Fireside Chat: Your "Crazy" Mind and How to Wrangle It

Join WITHIN Meditation teachers Hannah Knapp and Javier García Sánchez for a 45-minute exploration of our relationship to our restless minds.

Many of us assume meditation means “stopping thoughts.” When that doesn’t happen, we feel stuck or discouraged. But what if wandering, restlessness, and distraction aren’t signs of failure — but normal stages of training attention?

Together, we’ll unpack:

• Why the mind moves the way it does

• How to shift from self-criticism to skillful training

• What it actually means to make progress

You’ll leave with clarity, reassurance, and practical insight into living well with your own mind.

This free session offers a taste of the foundations we’ll deepen in Javier’s upcoming 6-week meditation journey, Building a Lifelong Practice. Whether you join us live via Zoom 5:45-6:30pm PT, or listen to the recording afterwards, you’ll leave with practical tools, a clearer understanding of how meditation develops over time, and a more compassionate view of your own experience.

✨ Bring your attention. Bring your questions.

Reflection prompts:

• What feels most challenging in your meditation right now?

• What crazy patterns keep showing up for you?

• What do you secretly wish meditation would fix?

About WITHIN Meditation

WITHIN Meditation is San Francisco’s first drop-in meditation studio, established in 2017. We’re a community for people who want to know themselves more deeply. Our teachers offer both practical tools and inspiration for living your life more fully, drawing on different wisdom traditions.

With the advent of COVID-19, we moved all of our classes online, where we’ve created a community of teachers and students from across the United States and as far away as London and the Philippines. We hold up to 3 classes per day, each with a different teacher, making it easy for anyone to drop in and reset. We also offer circles, retreats and events to deepen your practice and connect you with others in the WITHIN community.

Since our inception, we’ve offered that same inspiration and assistance in offices throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Over the last several years, we’ve expanded to offering virtual sessions to companies around the world.

What to expect at our fireside chats

These free live online sessions are a great way for you to get to know us and explore ideas about your well-being with insights from our teachers.

When you join us using the Zoom link we'll email you ahead of time, you'll meet two of our teachers, Hannah and Javier. They'll discuss the topic, and also take questions and comments from the attendees. You're welcome to just listen in, or to participate to whatever degree feels comfortable and exciting to you.

Please note, during the conversation we will record both the questions submitted and the responses from the teachers. If you’d prefer that we not mention your name, be sure to indicate that when you type your question in the Zoom chat.

About Your Event Hosts

Javier García Sánchez is an artist and educator weaving ancient wisdom into the fabric of contemporary life.

Rooted in over a decade of meditation practice, he explores how awareness can shape perception, movement, and creativity. Meditation has been a profound anchor in his life, cultivating presence, resilience, and a deeper way of seeing. He teaches to help others access the infinite potential of their minds, drawing on his own studies, retreats, and artistic sensibilities. His students value his gentle directness, poetic imagery, and the seamless integration of art into his meditations.

Javier has trained extensively in meditation, yoga, and breathwork, and regularly undertakes month-long silent retreats to deepen his practice. He is currently completing the 18 Foundational Buddhist Courses through the Asian Classic Institute—a rigorous study paralleling the core curriculum of a Geshe (Doctor of Theology) in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries.

He is also a certified coach, an aikidō practitioner, and a student of the Japanese tea ceremony. He studied Art & Design at Central Saint Martins, International Commerce at the University of Salamanca, and Management at Gothenburg University. His consulting work has helped large organizations navigate vision and strategy, while his art has been commissioned by publications such as The New Yorker and exhibited internationally.

Hannah Knapp has been meditating since 2012, when she dove in head-first with a 10-day Vipassana retreat. It was during that retreat that she realized she was ready for the adventure of pregnancy and parenting. Coming out of that experience, she knew she needed a community to practice with: there was just nothing like meditating with other people. Her passion for sharing the power of mindfulness has led her to launch (and lead) group meditations wherever she’s worked, and to start WITHIN Meditation.

Through mindfulness, she’s developed a deep resilience, focus, and capacity to love that she draws on every day, both as the mom of two children and as a start-up founder. She’s delighted to be leading meditation sessions in our online studio and in companies throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and across the country, while building an amazing team of teachers at WITHIN.