:00pm to 1:50pm, First-floor Dining Room, Bree Bartholomew
hummus
fattoush
chicken shawarma
Perspectives and Purposes
Saturday, 2:00pm to 2:50pm, Game Room, Brandon Watson
In this talk, we’ll be murdering a sacred cow of modern thought: a “View from Nowhere” which promises an escape from our messy, partial perspectives. What happens when we stop trying to escape these lived perspectives, and instead embrace them as a starting point for inquiry? What we find is that mind and world aren’t separate—they’re entangled!
Precisely because we don’t leave our viewpoints behind as we examine their construction, this leaves us with a question: how do we unpack a circularity that we ourselves are a part of? The answer lies not in escaping this circle, but in learning how to navigate it skillfully.
General Semantics
Saturday, 3:00pm to 3:50pm, Game Room, Bruce Webber
General Semantics is a school of thought developed by Alfred Korzybski in the first half of the 20th century. It draws on science and effective language use to help us think more clearly and solve problems. We’ll explore how ethics can emerge naturally from recognizing what sets humans apart from other animals, and how becoming aware of our own abstraction process supports a positive theory of sanity.
Is Transhumanism Necessary for a Positive Future Between Humans and Machines?
Saturday, 4:00pm to 4:50pm, Game Room, Blake Elias
“Don’t die—all the rest is commentary.”
This talk is on the future of humans and machines.
In this age of rapid technological advancement, it is necessary to ask:
· What does a desirable future look like?
· What actions should we take, and what technology should we build, to make this future a reality?
I will propose that transhumanism—namely, the merger of humans and machines—may be the best path forward.
To get there, I will sketch the beginnings of a formal framework for posing these questions. I will first propose an information-theoretic way to account for values, i.e. what a desirable future looks like.
I’ll outline several possible choices of what types of technology to build, taken from the literatures on media studies and AI alignment, and address what issues arise when each of these is pushed to its limit.
I’ll then propose what I see as one viable pathway toward success—namely, transhumanism—and what formal criteria we could place on what a “good” merge looks like.
Along the way I’ll point out some unanswered (and unasked) questions at the intersection of algorithms, information, evolution, and economics, and motivate how seeking a former foundation on these would help address larger questions around the ethics of human-machine futures.
Romanticism and Decadence during the Long 19th Century
Saturday, 5:00pm to 5:50pm, Game Room, Alex Cesarz
The long 19th century refers to the period in European history between the French Revolution and World War I. With these two cataclysmic conflicts as bookends, this era was a period of dramatic social changes and cultural flowering, and yet history textbooks and pop history fluff videos on youtube don’t do it justice. I want to try to tell the story of the 19th century with a focus on the lives of the great artists and the ideas that inspired them.
From the visionary idealism of Blake, Goethe, and Beethoven in the revolutionary era, to the genteel reactionary cosmopolitanism of the Metternich era, to the barricades of 1848 where Richard Wagner fought alongside Mikhail Bakunin, to the decadent and pessimistic Fin de siècle period, where the works of Swinburne, Wilde, and Beardsley anticipated the 20th century avant-garde, hopefully this talk will help you appreciate in richer color a vibrant era of art history that shaped the world as we know it in many ways yet often seems to get glossed over as dusty museum pieces.
Lightning Talks
Saturday, 6:00pm to 6:50pm, Game Room, anyone
Everyone and anyone gets to present on whatever they’re interested in, with a strict time limit of five minutes apiece.
Turing and Tabletops
Saturday, 7:00pm to 7:50pm, Second-floor Dining Room, Josh Brulé
“Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?”
Yes—we’ve all seen ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion.
But can AI be a satisfactory roleplaying partner? Can we tell the difference between roleplaying with a fellow human versus an LLM?
Instead of the classic Turing Test where we ask a series of questions, we’ll prompt an LLM to interactively roleplay a fictional character in some scenario, e.g. a tsundere elf princess, avoiding the enemy army with the help of the mercenary she just hired. Please feel free to bring your own prompts. Dramatic readings are encouraged.
Saturday Dinner (Italian)
Saturday, 8:00pm to 8:50pm, First-floor Dining Room, Bree Bartholomew
spaghetti with marinara sauce
meatballs + Italian sausage
garlic bread
salad
Karaoke
Saturday, 9:30pm to the end of the night, First-floor Living Room, Bree Bartholomew
Fluidity Forum 2’s popular karaoke night returns!
Sunday
Coffee Ritual
Sunday, 11:00am to 11:50am, Game Room, Matt Arnold
A Monty Python-esque high church parody ritual. The Pope of Coffee shall blesspresso the Holy of Holies: the most theatrical brewing method ever devised. The acolytes will serve the Holy Liquid unto the congregation, who shall raise the sacrament to the east, and in unison, recite the litany “God, I needed that!” A blend of caféths such as Press-byterian, Buzzentine, Sipiscopal, the Latte-day Saints, and even Atheismericano.
Sunday Brunch
Sunday, 12:00pm to 12:50pm, First-floor Dining Room, Bree Bartholomew
scrambled eggs
waffles
sour cream coffee cake
fresh fruit
Arm Yourself 101
Sunday, 1:00pm to 1:50pm, Game Room, Alexis Wu
An introduction to designing and assuming your personal heraldic coat of arms. In his 1901 essay “A Defence of Heraldry”, G. K. Chesterton argued that democracy made the appalling mistake of not saying, as it should have, to the common citizen, “You are as good as the Duke of Norfolk”, but instead used a meaner formula, “The Duke of Norfolk is no better than you are”. How, then, do we translate that adoration of symbolic colors and shapes, that celebration of beauty, pageantry, and self-expression from the old days, into our age of (nominally democracy, but in actuality) homogenization and enshittification? How might the principles and best practices of heraldry help you navigate a sea of uninspired Twitter/Substack icons and profile pictures? Why is the seemingly impenetrable technolect that is heraldic blazons nevertheless useful? And is the Rule of Tincture a hard and fast rule or just a respectful suggestion?
The Comfort Cocoon
Sunday, 2:00pm to 2:50pm, Matt Arnold
This follow-up to last year’s talk about how to avoid starting a cult discusses the equal and opposite problem of hyper-individuated alienation. Almost everyone abandons voluntary associations at the slightest friction. Life is reduced to employment, a spouse, children, pets, maybe some extended family, and maybe “a couple friends”. A life without voluntary associations is frictionless and predictable, but group skills atrophy, leading to anxiety. This is not a moral failing, just a predictable cultural drift. What can we do, without nagging or shaming, to make group life worth the trouble?
Closing Reflections
Sunday, 3:00pm to 3:50pm, everyone
What was it like to be this group?
Items and Exhibits
“K” Artwork
throughout the forum, no set location, Kara Bradley
A large metal “K” sculpture that will light up. This is my final project for the welding program I have been enrolled in.
Popcorn Machine and Home-made Popcorn Seasoning Blends
throughout the forum, no set location, Jamie Finerman
Fresh popped popcorn has been a part of many special moments for me.
Hi-fi Headphones
throughout the forum, no set location, Norman Perlmutter
I’ll bring my hi-fi headphones to share, which I hope will support wonderment and enjoyment.
Yunzi Go Stones, Jujube Wood Bowls, and Spruce Renju Board
throughout the forum, no set location, Alexis Wu
A renju set for us to play with throughout the weekend (and that will be donated to the Fluidity Forum team), consisting of
· Yunzi Go stones made in Yunnan Province, China from two proprietary blends of powdered local mountain rocks and semi-precious minerals that have been molten, sintered, hand-poured, and allowed to cool and resolidify
· two jujube wood Go-stone bowls
· one 2.5-inch-thick, 15-by-15-row renju board made of one single piece of spruce wood (can also be used to play smaller, nonstandard games of Go)
Canceled
What is Mindfulness? A Discussion and Workshop on Meditation Techniques from a Secular Lens
by Srikar Pamidimukkala
Srikar Pamidimukkala is no longer able to attend, and so will not be able to lead this session.
Shinzen Young has written a very well-reasoned and secular introduction to meditation called What is Mindfulness?, which is freely available online and offers an interesting starting point for discussing the broad range of meditation techniques. In this workshop, we’ll quickly introduce some concepts from this, including the three aspects that mindfulness practices typically seek to foster (Sensory Clarity, Equanimity, and Concentration Power) as well as my own personal framework of two broad categories of meditative practices (Object-concentration, and Direct-insight). After this quick introduction, we can open up for a discussion of these practices, or other mindfulness techniques, using these frameworks to better place them in the wider context of mindfulness practices. We can also have some time where we try out some of these meditation techniques together.