Are you ready to transform patterns that meditation alone hasn’t shifted? Embrace a life filled with love, connection, joy, aliveness, and authenticity? Unlock the benefits that meditation is meant to bring?
Join us for a free introduction session to learn what the Integrated Meditation Program is like!
Applications for the January 2027 cohort are now open!
A message from Amma
For nearly fifty years, meditation has been central to my life. As a former Theravada Buddhist nun for 26 years — 28 if you include my years as an anagarika — and a Dharma teacher for 35 years, beginning with teaching families before leading intensive retreats in 1996, I’ve been fortunate to practice under exceptional conditions and receive teachings from some of the world’s most respected meditation masters.
Despite the profound transformations that practice and insight brought, a persistent core belief of unworthiness, along with an underlying sadness and basic fear, remained within me.
My work with the Three Pillars shifted these core beliefs and feelings, positively affecting my health, my closest relationships, and my capacity to meet difficulty. Later they became the foundation of the Integrated Meditation Program.
Having experienced that relief myself after decades of meditation practice, long retreats, and extraordinary teachers and teachings, I’m pleased to be able to offer support to other meditators in areas where meditation alone has not always been enough.
Curious but not sure whether you want to commit to a six-month program?
- Join us on a free Introduction to Integrated Meditation session for an hour of program overview, guided meditation and live Q&A with Amma Thanasanti
- Listen to a podcast “When Meditation Just isn’t Enough” to find out the reasons this program is important for many people.
- Look at the IMP Program Evaluation results from cohort 1 to see the positive changes participants experienced.
- Read the blog: How the Integrated Meditation Program builds connection, resilience and grounding.
- Read Amma’s Lion’s Roar article What Integrated Meditation Is, and Why It Matters for more insight into the ideas grounding the IMP
Meet the Team
Overview of the IMP
This innovative program starts you on an open-ended discovery process designed to help you cultivate safety, attunement, comfort, delight, and encouragement — supporting you to express yourself and be creative. We’ve seen the impact of this program show up as shifts in your internal and external sense of safety, in your beliefs about yourself, in your capacity for self-compassion, and in your relationships. Previous participants have found that the program deepened their meditation practice, helping remove some of the obstacles that can make the joy and freedom discovered in meditation difficult to access consistently in daily life.
This program has three pillars:
- Collaboration: Support from teachers, mentors and peers using inquiry and shared exploration. We do not practice alone.
- Mentalization and Meditation:
Developing the capacity to observe thoughts, feelings, and experience while they are occurring, allowing us to see ourselves more clearly and respond with greater freedom. - Ideal Parent Figure Imagery:
Using imagery practices to cultivate direct access to safety, attunement, comfort, delight, and encouragement, helping these qualities become increasingly available from within.
Integrated Meditation is an immersive six-month program. Each month includes one big group and one small group meeting with a teacher or facillitator, one peer-led group, and one additional time to meet with a peer to do inquiry together. In addition, you’ll have four 45-minute one-on-one meetings with Amma. Community is a vital part of learning, sharing, and discovering new insights together.
This is a meditation program, not therapy. The tools we use — meditation, inquiry, and imagination — are contemplative practices, not clinical interventions, and Amma and the mentors are meditation teachers, not therapists. In practice, this means the program can support you in working with thoughts, beliefs, and patterns that are within a manageable range, but it isn’t designed or equipped to treat clinical conditions or hold acute trauma as it surfaces. Because of this, we ask that anyone joining either already have a relationship with a therapist or be willing to reach out to one if needed during the program. We assess if our capacity and what you need is a match through free self-assessment quizzes and an interview.
For this program to be effective, we need a group of motivated meditators committed to attending all meetings for the full six months — big group sessions, small group sessions, peer group meetings, peer meetings with buddies, and one-on-one sessions with a teacher.
FAQs
Who?
The Integrated Meditation Program is designed for meditators who have been practicing for 3 years or longer, have a regular meditation practice, and have some tools to work with difficult emotional experiences. It is for meditators who want to get more out of their meditation practice, and who want to work with challenging patterns that meditation alone has not resolved.
What?
The Integrated Meditation Program is a 6-month immersive community experience in which you develop and practice tools to create internal safety, attune to yourself and others, increase your skills at self-soothing, letting in appreciation, and allowing your creativity to express itself. It combines traditional and trauma-informed meditation practices with the use of imagery.
Where?
Virtual, on Zoom.
When?
Beginning January 16, 2027. Meetings run near-weekly: Big group sessions every 3rd Saturday of the month, small mentor group sessions during the following week, peer group sessions one week after the small group, and one-on-one buddy sessions the week after that and sometimes interspersed throughout.
What’s the time commitment?
Each month requires a minimum of 7 hours, as follows:
- 3-hour big group
- 90-minute mentor group with a teacher
- 90-minute peer group
- 60 minutes one-on-one with an individual peer, to continue practicing together. (This one-on-one peer meeting has proven extremely beneficial for deepening the practices and the insights that come from them — many participants opt to meet more than once a month.)
Throughout the program, there are four additional 45-minute meetings with Amma, to help you make the best use of the Ideal Parent Figure imagery.
What’s the cost of the program?
The program is offered at a base rate of $383 US per month, with partial scholarships available. There is also a $175 administrative deposit, returned during the last month of the program.
What is Amma’s connection with David Elliott?
David Elliott, PhD, co-founded the Three Pillars Framework and Ideal Parent Figure (IPF) method with Daniel P. Brown, PhD. These groundbreaking attachment-based approaches provide an important foundation for the Integrated Meditation Program (IMP), where they are integrated with meditation, metacognition, contemplative inquiry, and trauma-informed practice.
Since January 2023, Amma has worked closely with David as the Integrated Meditation Program has evolved. Drawing on his expertise in attachment psychology, David has served as an advisor to IMP, endorses the program, and joins participants as a guest speaker during the course.
David Elliott writes:
“The Integrated Meditation Program offers an innovative and effective approach to enhancing the benefits of meditative practice. Amma has consulted with me about ways to apply insights from the field of attachment psychology toward this goal, and I am very impressed by her creative and truly integrative offering. In addition to the effectiveness of the form and structure of the program, Amma’s warmth and wisdom, her lightheartedness and playfulness, and her depth of understanding and experience add immeasurably to participants’ engagement with the work.”
— David Elliott, PhD
Co-founder of the Three Pillars Framework and Ideal Parent Figure Method
David participates in IMP as an advisor and guest speaker. He is not acting as a therapist for participants in the program.
How do I get accepted to the program?
First, fill out the application, which includes three free self-assessment quizzes. You’ll then be contacted to schedule a one-on-one interview, and afterward, contacted about acceptance into the program. There is no cost to apply.
How is the course administered?
We use Padlet as a noticeboard for journal prompts, peer group instructions, mentor meeting recordings, and resources. We use email for general reminders and communication.
How quickly should I expect to see changes?
Most participants spend the first couple of months becoming familiar with the Three Pillars and the first few qualities of safety, attunement, comfort, delight, and encouragement. For most people, it takes at least two months before these practices become familiar enough for significant changes to begin emerging.
A small number of participants notice shifts almost immediately, but they are the exception rather than the rule.
The people who see the most significant results are not necessarily those who see results the fastest. Those who continue showing up and doing the practices consistently, even before they notice obvious changes, usually see significant results.
Are there any additional things I should know about?
- To build the community cohesiveness that makes this program effective, we abide by these confidentiality and ethical guidelines.
- We ask that if you don’t currently have a relationship with a therapist, you’re willing to reach out to one if needed during the program.
What if it turns out I can no longer participate after enrolling?
If you need to withdraw, your $175 administrative deposit will not be returned.
Can you describe what the Integrated Meditation Program is not?
This program is not therapy. Amma and the mentors are meditation teachers, not therapists. We do not diagnose or treat clinical conditions, provide psychotherapy, or offer crisis support. The practices used in this program — meditation, inquiry, and imagery — are contemplative practices designed to support meditation and human development rather than clinical treatment. We deeply respect the healing required after significant loss, trauma, or a mental health crisis, and if you’ve recently experienced any of these, we advise waiting at least a year before applying to this program.
What’s the difference between attachment repair as a therapeutic intervention and IMP?
Attachment-focused therapy is typically done one-on-one with a trained clinician over an extended timeframe — often one to three years of regular sessions — working toward what is sometimes called an “earned secure” attachment style. The therapeutic relationship itself becomes an important part of the healing process, and therapists are trained to work directly with trauma and dysregulation as they arise, including material that may be intense or destabilizing.
IMP works differently, both in method and in scope.
It draws on some of the same underlying ideas — particularly Ideal Parent Figure imagery — but uses them within a contemplative framework of meditation, inquiry, nature-based support, and community practice rather than within a clinical relationship.
Meditation develops the capacity to remain present with experience and to draw on inner resources when difficulty arises. Inquiry helps illuminate the assumptions, beliefs, and patterns that obscure the strengths and capacities that are already present. The program is built around group support and contemplative practice rather than one-on-one clinical work, and helps participants cultivate direct access to the felt qualities of safety, attunement, comfort, delight, and encouragement. As these qualities become increasingly available internally, participants often find themselves able to bring them into contact with difficult experiences, memories, and longstanding patterns in ways that support greater freedom and wholeness.
Because IMP is not therapy, it is not designed or equipped to treat clinical conditions or to hold trauma that regularly moves someone outside a manageable range. When experiences arise that exceed what can comfortably be held within a meditation setting, additional therapeutic support will be recommended alongside or instead of this work.
Resources
Sample IMP Guided Meditation: Safety
IMP Waiver
