Open Mind and a Free Heart – Mindfulness and Compassion Retreat in Silence
May 21- May 26, 2023
“Everything we do for ourselves, we do for others,
and everything we do for others, we also do for ourselves.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
→THIS RETREAT WILL BE HELD IN ENGLISH AND ONLINE ONLY. YOU CAN REGISTER HERE
With the growing popularity of mindfulness and compassion many of us are getting a taste of meditation and a wish to practise more intensively, but there are limited opportunities to take our meditation practice deeper in the ideal conditions that a retreat can provide.
This 5 days meditation retreat is aimed to fulfil that need whether your mindfulness training has been in Breathworks, MBSR, MBCT or any other mindfulness-based approach.
Vidyamala and Sona are looking forward to helping you deepen your mindfulness and compassion practice. Learn how to let go of ‘sticky’, reactive states of mind that keep us stuck on the surface of things. As these gradually dissolve, learn to taste the freedom that naturally arises with ever-increasing experiences of openness and love.
Vidyamala and Sona invite you to join them in exploring how we can work with our minds and hearts to move towards greater expansiveness, love and freedom.
There are many models for this journey from wisdom traditions and they will draw on some of these over the week – applying ancient wisdom to our minds in the modern world.
They will unpack an ‘energetic arc’ of awakening which includes becoming more mindful and present; getting to know experience; learning to release tight and contracted states; and opening to increasing levels of bliss, absorption and equanimity.
They will also unpack ways to work with all the habits and tendencies which prevent this kind of opening. This includes mental and emotional states such as: anxiety and restlessness; a dull mind and body; getting caught in loops of craving and ill-will; and doubt in the benefits of mindfulness practice.
This retreat will be held mostly in silence, apart from teaching sessions to help you take your meditation deeper and opportunities for enquiry. Many of us long for periods to quietly deepen the mindfulness and compassion practices we have learned. There will also be led mindful movement sessions.
There will also be opportunities for Q & A with the leaders and chances to talk about your meditation experiences over the retreat.
Suitable for
Mindfulness teachers, trainers, supervisors and 8-week mindfulness course graduates who have a regular mindfulness practice of at least one year
What we will explore together
- Ways to work with habits that hinder deepening awareness
- Ways to release the mind into ever more expansive and liberating awareness
- A chance to meet in small groups for shared mentoring
- An opportunity for sustained practice in a retreat context
Seminar Times
Sunday, May 21. 5 p.m. – Friday, May 26, 1 p.m.
ONLINE ONLY. Please register here
Seminar Directors
Vidyamala Burch OBE
Founder of the Breathworks method. Breathworks was developed by Vidyamala Burch based on her own experience with chronic pain. At the age of sixteen, she suffered a serious spinal injury and subsequently had to undergo several operations. Chronic pain and partial paralysis have remained to this day. In search of a helpful way to deal with this serious challenge, she began to explore the effects of mindfulness practice and meditation in order to cope with the persistent pain. Since 2001, she passes on the skills and techniques that had helped transform her life.
Vidyamala Burch also learned meditation and its use for stress management, inter alia, with John Kabat-Zinn at the Center for Mindfulness, University of Massachusetts Medical School.
She is the author of: “Living well with pain and illness – The mindful way to free yourself from suffering“ (2009)
and co-author of “Mindfulness for Health – a practical guide to relieving pain, reducing stress and restoring wellbeing” (2013) with a foreword by Prof. Dr. Mark Williams. Vidyamala Burch has been made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen’s Birthday 2022 Honours List. She has been honoured for her Services to Wellbeing and Pain Management as the Co-founder of Breathworks, an organisation which teaches mindfulness-based approaches to people coping with pain, illness and stress.
Sona Fricker
Co-founder of Breathworks and a senior teacher in the Breathworks method. He works closely with Vidyamala Burch, the founder of Breathworks. He has been teaching mindfulness meditation and Buddhist philosophy internationally for more than 40 years. He set up various Buddhist centres in Great Britain and Sweden and was also involved in setting up a centre in Essen. For 15 years he led a retreat centre in the UK. In 2003 he started working with Vidyamala Burch – and in 2004 they founded the Breathworks Self-Help Network with Gary Hennessey. Sona offers seminars on mindfulness and compassion worldwide and together with Vidyamala Burch he trains teachers in the Breathworks method.
This retreat meets the requirements for continuous training for MBSR and MBCT teachers of the MBSR Association Germany.