What if your most difficult emotions were not obstacles to your spiritual path, but gateways to awakening? In this experiential course, you’ll explore a central teaching of Vajrayana Buddhism: the transformation of the five poisons into the five wisdoms. Rather than rejecting anger, pride, attachment, jealousy, and ignorance, you’ll learn how these powerful emotions can be transformed into their enlightened expressions, revealing the wisdom within them.
Through guided meditation, discussion, and contemplative practice, you’ll deepen your understanding of Vajrayana philosophy while developing practical ways to work skillfully with challenging emotions. You’ll explore the relationship between duality and non-duality, gain insight into your own emotional patterns, and engage with meditation practices that support greater awareness, compassion, and transformation.
Participants should plan to spend one to three hours in meditation practice between classes to integrate the teachings.
This advanced course is for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of their emotional life, a richer meditation practice, or a new perspective on the transformative potential of every human experience. You’ll leave with practical tools for working with difficult emotions and a deeper understanding of one of Buddhism’s most powerful teachings.
• Explore the Vajrayana teaching of transforming the five poisons into the five wisdoms
• Learn practical ways to work skillfully with challenging emotions such as anger, pride, attachment, jealousy, and ignorance
• Discover how difficult emotions can become gateways to greater awareness, compassion, and insight
• Deepen your understanding of duality and non-duality and their relationship to emotional experience
• Engage in guided meditation and contemplative practices drawn from the Vajrayana tradition
• Gain insight into your own emotional patterns and the wisdom hidden within them
• Expand your meditation practice through experiential techniques that support personal and spiritual transformation
• 10 recorded practice/lecture videos (approx. 4.5 hours total)
• 7 meditation recordings to choose from
• 4 two-hour class meetings
• Guided meditations and experiential practices
• Peer sharing and instructor Q&A
• Recommended reading and handout materials
• Applied Buddhist Psychology 1: Entering the Stream
• Applied Buddhist Psychology 2: The Enlightened Mind
• Psychology of the Bodhisattva (highly recommended)
“Thank you for this class! I asked for more advanced practices for Buddhism and here they are!” – Vinitha W.
“I love the way this class shows how one concept flows in or out of another. It brought forward the interrelationships between concepts and solidified understanding with practice.” – Joanne P.
Tuition: $475
Workshop Format: This course is offered via Distance Learning.
Offered by: Association of Depth Hypnosis Practitioners through the Sacred Stream.
The Sacred Stream has provided high quality education for over twenty years. Each course we offer provides easy to use portal pages, support staff, and support materials. Classes are offered with both online and in person options that are expertly managed to offer the best experience possible for students.
Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. is a renowned teacher and practitioner whose work bridges ancient wisdom traditions and modern therapeutic practices. She is the creator of Depth Hypnosis™, a groundbreaking model that combines elements of shamanism, Buddhism, energy medicine, hypnosis, and transpersonal psychology. Widely respected by clinicians and spiritual counselors alike, Depth Hypnosis offers a powerful path to healing and self-discovery and has helped thousands of people live happier, more fulfilling lives.
Holding advanced degrees in cultural and linguistic anthropology, comparative religion, and transpersonal psychology, Isa has spent over thirty years studying and practicing spiritual, meditative, and healing traditions from around the world. A pioneer in bringing shamanic and Buddhist principles into clinical contexts, she also developed Coming to Peace™, an innovative conflict resolution process inspired in part by indigenous peacemaking practices from Hawaii, Africa, and North America.
A longtime Buddhist practitioner, Isa developed the Sacred Stream’s Applied Buddhist Psychology program to help students integrate core principles of Buddhist philosophy into their personal lives and professional practice. She has co-taught with renowned Buddhist teachers, including Robert Thurman, Thupten Jinpa, and Khensur Rinpoche Thupten Tenzin, the Abbot of Gyuto Monastery in Dharamsala.
An accomplished author of three books, Isa speaks six languages and teaches and lectures worldwide.
