Dates: Friday, May 10, 3:00pm – Thursday, May 16, 11:30am; 6 nights
Sliding Scale: $1600 – 700, PLUS a donation to the teacher(s) and retreat staff. Code 250R19.
18 CE credits available for $180 for psychologists and California licensed MFTs, LCSWs, LEPs, LPCCs, and nurses.

This retreat is now in session.

Retreat Description:
The Buddha encouraged Maranasati practice to live an awakened life. This practice supports our appreciation of the preciousness of human birth and the development of equanimity with the difficulties of human existence. It helps us gain freedom from rigidity and clinging through a more expansive perspective of the inevitable and natural letting go. Maranasati matures our insight into impermanence and change, nourishing a skillful orientation to both life and death. In the retreat we will utilize the skills of loving awareness, compassion and investigation in our sitting practice, with some guided visualization and a period of contemplative inquiry each day.

While silent residential retreat experience is recommended, it is not required to attend this retreat. This retreat is considered a “workshop-style” retreat; meaning, there will be one non-silent/interactive session each day.

Previously recorded teachings from Bhikkhu Analayo will be shared via video; he will not be onsite in person.

Financial assistance is available for all Spirit Rock residential retreats. Our scholarship rate is $40/night and available for all those with financial hardship with special funds allocated to People of Color (POC), folks with serious medical conditions, and young adults (age 18-26). Scholarship funding is offered on a first-come, first-serve basis. Scholarships are budgeted per retreat and because they are in high demand, can run out quickly. We encourage you to register for a retreat as close as possible to the registration opening date (lotteries are an exception).

Teachings are appropriate for health care professionals as well as the general public. Health care professionals will be able to incorporate the tools and practices offered in this program in ways beneficial to clients or patients. Continuing Education (CE) credit available. See below for attendance requirements and more information.

Learning Objectives for participating health care professionals-
Based on the content of this program, you will be able to:

• Incorporate practices with clients to normalize death as an integral part of life;
• Incorporate practices with clients to recognize the aliveness and life force present in this moment to cultivate embodied presence and appreciation for being alive;
• Describe relationship to “not knowing,” in ways that may be used with clients;
• Incorporate, with self and others, the meditation of “this breath could be my last,” to appreciate the immediacy and intimacy of life-and-death;
• Utilize ritual, e.g. by creating a community altar for deceased loved ones, to appreciate the common humanity of grief and loss;
• Compose own obituary to gain perspective, in ways that may be used and shared with clients;
• Incorporate practices with clients to meditate on both the inevitability and the uncertainty of death’s timing;
• Communicate, and examine with clients the entanglement of attachment, and the liberation in letting go;
• Utilize art, such as poetry or prose, as tools in embracing one’s own death, processing grief, and letting go, in ways that may be used and shared with clients;
• Incorporate visualization practices regarding own death to help inform life path, in ways that may be used and shared with clients;
• Utilize the practice of offering and asking for forgiveness internally, in ways that could be used and shared with clients;
• Describe the relationship between embracing death and arising of gratitude;
• Utilize practices to empathize with clients facing terminal illness.