The Heart of the Sit.Feel.Heal.
Meditation Center
The Sit.Feel.Heal. Meditation Center is a welcoming space for you to explore the human experience through self-reflective and contemplative practices.
It is built, supported and sustained by community and connection.
Our offerings are rooted in trauma-informed mindfulness, presence, curiosity, and compassion. Through mindfulness meditation, emotional understanding, reflection, conversation and creativity, we create opportunities to explore our personal experience in times of crisis and in times of ease. Learning to let go of the need to fix, escape, or perfect ourselves, we then begin to meet experience with kind awareness, care and appreciation.
What & how we practice
The practices, teachings, and reflections offered here are invitations to contemplate, not prescriptions for what someone should believe or blindly follow.
Teachers and teachings offer wisdom, guidance, practices, and perspectives with the intention of supporting and empowering each person to come to their own understanding of how an offering may apply to their lived experience.
We trust that healing and growth happen in relationship. Relationship with ourselves and others. They happen through the experience of being seen, heard and supported, and also through having a place where we don’t have to be perfect or have all the answers.
Part of practice is learning to listen to our heart, develop discernment, and discover what feels supportive, meaningful, and applicable to our own lives. We also practice listening to the experiences of others with that same openness and curiosity. This is a space where you don’t have to be perfect or have all the answers.
The Sit.Feel.Heal community
Community is integral to what we cultivate here, and participation can look different for each of us.
Participation is an invitation, not a demand. We honor each person’s ability to decide when and how they participate based on where they are in their own process.
There is no expectation to share or show up in a particular way in order to belong. We encourage connection while also learning to trust ourselves and knowing when it feels right to lean in, when to step back, when to share, and when we may simply need to listen.
Community doesn’t require sameness. We can honor what is true in our own experience and understanding, while remaining open and curious towards the varying experience of others. We can learn from one another without needing to agree or fully understand another person’s experience in order to honor it.
In this way, individual expression and relationship aren’t opposites.
How it all began
Sit.Feel.Heal founder Joe Clements never set out to build a meditation center. He was content leading mindfulness groups in recovery centers and working one-on-one. But as the community grew, so did the persistent encouragement for a regular drop-in meditation group, and so the Santa Cruz Meditation Group came into being.
For the next few years, they were (as Joe jokingly called them) "Nomad Meditators" - moving from space to space with a tote bag of meditation cushions, lights, and a bell.
Eventually, the group needed a more permanent home, a place to put down some roots, and we found our place here on River Street.
What began as a space for a weekly gathering has gradually grown and evolved into The Sit.Feel.Heal. Meditation Center: a welcoming space for self-reflection, connection, creativity, and community. A space where different teachers, practices, and perspectives can come together while staying rooted in presence, curiosity, compassion, and direct experience.
In many ways, the Center continues to grow the same way the original group did: organically, through relationship, participation, and people showing up for one another.
At The Center
The Sit.Feel.Heal. Center is here for anyone seeking:
A consistent space for meditation and reflection.
Support through life transitions, burnout, or emotional fatigue.
Accessible mindfulness and trauma-informed teaching.
Community that values authenticity, curiosity, and ease.
You don’t need a spiritual résumé to belong here, just curiosity and a willingness to show up.