The Collective Well - Heart
with Jess Huon
Attune to the wisdom and power of your heart
Live, online classes • August to November 2025
A 3-month online course with Jess Huon, guest speakers and assistant teachers. With an optional in-person retreat. Starts 10th August
The world—in all its pain and beauty—can feel overwhelming.
Heartbreak, loneliness, the weight of ecological and political tumult—they land on us differently and unevenly, but none of us escape them.
It's natural to want to harden up, go into your head, or numb out when the heat is on.
But grounded, discerning love is what we need most right now.
Your Heart Can Do What Your Mind Cannot
When your heart engages—as you get behind your own life— powerful shifts start to happen.
The safety comes, bravery comes, the devotion comes. Deeper letting go happens more naturally.
Action comes from a connected and supported place.
Do Any of These Resonate?
✦ You've done a lot of work and can see your reactive patterns, but feel something else is needed for a deeper shift
✦ You sense that more palpable love and aliveness is available for you
✦ You need more resourcing and support to show up for what’s most important to you - parenting, creativity, relationships, your work in the world
✦ You know there's a lot at stake now, and we all need to get on a deeper track of care
The Heart Has Ancient Capacity
Your heart has the power to rise again and again, through great loss and hardship. To meet experience with courage and warmth. To be a lover of the real.
But a powerful heart is not naive openness.
It's not fawning or self-indulgent. It's a discerning, tender and sometimes fierce love - supported by steady ground and the recognition that we all belong to a wider network.
It's natural that our hearts need time. You can't force a heart open any more than you can force another to love you, or a wild animal to come close.
This takes practice, and wise handling.
The Collective Well Will Take You Into the Most Powerful Force for Healing—Your Own Heart
In these tender and tumultuous times, we'll protect a practice space where you can head into deeper waters, under the static and defenses. Where you can learn to ride the waves of what's both beautiful and hard.
Staying in the body. Staying here.
Together, we can draw up deeper nourishment, backed by discernment, wisdom and the weight of our embodiment. Diving under the noise and the shoulds, so you can connect with what is uniquely yours to do.
From the heart out to the hands.
In This Three-Month Journey, You Will…
Awaken Heart Power
✦ Gain a deeper lived experience of core heart and grounding practices—including metta (loving-kindness), and tonglen (giving and taking)
✦ Create safety through responding to yourself with tenderness rather than judgment
✦ Take the next step in un-numbing your heart while cultivating steadiness to hold what arises
Cultivate Discerning Love
✦ Explore the two wings of awakening—discernment and love—to skillfully respond to pain, and cultivate freedom
✦ Nourish and resource yourself deeper to counteract negative biasing, overwhelm, and fixation on suffering
✦ Cultivate healthy boundaries to support your heart to open and to protect what matters to you
Find Your Unique Response
✦ Centre yourself in what is uniquely yours to do - whether you’re approved of or not
✦ Stop second-guessing and start following through on creative responses and action
✦ Be the one who can stop the cycles of reactivity and take a different posture
Strengthen Community and Belonging
✦ Place yourself in a field of care and wider belonging, not to self-insulate but to open out
✦ Learn to be in more reciprocal relationship with life - healthy give and take
✦ Widen your sense of care while listening to your own unique heart
This Course Is For You If...
You want more love in your life - and know this starts with you, and takes practice
You want to show up with more presence and warmth for what matters to you - whether you're a parent, professional, activist, artist, friend, or lover
You've done a lot of work, can see your patterns, and want to cultivate the presence that enables deeper change
You want to feel more inner care, courage and interconnection. To feel less alone
You feel like we're sometimes missing each other under all the labels and noise, and wish to see yourself and others with more clarity and generosity
You want to learn how to feel deeply without being overwhelmed, and to cultivate healthy boundaries
You know your mind can only get you so far, and you want to drop into the wisdom of your body and heart
You want a regular space to connect with yourself and pause the busyness—so you can go arms wide open back into life
You know that structure, guidance and community accountability will create the conditions for you to really do it
Your Guide: Jess Huon
“From my first encounters with the Buddha's teachings I was lit up by the heart practices and sought them out.”
With 30 years of practice and study, Jess has spent countless hours exploring what it means to be human. A dharma teacher, writer (The Dark Wet, Giramondo Publishing), and mentor, she blends deep understanding of classical Buddhist teachings with her embodied experience as a contemporary woman and artist on the path.
Authorised to teach in the Insight and Open Dharma traditions, Jess has spent extended periods in monasteries worldwide. Her approach is deeply informed by Tibetan tradition and long stretches of solitary forest practice.
She stands for every human's capacity to find fresh responses to personal and collective challenges, deeper than distraction and despair.
“I carried one sutta (early Buddhist discourse) in my pocket as a reminder until it was torn and blurred in the years I spent in India. It says that all of the other methods we engage in toward awakening do not equal a sixteenth of the mind-release of loving-kindness. That loving-kindness surpasses them and shines forth, bright and brilliant. I still have that piece of paper.“
The Path of Practice
These teachings are set within Buddhist frameworks that support your heart to open in a sustained way.
In this round of The Collective Well we will be focusing on the heart teachings in the context of this wider path that Jess has mapped out, based on her learning of the Buddha's intricate maps (Insight and Tibetan Traditions). As always, we will be supported by a ground of settling and resourcing and of insight and discernment.
Supporting your unique path
*
Supporting your unique path *
All the training here is to support you to make practice your own. We become supported by these ancient maps and reference points, to live with less fear, to pursue our lives with courage.
Guest Teachers
Kylie Marjambi
Caring for the Next 7 Generations
Kylie Marjambi, Flight of the Owl, walks as a living example and interpreter of the ancient way in the context of the next 7 generations. Based on her Great Grandmother's & Great Grandfather's Lands & Waters in Uki of the 5 Rivers of the Githabul Ngarakwal Moiety in the mountains of the Northern Rivers of NSW.
Kylie holds the blood of the colonized as well as the colonizers, and focuses her walk on leading by example a return to new old ways of being and seeing. Ancient wisdom, connection and grounding ceremony for modern times to honour the old ones and our habitat, Planet Earth.
Zohar Lavie and Nathan Glyde
Love in Action
Zohar Lavie has been practising meditation in different traditions since 1995. This journey has taken her from the meditation cushion into exploring further ways of expressing truth and love. She now spends most of her time facilitating retreats that offer service as a spiritual path around the world. Since 2006 she has taught on silent retreats and Dharma gatherings in India, Europe, Israel and Palestine.
Nathan Glyde has been practicing and studying meditation since 1997, and sharing teachings on retreats since 2007. In 2004 he co-founded SanghaSeva with Zohar Lavie, whose retreats emphasise wisdom and compassion in ecological and humanitarian service.
Jeannie Zandi
The Beauty of Going Down: The Role of Tears in Awakening & Embodiment
Jeannie is a spiritual teacher, writer, mother and revolutionary of the heart called to serve the lived expression of the divine through the liberation of the human heart.
A year before the birth of her daughter, Jeannie was plunged into a dark night of the soul that culminated in a radical shift of consciousness. She is known for her fearless clarity, tender mercy toward humanness, and a juicy, poetic and often humorous style that draws from Advaita Vedanta, Sufism, Christian mysticism and the ongoing revelation of fully engaged living. Jeannie Zandi
The Course Includes
Live Teaching & Practice (weekly offerings)
✦ Fortnightly teaching and practice sessions with Jess, 4-6pm on Sundays
✦ Three additional guest sessions with powerful, esteemed teachers
✦ Two Q&A sessions with Jess
✦ Three practice support/integration sessions with assistant teachers
Community & Support
✦ Weekly silent morning sits, Thursday 7am
✦ Private community forum
✦ Dharma buddies program
Resources & Recordings
✦ Access to all recordings and additional foundational practices
✦ Three artisan crafted maps by Jess and fellow artists depicting the path
Special Offerings
✦ Private retreat access - 3-day in-person retreat November 15-17th with Collective Well participants only (additional cost)
Course Dates
August - November 2025
(all online)
AUGUST 2025
Sun 10th - Opening Teaching Session, 4-6pm
Tuesday 12th - Support for setting up your practice, with assistant teacher (7:30pm)
Sun 24th - Teaching Session 4-6pm
Weds 27th - Q&A with Jess (7:30pm)
SEPTEMBER 2025
Tue 2nd - Guest Speaker
Sun 7th - Teaching Session, 4-6pm
Tues 16th - Community Check-in with assistant teacher (7:30pm)
Sun 21st - Teaching Session 4-6pm
Weds 24th - Q&A with Jess (7:30pm)
OCTOBER 2025
Sun 5th - Teaching Session 4-6pm
Tue 7th - Guest Speaker
Tue 14th - Community Check-in with assistant teacher (7:30pm)
Sun 19th - Teaching Session, 4-6pm
Tue 21st - Guest Speaker
NOVEMBER 2025
Sun 2nd - Closing Teaching Session, 4-6pm
15th-17th Nov - Optional in-person retreat in Melbourne only for Collective Well Participants. (additional cost)
You will receive a welcome package prior to the course commencing
Program Fees
Full Payment: AU$1550
($750 deposit + $800 balance Monday August 18th)
Scholarship and payment plan opportunities available—email us at mentoring@jesshuon.com if cost is a barrier
You Don't Have to Do This Alone
When we're actually most in need of care—in transition, on a new edge, or in a dark night —it's easy to react to ourselves with aggression or criticism. Our old familiar loops need interrupting. Again and again.
This takes time and repetition. This takes practice. It also takes support.
Over three months, this mentorship will create structure, refuge and kinship as we continue to open our hearts and minds in the midst of our real lives.
With the holding of wisdom teachings and the support of a vibrant practice community, you will be supported to make real change in how you relate to yourself and the people around you.
Together, we can anchor into these depths from our own homes—without having to pack up our bags and go elsewhere.
Is Now Your Time?
Life is pressing harder on all of us, even if you are deeply practiced.
Is now your time to deepen your practice? Is now your time to awaken the power of your heart?
We don't practice for ourselves alone - this is the essence of the Heart's Teachings. Practice ripples out into your life. Do it for yourself, but also for the people around you. Do it for all of us.
Let's do this with support. Let's do this together.
The world is our monastery. Find your place in this practice container.
Have questions?
Email us at mentoring@jesshuon.com — we're here to support you in finding your way to this work.
A Personal Invitation from Jess
I think many of us know how scary things can get when love leaves the house. When knee jerk reactions reign and we limit people into labels and others.
And what a difference it makes when we can bring it home. In more ways than one.
This feels like the season of the heart in my teaching and I invite you to join me. I don't often go there so directly!
It's important to know that we don’t have to have it all together to receive them. They’re not conditional. They’re not found in some ideal place. In fact we can find the heart—and the traditions back this—right in the midst of a difficult moment, if we can apply the right remedy. This can be a moment of healing instead of a repetition.
First you just need a little spark right in that vulnerable point, that you usually want to turn away from or cover up, and if you have the support to stay with it, to keep blowing, a bright refuge can be lit inside—a fire that other people might also want to come and warm themselves by.
When you can unnumb to yourself, it's so powerful. When your heart is there, you're not alone.
Every-one is welcome.
