Balance & Insight facilitates mindfulness and wellbeing programs for people working in higher education. Founded by Larisa Castillo and Kris Peterson, who are both University of California Irvine professors and meditation teachers, Balance & Insight takes trauma-informed, liberatory approaches to wellbeing practices that integrate participants’ intellectual, emotional, embodied, and spiritual lives. Through meditation, yoga, council circles, and embodied rest and reflection, the workshops and long retreats cultivate connection, enhance vitality, and rejuvenate people’s sense of purpose.
Recent studies reveal a sharp decline in wellbeing among university students, staff, and faculty. Educators report increased burnout and often feel they have lost sight of their purpose, while students report being overwhelmed, anxious, and lacking in guidance. Many have lost a sense of belonging as they navigate an atmosphere of disconnection. These all are symptoms of the increased compartmentalization of academic life.
Balance & Insight addresses these issues by bridging people’s inner and outer lives. By settling the mind, body, and heart, participants integrate all aspects of themselves. They enter deeper states of ease and gain insight into ethical, compassionate, and conscious action, allowing them to make more intentional choices about how to live. In a world fraught with crisis, aggression, and alienation, we seek to remind people of what they inherently possess: the capacity to heal, connect, and live with balance and insight.
Facilitators
Larisa Castillo
Larisa Castillo has been trained as a meditation instructor in MBSR and a secular Buddhist tradition. She has also received training in council facilitation from the Center for Council and has co-taught meditation retreats at Drala Mountain Center in Red Feather Lakes, CO. Within these contexts, she explores how different meditation traditions communicate and intersect. At the university, she studies Critical and Contemplative Pedagogies. She teaches classes on "Cultivating Well-being" and "Climate Resilience," in addition to teaching classes in the Humanities. She works to integrate mindfulness, wellbeing, and equity into classrooms at UC Irvine. For more on her academic work, visit https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/larisacastillo/
Kris Peterson
Kris Peterson has been trained as a meditation facilitator (secular Buddhism), yoga teacher (Sivananda and yin), domestic violence crisis counselor, biodynamic craniosacral therapist (Stillpoint, NY), as well as in council facilitation (Center for Council). She has been active in social justice issues and has facilitated anti-racist and anti-oppression classes since the early 1990s. Kris weaves her anthropological interests with practices of holistic connection in the classroom: social justice, mindfulness meditation, increased body awareness, and practices in individual and social trauma release. She is especially interested in supporting individual ease and joy, as well as cultivating collective liberation for all beings. For more information on her academic work: https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/kris/
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