This retreat taught over seven days will be structured and held so as to create a safe and supportive environment for this work of “coming back home to ourselves”. Residential retreat offers a unique opportunity to cultivate a continuity of mindfulness that allows us to deepen our understanding of the workings of our own heart, mind and body.
The retreat will be shaped around the Buddhist psychological framework of the four foundations of mindfulness, as well as drawing from the contemporary understandings informing mindfulness-based programmes. We will practise with and build on the meditation forms familiar to those within Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction/Cognitive Therapy. There will be periods of guided and unguided sitting, lying, walking and mindful movement practice, opportunities for informal practice, and meetings to explore first person experience with the teachers and their support team. The retreat will also include each day a short period of carefully guided interpersonal mindfulness practice drawn from Insight Dialogue to enable us to inquire into the teaching themes with the support of a co-meditator.
The overall container of the retreat will be one of noble silence: a chance to be in community with like-minded people without the need to “be” anyone in particular. There will be opportunities for sharing and connecting at the end of our time together.
The retreat is ideal for those who have taken an 8-week mindfulness course and wish to deepen their learning, those who are training to teach mindfulness-based courses and for established mindfulness-based teachers.