Retreats
Much of the time on our retreats is spent in guided inquiry: through practices such as dialogue, deep listening, journaling, meditation, and mindful movement, participants can examine their work from new perspectives. Retreats often include contemplative methods for cultivating greater self and social awareness, well-being, compassion, and our ongoing explorations of meaning, purpose, and values.
1/11/22: There are no upcoming retreats scheduled at this time.
No! These retreats are designed for participants with a wide range of experience in contemplative practice, including beginners.
Yes! Access grants are available to reduce the registration fee. A link to request an access grant may be found in each event listing.
Yes! Members of the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education receive a discount on registration. Be sure you are logged in to your account when registering and the discount will be automatically applied.
Past Retreats
Artistic Contemplative Practice for Ecojustice
An online retreat with JuPong Lin
Friday, October 15th, 1-4pm EDT
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and record-breaking climate change events, communities are swinging between denial, anxiety, paralysis and urgency. Ecojustice education, particularly processes that bridge personal practices with the political/collective actions, are needed for systems change. Ecojustice encompasses racial justice, anti- and decolonial practice, and justice for the more-than-human world. An ecojustice framework holds space for revitalization of and reconnection with our ancestral wisdom and our more-than-human kin. At the same time, a contemplative ecojustice pedagogy can hold open the door for critical engagement with the extractive, exploitative systems that have divested so many communities from our wisdom lineages.
Participants of this retreat will receive guidance for co-creating a space for contemplative engagement with the existential, planetary crisis we face through contemplative arts creation and worldmaking, while attentive to spiritual bypassing and cultural appropriation.
Retreat Takeaways:
- Learn and practice contemplative arts, specifically paperfolding as prayer; embodied poetry; deep listening; story circle; qigong-infused somatics.
- Learn and share practices of integrating contemplative and critical pedagogy
- Work with responses to spiritual bypassing and cultural appropriation
- Connect personal contemplative practice with collective action for climate justice
A Taiwan-born artist and poet, JuPong Lin weaves her ancestral traditions into community performances, cultivating kinship between humans of different places and with our more-than-human kin. As a de/colonial artist and institutional activist/educator, she blends paperfolding, poetics, story circle and qigong in contemplative, relational arts that bridge personal and collective healing. JuPong is a PhD candidate in the Environmental Studies program at Antioch University New England, a faculty member in the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Program at Goddard College for over 15 years, and led an initiative in decolonial arts.
Memory as Arc:
A Poetic Archiving of Your Archives
An online retreat with Arisa White and Meredith Clark
Friday, September 17th, 1-5pm EDT
In this creative writing retreat, participants will move along their arcs of memories and take notice of the themes and motifs that shape their histories. This engagement with your past, present, and future will help to unleash the fierce potential that comes from re-archiving your archives. Borrowing from strategies used in poetry, participants will craft evocative images and extended metaphors that identify unique patterns and introduce fresh energy to personal narratives. We will ground ourselves with contemplative exercises, engage in various generative writing activities, discuss source texts, and optionally share your work with the group. Participants will leave with a series of short pieces that can be used for further creative and scholarly development.
Arisa White is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College and a Cave Canem fellow. She is the author of the poetic memoir Who’s Your Daddy, co-editor of Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart, and co-author of Biddy Mason Speaks Up, winner of the Nautilus Book Award for Middle-Grade Nonfiction. As the creator of the Beautiful Things Project, Arisa curates poetic collaborations that center narratives of queer people of color. She serves on the board of directors for Foglifter and Nomadic Press. arisawhite.com
Meredith Clark is a poet and writer whose work has received Black Warrior Review’s nonfiction prize and the Sonora Review nonfiction prize. Her writing has appeared in Phoebe, Gigantic Sequins, Denver Quarterly, Berkeley Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, The Rumpus, and elsewhere, and she is the recipient of grants and residencies from Artist Trust, Jack Straw, Art Farm Nebraska, and The Vermont Studio Center. Her book Lyrebird is out now with Platypus Press.
Creative Resilience Retreat: Transforming Embodied Oppression & Coming Into Belonging
Originally broadcast live via Zoom on Friday, August 27, 2021
1-4 pm ET
A link to the retreat recording has been emailed to registrants.
This retreat is an art-based dialogue based on creative prompts and somatic reflections about our experiences with, and conceptions of, how systems of oppression and white supremacy show up in our lives, and in our bodies. No matter our positionality, privilege or perspectives, we are impacted by these systems and, as we move through the world, we carry these impacts with us, into our interactions with others, with ourselves, with the Earth. This is a space for pausing and sitting with what’s there, identifying what we are carrying so that we might better choose, when we can, what to carry and how best to carry it. We will do this together and co-create a "whole person space," including checking in about our access needs. We will alternate between small group creative activities and large group dialogue, and I will lead us in short contemplative practices designed to invite us to hold both greater awareness and a sense of belonging.
Chelvanaya Gabriel (they/them) is an interdisciplinary art activist/storyteller and resilience facilitator with a background in the sciences. A self-taught artist, they found an Audre Lorde-inspired form of self-care and healing-survival in creating visual work after the 2016 election. This art practice has since expanded to become interwoven with their social justice facilitation and community building work. They create space through their work where stories of wellness, trauma, disability, and neurodiversity, especially of QTBIPOC folx, can be witnessed and collectively processed. Their work is guided by decolonizing contemplative/somatic practices and an embodied awareness of ancestral knowledge/healing. With an afroqueerfuturist/disability justice lens, they ask “Whose stories aren’t being told?” With an interdisciplinary and intentionally collaborative approach, they pose this question and step into boldness and an audacity to both take up space and hold space for all the complex stories that must be told.
Juneteenth Freedom Jam
Originally broadcast live via Zoom on Friday, June 18, 2021
3-6pm ET
A link to the retreat recording has been emailed to registrants.
Proceeds from your financial offerings will be shared with Mothers of the Movement, Unlock the Box, the teachers of the retreat and CMind’s event scholarship fund. Thank you for your support!
This joyful retreat, facilitated by Dr. Kamilah Majied and guest teachers, will be a relaxing space to recover from racism and rejoice in Blackness. Dr. Michelle Chatman, chair of the CMind board and Founder of the Black Mindfulness Summit, cites the Yoruba expression “suffering ends today.” This wise adage reminds us that we can, using our masterfully creative, meditative, prayerful, playful minds, release suffering at any moment and decide to attend to enjoying our lives whenever and however we please. This is a truth that is known and enacted by Black people everywhere, every day, all day. We celebrate Black Excellence taking center stage in every realm from academics to gymnastics, from poetry to politics. Blackcellence is within us and all around us! Come celebrate it with us!
Crafting Your Heart Story: Arts-Based Explorations Of Contemplative Activism
a retreat with Kerr Mesner
Originally broadcast live via Zoom on Friday, June 11, 2021
A link to the retreat recording has been emailed to registrants.
Contemplation shapes our activism… and our activism needs the grounding roots of contemplation. In this daylong retreat, we will combine contemplative and arts-based practices to reflect on our own activist journeys. We will draw on a range of accessible creative practices to explore and share with each other our journeys as contemplative activists. We will practice deep listening—to ourselves, to each other, and to that deeper wellspring from which contemplative practice arises.
Our day will include a combination of large and small group discussions, arts-based contemplative practices, and individual and group experiences. Creative practices may include (but are not limited to) free writing, found poetry, and gentle theater-based work. Participants are encouraged to bring their own arts-based practices to the retreat day as well. No special supplies are required other than items that can be found around the home.
This retreat is geared to people with no creative experience, lots of experience, and everyone in between!
Kerr Mesner, PhD, is a Visiting Assistant Professor and Chair: Women’s, Transgender, and Queer Studies, at Wells College. He is a spiritual director, a queer/transgender theologian, a theatre performer and educator, and an activist. Kerr’s current areas of activism and writing include contemplative practice, anti-oppressive approaches to education, transgender studies, gender and sexual diversity in education, and arts-based education. Kerr brings a background in theology, pastoral ministry, professional musical theatre, and queer activism to these current areas of research.
Satisfaction as Activism
a virtual rest-shop with Regina Smith
Originally broadcast live via Zoom on Sunday, February 21, 2021
A link to the retreat recording has been emailed to registrants.
In Uses of the Erotic, Audre Lorde writes, “In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those…sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change.” She goes on to define the erotic as “an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire...require...from ourselves, from our lives, from our work.” In this experiential rest-shop, we will explore satisfaction as a source of power and resistance through meditation, visualization, gentle movement, poetry, music and more.
Rooted in embodied contemplative philosophies, Regina Smith is known for her magical creativity, intellectual clarity, and mission-centered collaborative leadership. As a coach, she is passionate about supporting BIPOC folx in expressing their power by connecting with their inner divinity, and as a consultant and trainer, she brings radical honesty and expertise in mindfulness and power dynamics to helping organizations create inclusive cultures for the greater good. A life-long student of humility, she is currently the student of her beautiful and brilliant five-year-old son Zen. She currently serves Naropa University as Vice President for Mission, Culture, and Inclusive Community.
Holding Gently:
Eco-Anxiety and Contemplative Practice
a virtual mini-retreat with Devora Neumark, PhD
Originally broadcast live via Zoom on Friday, December 18, 2020, 12 – 3pm ET
A link to the retreat recording has been emailed to registrants.
To be at peace with a troubled world: this is not a reasonable aim. It can be achieved only through a disavowal of what surrounds you. To be at peace with yourself within a troubled world: that, by contrast, is an honorable aspiration.
~ George Monbiot, How Did We Get Into this Mess?, 2016 (p. 14)
With the winter solstice comes an opportunity to actively search for equilibrium between feeling into our individual and collective eco-anxiety, environmental grief & solastalgia, and building inner resilience. Through a series of guided meditations, visualizations & creative prompts, we will explore the following themes: grounding in presence, cultivating joy, practicing self-compassion, accepting change, fostering connection and moving into action. This 3-hour retreat will support participants to maintain a sense of inner peace while fostering hope and agency to respond to the human-induced climate crisis playing itself out across the globe.
Everyone is welcome.
Currently living in Iqaluit (in the Eastern Arctic),Devora Neumark,PhD is an interdisciplinary artist-researcher, educator and community-engaged practitioner with over 30 years of contemplative practice. Neumark is also a Yale School of Public Health-certified Climate Change Adaptation Practitioner. She has been a faculty member in the Goddard College MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program since July 2003 and was a co-founder of its Indigenous and Decolonial Art Concentration in Port Townsend, WA. Her Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s-funded research-creation PhD titled Radical Beauty for Troubled Times: Involuntary Displacement and the (Un)Making of Home was an inquiry into the relationship between the traumas associated with forced dislocation and the deliberate beautification of home, including the problematics of home related to climate disruption and the continued increase in global climate refugeeism. Neumark is developing two new bodies of related artwork: one engages wellness and the cultivation of joy as radical practice; the other is focused environmental trauma and mainstreaming climate justice.
Living on the Mobius Strip:
Meditation for Inner and Outer Beauty
the second retreat in a series for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color)
led by Dr. Veta Goler
Associate Professor and Chair of Dance Performance & Choreography,
Co-Director of the Teaching Resource and Research Center, Spelman College
Originally broadcast on Friday, December 11, 2020, 10 am – 5 pm EST
The retreat recording has been emailed to registrants.
This retreat will focus on various forms of meditation to help you connect with the goodness that is at the core of your being. Through silent meditation, reflection, listening, and journaling, we will be able to turn within and access inner truth and beauty, wisdom and strength. Our goal is that after this retreat, you will be able to draw on these experiences to remind yourself that you ARE enough, just as you are.
We wish to offer a singularly inspiring experience–a pause in the busyness of daily life–for coming together with the support of a variety of mindfulness meditation practices. Through silent practice, we seek to create a transformative sanctuary, a sense of community, and familiarity with mindfulness skills to be sustained and developed over time.
This retreat (and the series it is a part of) is designed to be suitable for beginners as well as advanced practitioners and will include seated mindfulness meditation, focusing on the breath, as well as mantra meditation and meditation on awareness, including awareness of sound (chanting and music). Instructions will also be offered for silent walking mindfulness meditation and using a labyrinth. We will invite you to share in small groups and with the whole group, but the day will emphasize individual work done with a supportive community. Participants in this series will also receive a beautiful journal handmade for you by artist Jonetta Moyo.
To offer additional support for your practice after this retreat, we invite you to join us for a 3-hour mini-retreat/closing session from 10am to 1pm ET on Saturday, January 9.The concluding event in January is free for anyone who has attended either prior retreat. Attendance at all three events in this series is optional, but we highly encourage you to do so in order to build and sustain a supportive community of practice together.
This retreat series is intended for people of the global majority (PGM) / BIPOC.
It is made possible by a grant from the Trust for the Meditation Process, a charitable foundation encouraging meditation, mindfulness, and contemplative prayer. www.trustformeditation.org
Veta Goler, PhD, is Associate Professor and Chair of Dance Performance & Choreography and Co-Director of the Teaching Resource and Research Center at Spelman College. A longtime meditator, she is committed to helping others discover the ways contemplative practices can enrich their lives. Veta is a national Circle of Trust® Courage & Renewal facilitator. Dr. Goler’s research interests include the intersection of dance and spirituality in popular culture and explorations of spirituality and contemplative practices in education and the workplace. She has published her research in dance and culture journals and anthologies and has presented at national and international conferences. She has facilitated retreats and workshops for personal and professional renewal at colleges, universities, K-12 schools and retreat sites throughout the country. She incorporates contemplative practices in her classes, leadership roles and daily life.
Living on the Mobius Strip: Meditation for Inner and Outer Beauty
The first retreat in a three-part series, for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color)
led by Dr. Veta Goler
Associate Professor and Chair of Dance Performance & Choreography, Co-Director of the Teaching Resource and Research Center, Spelman College
Originally broadcast on Saturday, November 14, 2020, 10 am – 5 pm EST
The retreat recording has been emailed to registrants.
This retreat will focus on various forms of meditation to help you connect with the goodness that is at the core of your being. Through silent meditation, reflection, listening, and journaling, we will be able to turn within and access inner truth and beauty, wisdom and strength. Our goal is that after this retreat, you will be able to draw on these experiences to remind yourself that you ARE enough, just as you are.
We wish to offer a singularly inspiring experience–a pause in the busyness of daily life–for coming together with the support of mindfulness meditation practice. Through silent practice, we seek to create a transformative sanctuary, a sense of community, and familiarity with mindfulness skills to be sustained and developed over time.
This retreat (and the series it is a part of) is designed to be suitable for beginners as well as advanced practitioners and will include seated mindfulness meditation, focusing on the breath, as well as mantra meditation and meditation on awareness, including awareness of sound (chanting and music). Instructions will also be offered for silent walking mindfulness meditation and using a labyrinth. We will invite you to share in small groups and with the whole group, but the day will emphasize individual work done with a supportive community. We will also send you a handmade blank journal, specially created for this retreat series by Jonetta Moyo, that will be yours to keep.
To offer additional support for your practice after this retreat, you can join us for two additional events:
- A second day-long retreat on Friday, December 11 (10am – 5pm)
- A 3-hour mini-retreat/closing session on Saturday, January 9 (10am – 1pm). This event is free for anyone who has attended either prior retreat. We will provide attendees with the registration link.
Attendance at all three events is optional, but we highly encourage you to do so in order to build and sustain a supportive community of practice together.
This retreat series is intended for people of the global majority (PGM) / BIPOC.
It is made possible by a grant from the Trust for the Meditation Process, a charitable foundation encouraging meditation, mindfulness, and contemplative prayer. www.trustformeditation.org
Veta Goler, PhD, is Associate Professor and Chair of Dance Performance & Choreography and Co-Director of the Teaching Resource and Research Center at Spelman College. A longtime meditator, she is committed to helping others discover the ways contemplative practices can enrich their lives. Veta is a national Circle of Trust® Courage & Renewal facilitator. Dr. Goler’s research interests include the intersection of dance and spirituality in popular culture and explorations of spirituality and contemplative practices in education and the workplace. She has published her research in dance and culture journals and anthologies and has presented at national and international conferences. She has facilitated retreats and workshops for personal and professional renewal at colleges, universities, K-12 schools and retreat sites throughout the country. She incorporates contemplative practices in her classes, leadership roles and daily life.
Climate Justice, Contemplative Practice and Performative Gestures
with Devora Neumark, PhD
Originally broadcast live via Zoom on Saturday, October 3rd, 2020
The retreat recording has been emailed to registrants.
While the impacts of the global climate emergency are increasingly creating a sense of urgency amongst more and more individuals and communities, for many, they are also amplifying climate justice initiatives, which have their roots in decades-long struggles in the United States and elsewhere. For the most part, BIPOC communities are the ones most often negatively impacted by environmental policy and from the human-caused increase of CO2 levels, which have not been seen before in recorded history.
Participants in this 5-hour mini-retreat will be introduced to a series of different climate justice principles (e.g. the Bali Principles of Climate Justice, the Climate Justice Alliance’s Just Transition Principles, and the Front & Centred Principles for Climate Justice). These principles will serve as an entry point to explore performative gestures that engage contemplative practice with the intention of cultivating awareness about and addressing environmental racism and climate equity.
* No prior experience and knowledge of performance practice and/or climate justice principles is necessary; however, individuals with such experiences and knowledges are welcome also!
Currently living in Iqaluit (in the Eastern Arctic), Devora Neumark, PhD is an interdisciplinary artist-researcher, educator and community-engaged practitioner with over 30 years of contemplative practice. Neumark is also a Yale School of Public Health-certified Climate Change Adaptation Practitioner. She has been a faculty member in the Goddard College MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program since July 2003 and was a co-founder of its Indigenous and Decolonial Art Concentration in Port Townsend, WA. Her Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s-funded research-creation PhD titled Radical Beauty for Troubled Times: Involuntary Displacement and the (Un)Making of Home was an inquiry into the relationship between the traumas associated with forced dislocation and the deliberate beautification of home, including the problematics of home related to climate disruption and the continued increase in global climate refugeeism. Neumark is developing two new bodies of related artwork: one engages wellness and the cultivation of joy as radical practice; the other is focused environmental trauma and mainstreaming climate justice.
Finding Your Ground in a Groundless World
A virtual mini-retreat with Leslie Booker
Originally broadcast live via Zoom on Thursday, July 23rd, 1-4pm ET
The retreat recording has been emailed to registrants.
“People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way, but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values.” – Grace Lee Boggs, Civil Rights Activist
In the midst of grief and loss, anger and rage, how do we show up for those who look towards us for guidance? How do we find steadiness, balance and a sense of confidence in our leadership in this groundless time?
In this nourishing 1/2 day retreat, we’ll take time to rest, restore and find refuge in the collective. We will use the practices of mindfulness, embodied wisdom and connection to guide us back to our imagination. In this space it will be okay, and encouraged, to not be okay. Please, come as you are.
Booker brings her heart and wisdom to the intersection of Dharma, Embodied Wisdom, and Social Justice; an integration of ancient wisdom practices that support us in navigating our modern world. She shares her expertise nationally as a guest lecturer at conferences, universities, and Dharma centers, on expanding our vision around culturally responsive teaching, and changing the paradigm of self and community care.
She has spoken at Mind & Life Institute’s International Symposium, the ACMHE/Contemplative Mind in Higher Education conference, Mindfulness in America, and Omega Institute’s Mindfulness in Education conferences, along with other pioneers in the mindfulness field such as Jon Kabat-Zinn, Dr. Daniel Siegel, Linda Lantieri, and His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Booker has been a featured speaker and facilitator at the Fetzer Institute, Vassar and Pitzer Colleges, and the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia. She’s passionate about training future teachers through the Peace Corps’ Jaffe Fellows and Teaching Residents at Teacher’s College at Columbia University.
Booker began sharing practice with vulnerable populations in 2005, and was a senior teacher and Director of Teacher Trainings with Lineage Project, where she worked with incarcerated and vulnerable youth for ten years. During this time, she also facilitated a mindfulness and cognitive-based therapy intervention on Riker’s Island from 2009-2011, a partnership between New York University and the National Institute of Health.
Booker continues to be inspired to hold folks in their journey to find a sense of freedom and liberation within a world that is burdened by greed, hatred, and delusion.
Black Wellness in the Era of COVID-19:
A Retreat for and with Black People
A virtual retreat with Ruth King and Kamilah Majied
Originally broadcast live via Zoom on Sunday, June 7th, 3:00 – 5:00 pm EDT
We are painfully living through what the emerging data confirm: that Black people are dying at disproportionate rates and experiencing more negative economic, legal, health and safety consequences due to COVID-19 and the ensuing Shelter in Place mandates. This is having a profound impact on our communities and on each of us personally and professionally. We also know that the causes and effects of these difficult times are deeply rooted in generations of injustice and neglect. Yet, our well-being depends on our response as leaders. It is time that we gather as Black practitioners, educators, artists, activists, and leaders and share the wisdom of our beautiful collective community.
We invite you, our beloved Black community, who do so much holding, caring, and leading, into a space of learning about how meditative practices can help us awaken to and sustain our physical, emotional, social, and communal wellness.
All the practices offered in this 2-hour session will seed your capacity to further nurture wellness in the Black communities you practice and lead in, thus enabling you to feel more fortified in guiding your respective communities towards surviving and thriving through the pandemic and beyond.
Join us for this pre-Juneteenth celebration of Our Black Lives as we learn together how to liberate and nourish our well-being and that of one another.
This virtual retreat is a space for Black people only.
(Allies, we appreciate your interest and support! Please consider making a donation to the retreat leaders to support their work.)
There is no fee to participate in this retreat. Donations are gratefully accepted.
If you wish, you may make gifts directly to the retreat leaders Ruth King (donate button can be found on the bottom of Ruth’s home page) and Kamilah Majied (via PayPal, Venmo or CashApp to kamilahmajied@yahoo.com).
Dr. Kamilah Majied is a mental health therapist, clinical academician, and internationally engaged consultant on inclusivity and contemplative pedagogy and practice. She teaches clinical practice and research, employing psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, mindfulness-based, and artistic approaches to well-being. Kamilah has also practiced and taught Buddhism and mindfulness practice from several perspectives including mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, mindfulness and racial justice, Buddhism and mental health, and mindfulness practices to preserve the environment. She gave opening remarks at the first White House Conference of Buddhist Leaders on Climate Change and Racial Justice, where she also facilitated a dialogue on ending racism amongst the internationally represented Buddhist leadership. After 15 years of teaching at Howard University, Dr. Majied has recently joined the faculty at California State University in Monterey Bay as a Professor of Social Work. Drawing from her decades of contemplative practice, clinical training, and social justice leadership, Dr. Majied engages people in experiencing wonder, humor and insight through transforming oppressive patterns, improving mental health and deepening relationships.
Ruth King is an international teacher in the Insight Meditation tradition, serving on the Teacher’s Council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, CA. King formally managed training and organizational development at Levi Strauss and Intel corporations consulting to leaders on cultural change initiatives. Currently, King teaches the Mindful of Race Training Program nationwide to teams and organizations combining mindfulness principles with an exploration of our racial conditioning, its impact, and our potential. King has a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and is the author of several publications including her most recent Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out. www.RuthKing.net
We Were Made for These Times Too
A virtual retreat with Veta Goler, PhD
Originally broadcast live on Tuesday, May 26th, 9 am – 4 pm EDT
The retreat recording has been emailed to participants.
Elders in various indigenous traditions have been reminding us that we were made for these times. They tell us that we took birth knowing that our specific gifts and talents would be needed at a critical juncture to help humanity evolve. This is that moment. Join Veta Goler for a virtual retreat from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm on Tuesday, May 26, 2020. This will be an opportunity to come together in community to support each other as we access our inner wisdom and strength. Through silence, meditation, journaling, music and other creative and contemplative practices, we can find comfort and connect with what is uniquely ours to give to the world in this moment.
Retreat Schedule
9-9:30 am | Informal arrival time |
9:30-10:15 am | Session I: Creating the Container/Creating Community |
10:15-10:45 am | Morning Pause |
10:45 am-12 pm | Session II: Turning Within/Initial Explorations |
12-1 pm | Lunch |
1-2:15 pm | Session III: Exploring the Depths/Our Work in These Times |
2:15-2:45 pm | Afternoon Pause |
2:45-4:00 pm | Session IV: Preparing to Return/Bringing our Gifts |
Veta Goler,PhD, is Associate Professor and Chair of Dance Performance & Choreography, and Co-Director of the Teaching Resource and Research Center, at Spelman College. Her research interests include the intersection of dance and spirituality in popular culture and explorations of spirituality and contemplative practices in education and the workplace. She has published her research in dance and culture journals and anthologies and has presented at national and international conferences.
As a longtime meditator, Goler is committed to helping others discover the ways contemplative practices can enrich their lives. She has facilitated retreats and workshops for personal and professional renewal at colleges, universities, K-12 schools and retreat sites throughout the country. She also incorporates contemplative practices in her classes and in the guided meditation sessions she has been leading for Spelman students, faculty and staff for over 10 years. Goler is a national Circle of Trust® facilitator, and many of the retreats and workshops she leads are based in the work of education innovator Parker J. Palmer, who has written extensively on the value of living an “undivided life,” in which one’s work is in harmony with one’s values.
Retreat for Educators: Contemplative Practices in Teaching and Learning Saturday, March 28, 2015 Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CT with Shalini Bahl and Daniel Barbezat |
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Contemplative Retreat for Educators: A Day of Practice Saturday, May 3, 2014 Friends Meeting of Washington, Washington, DC with Paul Wapner and Nicole Salimbene |
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Contemplative One-Day Retreat for Educators: Mindfulness, Lovingkindness, and Simple Yoga Saturday, February 22, 2014 Amherst College, Amherst, MA with Mirabai Bush and Anna Neiman Passalacqua |
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November 17 - 20, 2011 Garrison Institute, Garrison, NY With Mirabai Bush, Arthur Zajonc, and Anna Neiman Passalacqua Read the report (.pdf) |
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November 11 - 14, 2010 Garrison Institute, Garrison, NY With Mirabai Bush, Arthur Zajonc, and Sunanda Markus Read the report (.pdf) |
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November 12 - 15, 2009 Marconi Conference Center, Marshall, CA With Mirabai Bush and Arthur Zajonc Read the report (.pdf) |
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November 13-16, 2008 Menla Mountain Retreat Center, Phoenicia, NY With Mirabai Bush, Arthur Zajonc, and Sunanda Markus Read the report (.pdf) |
Questions? Get in touch with us!
