Welcome!

Welcome to our meditation system!

My name is Dr.Federico Andino (but please call me Fede) and I wanted to welcome you to this community of meditators.

On the next four weeks we’ll cover topics and practices such as:

·        What is meditation?

·        How can you try to meditate if it's your first time?

·        Why does it take a village to meditate?

·        How to integrate meditation into daily life to enhance your focus

·        How to build a community of like-minded people that can and will improve your health and enjoyment

We will do this using proven concepts of Mindful Meditation, based on scientific evidence. I will include in each chapter the articles that I use to base my assertions, but if you want to learn more, to agree or disagree or just, you know, drop a line, you can always find me at my email address.

But before we start with the system itself, let me tell you a bit about myself, so you know where I’m coming from.

About me (Dr.Fede)

My name is Fede, Federico Andino if we’re being formal (which I hope we aren’t). I’m from Argentina, and most people know me (if they know me at all) as Lama Fede, a Buddhist teacher of the TRC NGO.

Which, you know, is true. But it’s not the whole story.

I’ve been an academic and researcher for most of my life. My BA, MsC and PhD are in the subject of meditation, and all my postdoc work is on that, too. (mostly is in Spanish, though, since that’s the language we speak in Argentina). I’ve organized congresses, and now (as of writing this text) I’m the leading researcher in a Conicet-Usal backed project about how meditation was taught in Tibet. I was the chair of the Tibetan Religion class at Universidad del Salvador for fifteen years, until I retired from teaching there.

This makes it seem like I’ve been mostly an academic, but that’s not so. I’ve been working for years in the corporate world, as I’m currently the Lead Global Researcher on Mindfulness at IBM and created the Mindfulness Community and practice there with a group of great people (Patrick Kozakiewicz, Steve Ware, Emanuelle Terezani and so many other great friends and colleagues). I’ve been teaching it in corporate environments since 2010. 

I’ve taught mindfulness at schools, at prisons and at hospitals. I’ve created curricula for studying mindfulness, I’ve authored books about it and countless articles. It’s fair to say that while I’m clearly not the best at either writing or teaching about mindfulness, I at least have put in the work and have something to say. I can even say that I’ve been saying it for years.

So why, now, am I writing more?

Because science is never done. More studies have come forth, new conclusions have arrived, and we’ve developed new methods. Most of the methods I’m going to teach are not my invention; I will quote them as best as I can and give credit. What is new is the perception that we have about mindfulness and what works.

What has changed?

We, the researchers in mindfulness, have realized that, by stripping mindfulness of all social context, and trying to make it a technique instead of a body of knowledge, we have lost a key that makes it work.

That key is community.

Community that, as a Buddhist, I can tell you it’s backed into the Buddhist practice and ritual. But while this may seem to imply that the Buddhist practice is the only practice that works, that’s not what I’m saying.

I’m saying that for a powerful, effective mindfulness practice, we need to understand what it means “it works” in context and apply those strategies in our lives.

So, that’s the intent of this system. To train you in a style of mindfulness meditation that just plain simply works, enhancing your focus and enriching your life through the work of community building. All science-based, no religion needed. Just plain gumption and willingness to do the work.

If you’d like to start, come join me in the first week of your month of transformation.

-Fede