The Rocky Mountain Mindfulness Center is now
SafeWithin Mindfulness Education!
Mission: To eliminate school violence within a generation, and to create a culture of care, safety, and mental fitness in education.
We are still the same 501c3 organization, dedicated to providing research-backed mindfulness training for educators and school communities.
How can I help put an end to school violence?
SafeWithin is actively seeking capital gifts, strategic support and partnerships, corporate sponsorships, and new board members.
Please contact us to learn how you can advocate for widespread mental fitness education, start your own mindfulness practice, or help us launch this crucial mission into the broader educational landscape and social justice conversation.
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Mental Fitness Education is more important now than ever before, and we are so grateful that you are willing to support these practices that connect us to each other and build resilience and positive coping techniques.
Your gifts in 2020 have allowed us to navigate the hardships of the pandemic and to offer meaningful programs and trainings at:
-Crestone Charter School, Crestone, CO. -Bixby School, Boulder, CO. -Lyons Elementary School, Lyons, CO. -Skyline High School, Longmont, CO. -Rio Grande Mindfulness Institute, Albuquerque, NM -South Bend Community School Corporation, South Bend, IN -Levadata Inc., International At Rocky Mountain Mindfulness Center we are committed to heart-centered leadership and cultivating safe spaces for human connection. Your tax deductible gift supports mindfulness education and mental fitness training for educators, parents, and students throughout the country! Thank you for helping us continue to do this tremendous work! |
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SafeWithin Community
We are based in Colorado, where we have experienced too many times the impact of gun violence and mental illness, and we believe that providing widespread mindfulness education will facilitate a generational shift toward kindness, resilience, and mental health that ripples far beyond the Rocky Mountain Region. Our trainings are grounded in secularity, and are built upon clinically-tested medical interventions, research-backed curricula, and neuro-scientific data. We are grateful for the diligent work of leaders in the science-based mindfulness field and for our advisors and the like-minded organizational leaders for their contributions to this field.
Cindy comes to the Rocky Mountain Mindfulness Center from a wide experiential background. She is an anthropologist and Fulbright Scholar, an author, a teacher, a therapist, a mindfulness facilitator, a single mother, and a student of the human experience.
Growing up near Baltimore, Cindy was raised in an altruistic household in the company of an adopted brother and sister from El Salvador. As a teenager, she volunteered regularly both in her home community and on annual trips to Costa Rica. There she encountered the sensory aliveness of the "Pura Vida" lifestyle and developed a passion for living life to the fullest, and for investigating the world's diverse cultures. As an adopted child herself, she also developed a deep curiosity about her own identity and her place in the world. The questions of belonging and self-acceptance were ones she began to ask with determination during her challenging high school years.
In college at Franklin and Marshall in Lancaster, Pa., she studied archaeology and anthropology, attended field schools in Marshall's Pen Jamaica, and earned a Fulbright Grant to live abroad in Guatemala, immersed in the Mayan culture in a small village on the shores of Lake Atitlan. She spend many years there, enduring near-death experiences, collecting stories, connecting with the Tz'utujiil people, and observing how the culture had been affected by grief and rapid globalization. Her memoir, Out of Grace, is the story of this extraordinary journey.
Upon returning to the States in her late 20s, Cindy settled in Oakland, where she learned to play bluegrass music, earned a Masters Degree in Writing Creative Nonfiction, and trained to become a teacher. Migrating to Colorado in 2009, she embarked upon a career teaching Language Arts, Social Studies, and Spanish in the St. Vrain Valley Public School District. After seven years of this career, which she loved passionately, she found herself overwhelmed in a failing marriage. Throughout the divorce, she navigated her ex-husband's battle with debilitating mental illness, and embarked upon a study of mindfulness to help her manage her own stress and anxiety. Seeing the benefits of the practice in her own life, and aware of a calling to address emotional needs of her students, she began to offer short mindfulness lessons in her classroom. As she witnessed the positive impact upon the decision-making, awareness, and emotional regulation of her students, she grew more vocal about the need for mindfulness and mental health education for her students. She was especially affected by the suicide of a teen Latino student that was handled poorly by the school. However, her administration was not receptive to her advocacy efforts, and she was ultimately released from that job as "not the right fit".
In the wake of that experience, Cindy began to study counseling and, during an advocacy project assignment in her ethics class, she realized that her passion for offering mindfulness to students, especially teens, was still very much alive. In the wake of the Parkland, Florida shooting, and with her own daughter reaching school age, she grew more and more determined to have a voice and an impact in a way she saw as truly meaningful. As her own personal practice developed, she trained in Hakomi, a mindfulness-based somatic psychotherapy, as well as facilitation of Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR), and the Mindful Schools curriculum. Soon after she started facilitating 8-week MBSR groups, she began to turn her attention and efforts towards teachers, a population she saw as characteristically overwhelmed, under appreciated, in dire need of permission for self-care, and in a position to be agents of social change in the classroom. She is deeply passionate about the mission of the Center, and has made it her life's work to advocate for mindfulness in schools for students and teachers, and to make the practice accessible to those most in need.
Growing up near Baltimore, Cindy was raised in an altruistic household in the company of an adopted brother and sister from El Salvador. As a teenager, she volunteered regularly both in her home community and on annual trips to Costa Rica. There she encountered the sensory aliveness of the "Pura Vida" lifestyle and developed a passion for living life to the fullest, and for investigating the world's diverse cultures. As an adopted child herself, she also developed a deep curiosity about her own identity and her place in the world. The questions of belonging and self-acceptance were ones she began to ask with determination during her challenging high school years.
In college at Franklin and Marshall in Lancaster, Pa., she studied archaeology and anthropology, attended field schools in Marshall's Pen Jamaica, and earned a Fulbright Grant to live abroad in Guatemala, immersed in the Mayan culture in a small village on the shores of Lake Atitlan. She spend many years there, enduring near-death experiences, collecting stories, connecting with the Tz'utujiil people, and observing how the culture had been affected by grief and rapid globalization. Her memoir, Out of Grace, is the story of this extraordinary journey.
Upon returning to the States in her late 20s, Cindy settled in Oakland, where she learned to play bluegrass music, earned a Masters Degree in Writing Creative Nonfiction, and trained to become a teacher. Migrating to Colorado in 2009, she embarked upon a career teaching Language Arts, Social Studies, and Spanish in the St. Vrain Valley Public School District. After seven years of this career, which she loved passionately, she found herself overwhelmed in a failing marriage. Throughout the divorce, she navigated her ex-husband's battle with debilitating mental illness, and embarked upon a study of mindfulness to help her manage her own stress and anxiety. Seeing the benefits of the practice in her own life, and aware of a calling to address emotional needs of her students, she began to offer short mindfulness lessons in her classroom. As she witnessed the positive impact upon the decision-making, awareness, and emotional regulation of her students, she grew more vocal about the need for mindfulness and mental health education for her students. She was especially affected by the suicide of a teen Latino student that was handled poorly by the school. However, her administration was not receptive to her advocacy efforts, and she was ultimately released from that job as "not the right fit".
In the wake of that experience, Cindy began to study counseling and, during an advocacy project assignment in her ethics class, she realized that her passion for offering mindfulness to students, especially teens, was still very much alive. In the wake of the Parkland, Florida shooting, and with her own daughter reaching school age, she grew more and more determined to have a voice and an impact in a way she saw as truly meaningful. As her own personal practice developed, she trained in Hakomi, a mindfulness-based somatic psychotherapy, as well as facilitation of Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR), and the Mindful Schools curriculum. Soon after she started facilitating 8-week MBSR groups, she began to turn her attention and efforts towards teachers, a population she saw as characteristically overwhelmed, under appreciated, in dire need of permission for self-care, and in a position to be agents of social change in the classroom. She is deeply passionate about the mission of the Center, and has made it her life's work to advocate for mindfulness in schools for students and teachers, and to make the practice accessible to those most in need.
Cindy Garner, MFA
Founder/Director, Mindfulness Instructor and School-Wide Implementation Consultant
Founder/Director, Mindfulness Instructor and School-Wide Implementation Consultant
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Patricia Rockman, MD
Mentor, Advisory Council CCFP FCFP, Executive Director of the Centre for Mindfulness Studies |
Andres Gonzalez has been the Co-Founder and Marketing Director for the Holistic Life Foundation, Inc. in Baltimore, MD since 2001. For sixteen years, Andres has taught yoga to diverse populations throughout the world, including Baltimore City Public School students, drug treatment centers, mental crisis facilities, homeless shelters, wellness centers, colleges, private schools and other various venues throughout the nation and throughout the world. He has partnered with John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health and the Penn State’s Prevention Research Center on a Stress and Relaxation Study and is a published author in the Journal of Children’s Services. His work with the Holistic Life Foundation has been featured on Making a Differenceon the NBC Nightly News, CNN, and CBS, as well as O the Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, Upworthy, Mindful Magazine, Yoga Journal, Shambala Sun, and many other publications. He is a certified Health Coach through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, maintains a B.S. in Marketing from University of Maryland, College Park and an MBA from the University of Maryland, University College. 
Andres Gonzalez
Advisory Council Co-founder and Marketing Director, Holistic Life Foundation |
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Daniel Rechtschaffen, Marriage and Family Therapist, is the author of The Way of Mindful Education and The Mindful Education Workbook. He is the founding director of Transformative Educational Leadership. He organizes the annual Mindfulness in Education Conference and Teacher Training at the Omega Institute. Daniel offers keynote speeches and mindfulness trainings at conferences, schools, communities, and businesses, such as University of Wisconsin Madison, Google, Esalen Institute, and schools around the globe. Daniel teaches mindfulness through music, sports, storytelling, games and other creative and engaging ways. He is inspired to utilize mindfulness to help us become more conscious, compassionate, and committed to taking care of this miraculous world we live in. He is the founding director of Mindful Education, a mindfulness-based social and emotional learning platform for educators. Daniel Rechtschaffen, MFT
Advisory Council Author, The Way of Mindful Education and the Mindful Education Workbook 
Sam Himelstein, PhD Is a Licensed Psychologist who’s worked in juvenile halls, chemical dependency settings, schools, outpatient hospitals, inpatient psychiatric hospitals, in community settings, and in private practice with teens, their families, and adults struggling with trauma, addiction, depression and anxiety, burnout, and general stress. A formerly incarcerated youth himself, Dr. Himelstein was privileged to change his life from a path of drugs, violence, crime, and self-destruction to that of healing and transformation. His mission is to help people become aware of the power of self-awareness and transformation, and train teens, parents, and professionals with similar interests. Sam Himelstein, PhD.
Author, Trauma-Informed Mindfulness with Teens |
Jessica Morey, MA is the Executive Director of iBme. She began practicing meditation at age 14 on teen retreats offered by the Insight Meditation Society (IMS). She returned every year for 6 years and then participated for 10 years in an IMS young adult mentoring group. Jessica has attended longer retreats (1-3 months) in Asia and the U.S., and is a founding board member and lead teacher for iBme teen retreats. Before joining iBme, Jessica worked in clean energy and climate policy and finance. She holds a BA in Environmental Engineering from Dartmouth and Masters degrees in Sustainable Development and International Affairs. Her published works range from the chapter ‘Ordinary Awakening’ in Blue Jean Buddha to Conflict Resolution of the Boruca Hydro-Energy Project: Renewable Energy Production in Costa Rica. Her experience of bringing mindfulness into her work and life was described in a 2012 Shambala Sun article ‘Dharma 2.0.’ More recently she wrote an article in the February 2014 Mindful Magazine, ‘Finding My Way,’about her experience learning and benefiting from mindfulness throughout her young adult years. She is an avid yoga practitioner and skier and loves dancing in any form. Jessica Morey
Advisory Council Teaching and Program Strategy, iBme 
Thaxter Williams has senior level experience in financial services and business management, including accounting, taxation and financial planning. He also has extensive knowledge of risk assessment and insurance, as well as investment products. Thaxter has consistently demonstrated abilities to simplify complex problems, meet demanding objectives and easily gain the confidence of both staff and clients. He earned his Master of Science in Taxation at Golden Gate University in San Francisco, California, and holds a B.A. in Business Administration. He is the past president of the Longmont Twin Peaks Rotary, the Chair of the Longmont Downtown Development Authority, and also serves on the board of the Longmont Affordable Housing Corporation. Previously he was involved in the Longmont Chamber of Commerce, the St.Vrain Valley School District Leadership Program, and the Longmont Community Justice Partnership. |
Janet Solyntjes, MA, Certified MBSR Teacher, a practitioner of mind-body disciplines since 1977, Janet completed a professional training in MBSR with Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli in 2002 and is a Certified MBSR Teacher. She is on the faculty of the UMass Center for Mindfulness and leads silent retreats for MBSR teachers-in-training. Janet leads programs and retreats in the US and internationally and is a senior teacher in the Shambhala tradition. She taught extensively as an Adjunct Professor at Naropa University offering undergraduate and graduate courses in meditation. Janet Solyntjes, MA
Advisory Council Center for Courageous Living Certified MBSR 
Carmen Sample is a "Social Entrepreneur" - a social worker by trade that also builds successful and profitable businesses that expand on the social mission of her companies. Carmen received her Master's degree in Social Work from the University of Denver in 2008 after completing two undergraduate degrees in Psychology and Spanish from the University of Colorado-Boulder. She then went on to complete post-graduate education and clinical training at the Denver Family Institute and subsequently became a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Licensed Addictions Counselor. Carmen Sample founded Sample Supports in 2010 after spending 10 years working with people with developmental disabilities and mental health needs. Carmen's career in social work started by working extensively in direct care and case management with at-risk youth and adults with developmental disabilities. While completing her graduate program, Carmen managed a child placement agency in Boulder County for children and adolescents with developmental disabilities placed in the foster care system. Additionally, Carmen and Mark Sample were host home providers for over 4 years collectively, which provided an excellent opportunity to understand what is needed to effectively support the providers that care for people with disabilities in their homes. Combining a sense of entrepreneurship with a social work background, Carmen started Sample Supports in 2010 which now provides comprehensive services to 500 individuals with disabilities within her three corporate offices throughout Colorado. Simultaneously, Carmen created Sample Therapy Services, an OBH-approved substance abuse treatment program in Boulder County primarily serving persons on parole and probation that still remains active today. Additionally, Carmen and Mark Sample started several other businesses that work in partnership with Sample Supports to provide employment opportunities to individuals with disabilities. In 2014 they debuted Crystal Joys, a retail jewelry store that now has three locations and an online store. Samples Restaurant opened in 2015, which is a full-service restaurant that has been featured on the food network and has won Colorado's Best Craft Beer Bar two years in a row. Samples Restaurant has also expanded into opening a catering company and a food truck. Finally, Gallery 1874 opened in 2016 and offers a beautiful event venue in a restored historic grange hall. Each business works with each other to provide supplemental services to individuals including employment opportunities, mental health support, and specialized substance abuse treatment. Within her network of businesses, Carmen currently employs over 300 people and attributes her success to having a skilled team - a team that is mainly comprised of female leaders. Over 80% of her leadership team and top executive positions are filled by women. Empowering other skilled and talented female leaders is a cornerstone of how the companies were built and how the growth rate of the businesses |