My Life’s Work
Time takes on a different quality, here in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
There is an intensity and enormity to the landscape, to the expansiveness of each moment, day, and season. Striking sunsets stretch across the vast desert landscapes, bathing the mountain peaks with crimson-red light, sometimes for hours and hours. Thunderstorms are strong and rainbows are bright and full, often double and arched across an entire sky. Winter weather often stretches into late May or into June. Time is a circle. The town speed limit is 15 mph. The closes stoplight is over 20 miles away. Even the bears, the coyote, the deer lumber slowly, unafraid and strolling fearlessly through the forests and town streets.
There is a spaciousness and openness in the day and in the open sky that invites introspection, reflection, connection. This place attracts spiritual seekers for a reason - there are healing waters and powerful magnetic forces at play. There is a legacy of the laying down of weapons by native peoples to come together. There are vortices and stupas, a ziggurat and earthen huts, sand dunes and wet lands. Balance is here in the land, in the dark sky, and in the people.
This is part of what attracted me, as a single mother, to uproot an already uprooted life, and finally make the big leap. I moved here with my then six-year-old daughter in the first weeks of the pandemic. If my job could be done online, then I could finally live in a place that suits my over-taxed nervous system.
My new community was immediately revealed to be populated with other children and soul-searching parents, and many of them were strong, single women, like me. Runaways. Refugees. Survivors. Exiles from mainstream culture and big city life. most of them single women. The pandemic exposed a sharp division between the need for child care and the POA’s commitment to residential zoning requirements.
Bio:
Cynthia Garner is a mindfulness instructor, licensed Colorado educator, creative nonfiction writer, single mother, anthropologist, bluegrass musician, organizational consultant, dog lover, Fulbright scholar, trauma survivor, and eco-therapist. She has over 20 years of personal mindfulness practice and a wealth of life experience with managing stress, anxiety, and traumatic stimuli.
Cindy Garner is a mindfulness instructor and school-wide implementation consultant, and an advocate for widespread mental fitness education across the lifespan. She is a single mother and former classroom teacher, with training in research-backed and medically-based mindfulness interventions and depth psychotherapy and counseling. Cindy offers group facilitation and classroom implementation strategies based in creating interpersonal safety through connection and nature-awareness practices, and she brings her wealth of life experience with managing severe stress, anxiety, chronic pain, abuse, depression, addiction, divorce, and trauma into her mental fitness work with educators and parents.
Cindy is the founder and executive director of SafeWithin Mindfulness Education and the Rocky Mountain Mindfulness Center, a 501c3 nonprofit located in Crestone, Colorado. She is trained in Hakomi, a mindfulness-based somatic psychotherapy, and is qualified through the UCSD Medical School as a facilitator of Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for preventing depressive relapse. She also completed year-long teacher trainings with Mindful Schools and with iBme (Inward Bound Mindfulness Education) for teaching mindfulness to adolescents, and is currently participating in the year-long Mindful Schools “School-wide Implementation Program”.
Based upon her very challenging years of public school teaching experience, Cindy began to offer high-impact and heart-centered programming focused on educators and school leadership, a population she recognized as characteristically overwhelmed, undernourished, and in a position to be powerful agents of social change in the classroom. Additionally, practicing mindfulness within the landscape of her own trauma history and family mental health challenges informed the approach to teaching mindfulness within the educational setting that would become SafeWithin, a whole-systems and trauma-sensitive approach to working with school communities. She is currently engaged in public speaking and offering introductory and relational webinars to corporations and school districts. In addition, Cindy is the author of an upcoming trauma-sensitive “Mindfulness Basics for Educators” self-directed course, and is authoring a book to serve as a resource for training educators and youth leaders in facilitating mindfulness practice in community.
Teacher Training:
After seven year as a middle and high school classroom teacher, and witnessing a deficit of social, emotional, and mental health supports for students and educators, Cynthia became and advocate for widespread mental wellness education and undertook a training pathway to bring secular and research-backed mindfulness to educators and school communities.
She engaged in graduate education in counseling and mental health, trained in Hakomi, a mindfulness-based somatic psychotherapy, and became qualified through the UCSD Medical School as a facilitator of Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for preventing depressive relapse. She also completed year-long teacher trainings with Mindful Schools and with iBme (Inward Bound Mindfulness Education) for teaching mindfulness to adolescents, and is currently engaged in the year-long Mindful Schools “School-wide Implementation Program”.
Cynthia’s mindfulness teaching approach is also deeply informed by her post-graduate anthropology work as a Fulbright scholar in Guatemala, her Masters degree in writing Creative Nonfiction, and her graduate counseling studies which include eco-psychology, dreamwork, grief and loss, substance-abuse and addictions treatment, and crisis and trauma.
Coaching and Consulting:
Based upon her very challenging years of public school teaching experience, Cindy began to offer high-impact and heart-centered programming focused on educators and school leadership, a population she recognized as characteristically overwhelmed, undernourished, and in a position to be powerful agents of social change in the classroom. Additionally, practicing mindfulness within the landscape of her own trauma history and family mental health challenges informed the approach to teaching mindfulness within the educational setting that would become the SafeWithin Program, a whole-systems and trauma-sensitive approach to working with school communities. She is currently engaged in public speaking and offering introductory webinars to corporations and school districts, in addition to developing online course content and authoring a book to serve as a resource for training educators and youth leaders in facilitating mindfulness practice in community.
