Event Type: Day Retreats

Date & Time: Sunday, July 10, 2022; 10:00am – 5:00pm US Pacific Time
Sliding Scale: $45-$200. Our sliding scale options for this program include financial support for our teachers. Code DR2D22.
Continuing Education Credits: This program offers 6 CE credits for $60 for licensed psychologists, and California licensed MFTs, LCSWs, LEPs, LPCCs, nurses, and chiropractors.

Please Note: This retreat is offered online only. We invite you to try this creative form of practice as we take care of one another and respond skillfully to COVID-19.

Description:

Inquiry, or investigation, is one of the seven factors of awakening, a quality that both leads to and expresses awakening. Inquiry can be a crucial factor in our practice, leading to greater aliveness, energy, interest, and wisdom, yet we may still believe that meditation should be about “not thinking.” In practice, we just initially need to not be ruled by thinking—which makes it possible to then use thinking and questioning fruitfully in the process of inquiry.

We’ll explore five modes of inquiry:

(1) bringing inquiry into our mindfulness practice in several ways

(2) listening deeply, particularly through the body and emotions, when there are repetitive thoughts and narratives, as well as difficult experiences

(3) using a core teaching to guide one’s practice

(4) radical questioning

(5) uncovering and transforming limiting beliefs

The day will combine short talks, guided inquiry practices, and discussion.

All are welcome! No one will be turned away for lack of funds as space allows. For more information, please email Registration@spiritrock.org.

Date & Time: Saturday, July 16, 2022; 10:00am-3:00pm US Pacific Time
Sliding Scale: $45-$200. Our sliding scale options for this program include financial support for our teachers. Code CL1D22.

Please Note: This retreat is offered online only. We invite you to try this creative form of practice as we take care of one another and respond skillfully to COVID-19.

Description:

At times, Buddhist teachings and meditation practice may feel like an attempt to escape human life. Being born into this world can seem somehow wrong or undesirable. This can lead to a sense of mistrust in our bodies, our impulses, and in nature itself. But what if this path actually led to becoming more fully human, rather than escaping the human condition? What if liberation could be found through embracing our true nature as conscious beings, rather than taming it? With these concepts in mind, this daylong retreat will focus on the joy and beauty of birth, becoming, humanness, interconnection, and nature. Together, we will celebrate life.

All are welcome! No one will be turned away for lack of funds as space allows. For more information, please email Registration@spiritrock.org.

Date & Time: Saturday, July 23, 2022; 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. US Pacific Time
In-Person Sliding Scale: $108-$1008

*Our sliding scale options for this program include financial support for our teachers, MBA and Spirit Rock. Code JG1B22.

Please Note: This program will be offered as a hybrid: on-land and online. This is the registration page for the on-land program to be held in the Community Meditation Center.

A Benefit for the Spirit Rock Scholarship Fund

Description: This program is a wonderful opportunity to experience the wisdom of Joseph Goldstein, one of the foremost Vipassanā teachers in the Insight tradition. DaRa Williams, guiding teacher at the Insight Meditation Society, will be in conversation with Joseph to reflect on his teachings over the years, as well as on the evolution and future of Buddhism in the West. The program includes a guided meditation and audience Q&A from the Spirit Rock community. Join us on-land or online!

Space is very limited due to COVID protocols in place, please register here only if you can join us on the land. If you can only join us remotely online, please register for the Online version and you can participate by Zoom or watch the program later.

Date & Time: Sunday, July 24, 2022; 10:00am – 4:00pm US Pacific Time
Sliding Scale: $45-$200. Our sliding scale options for this program include financial support for our teachers. Code DC2D22.
Continuing Education Credits: This program offers 5 CE credits for $50 for licensed psychologists, and California licensed MFTs, LCSWs, LEPs, LPCCs, nurses, and chiropractors.

Please Note: This retreat is offered online only. We invite you to try this creative form of practice as we take care of one another and respond skillfully to COVID-19.

Description:

Health in our body and clarity in our meditation increases as energy flows more freely through the spine. In this daylong we’ll learn five simple Qigong movements that awaken energetic wholeness in the spine and the entire body. We will experience how awakening the spine through Qigong is a valuable support and complement to mindfulness meditation.

These Qigong practices release spinal stagnation and open a profound circulation of energy. This promotes health and wellbeing in body and mind. Qigong and meditation bring a bright wakefulness and a concentrated, embodied presence that help us discover who we are beyond our stories.

All are welcome! No one will be turned away for lack of funds as space allows. For more information, please email Registration@spiritrock.org.

Date & Time: Saturday, August 13, 2022; 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. US Pacific Time
Sliding Scale: $45-$200. Our sliding scale options for this program include financial support for our teachers. Code TS1D22.

Description: The Buddha asked his students to deepen in awareness of six kinds of experience: sights, sounds, tastes, aromas, body sensations, and mental experiences such as inner images, sounds, concepts, and our inner voice. These are simple momentary experiences in which we can become lost and enchanted, around which we might forever seek an unreachable sense of safety or contentment.

By becoming mindful of our breath and body, of the pleasant and unpleasant nature of these six experiences, and of their impermanent, ever-changing nature, we wake up from being lost in an exhausting dream. In learning to be mindful of these six sense doors, we discover a trustworthy peace and freedom.

All are welcome! No one will be turned away for lack of funds as space allows. For more information, please email Registration@spiritrock.org.

Date & Time: Sunday, August 14, 2022; 10:00am-4:00pm US Pacific Time
Sliding Scale: $45-$200. Our sliding scale options for this program include financial support for our teachers. Code HC2D22.
Continuing Education Credits: This program offers 5 CE credits for $50 for licensed psychologists, and California licensed MFTs, LCSWs, LEPs, LPCCs, nurses, and chiropractors.

Please Note: This retreat is offered online only. We invite you to try this creative form of practice as we take care of one another and respond skillfully to COVID-19.

Description: During this retreat we will explore the nature of ego and the enormous stress that comes with trying to be “someone.” With Insight Meditation, we can make peace with our various self views. In sitting and walking meditation, supported by instructions and Dharma talks, we will cultivate embodied presence. We will use the healing tools of mindfulness and lovingkindness to meet the activity of self with balance and openness, perhaps even “loving the house that ego built.”

All are welcome! No one will be turned away for lack of funds as space allows. For more information, please email Registration@spiritrock.org.

Date & Time: Saturday, August 20, 2022; 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. US Pacific Time
Sliding Scale: Dana (By Donation) $0-$108. Code AP1G22.

Please Note: This retreat is offered online only. We invite you to try this creative form of practice as we take care of one another and respond skillfully to COVID-19.

Description:
Whether we like it or not, we’re in contact with the world, some of it pleasant and agreeable and some of it unpleasant and disagreeable. Can we be present for this experience, and use it for our own and others’ benefit?

Date & Time: Sunday, August 21, 2022; 10:00am-5:00pm US Pacific Time
Sliding Scale: $45-$200. Our sliding scale options for this program include financial support for our teachers. Code PB3D22.
Continuing Education Credits: This program offers 6 CE credits for $60 for psychologists, and California licensed MFTs, LCSWs, LEPs, LPCCs, nurses, and chiropractors.

Please Note: This retreat is offered online only. We invite you to try this creative form of practice as we take care of one another and respond skillfully to COVID-19.

Description: For over 2500 years, the extraordinarily resilient Buddhist feminine has carried the Dharma. As Maya Angelou said, “Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it.” Buddhist women have overcome barriers of culture, class, race, religion, and gender by following the natural inclination of their hearts to find enlightenment through the Four Noble Truths.

Their stories have the potential to help us find our heart’s liberation in the midst of the pandemic, climate trauma, and protests to bring awareness to issues of race and systemic injustice in our society. Our intention in this daylong is to find joy and freedom through our lived experience embracing our stories. With compassion, we connect to our inner sources of strength, peace, and empowerment, which enable us to both accept and transform what is needed in ourselves and the world around us.

All are welcome! No one will be turned away for lack of funds as space allows. For more information, please email Registration@spiritrock.org.

Date & Time: Saturday, August 27, 2022; 10:00am-4:00pm US Pacific Time
Sliding Scale: $45-$200. Our sliding scale options for this program include financial support for our teachers. Code JD1D22.
Continuing Education Credits: Pending

Please Note: This retreat is offered online only. We invite you to try this creative form of practice as we take care of one another and respond skillfully to COVID-19.

Description:

Bringing our mindfulness practice to gender invites us to open and be curious about the possibilities of gender identities beyond the binary. Our gender identities, expressions and experiences profoundly impact all areas of our lives providing us both joy and difficulties. How do we create communities that are open to all genders and learn how to navigate the complexities of gender? During this day of practice, we will investigate how cultural, historical, and familial conditioning around gender impact us as individuals and as communities. Through meditations and interactive activities, we will explore gender in order to nurture a world that is founded in inclusivity and freedom for all.

All are welcome! No one will be turned away for lack of funds as space allows. For more information, please email Registration@spiritrock.org.

Date & Time: Friday, September 30, 2022; 10:00am – 4:00pm US Pacific Time
Sliding Scale: $45-$200. Our sliding scale options for this program include financial support for our teachers. Code TR1D22.
Continuing Education Credits: This program offers 5 CE credits for $50 for psychologists, and California licensed MFTs, LCSWs, LEPs, LPCCs, nurses, and chiropractors.

Please Note: This retreat is offered online only. We invite you to try this creative form of practice as we take care of one another and respond skillfully to COVID-19.

Description: In concentration and serenity meditation (samatha), we return awareness to one object of meditation to the exclusion of everything else, unifying the mind stream. This reveals with heightened clarity our habitual patterns that cause us to suffer, called “purification of mind.” A laser-like awareness can develop, potentially leading to profound peace, stillness, joy, as well as the meditative absorptions known as jhāna. Topics include: the practice path, the relationship of samatha and vipassanā, and working with striving and hindrances.

All are welcome! No one will be turned away for lack of funds as space allows. For more information, please email Registration@spiritrock.org.