Mindfulness + Compassion Retreat: Opening Our Tender Heart to Compassion

This Retreat is Now Full.
Please Email Us If Wishing to be on the Wait List

Dates: OCTOBER 13 – 15th
Location: Sarana Springs, Chatsworth ON
Fee: $195 includes meals

With gratitude, we are able offer this retreat at a reduced cost due to the generosity of one of our long-time community members. Thank you.

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This weekend retreat invites you to explore your mindfulness practice, touch into the roots of compassion and, be refreshed by the natural world and fall colors. Including nature in our reflective and practice time allows us to deepen and expand our heart awareness towards all beings.  Mindfulness + Compassion Skills with Nature build a foundation for loving kindness and a deepening our sense of interrelatedness and oneness.

Sarana Springs is set in a beautiful with a wilderness environment, where fresh water springs carve creeks throughout the property and where a small lake, ponds and river remind us how water sustains all life. Here, as our practice expands to sense into the roots of suffering, we share as a community the role of developing kindness, tenderly turning towards our vulnerability, and meeting forgiveness as a means for sustaining our selves and for extending this loving awareness towards our world.

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Program Location at Sarana Springs near Chatsworth, Ontario.

Sarana Springs is approximately a 2.5 hour drive from Toronto, north of Markdale and south of Owen Sound, located on 171 acres of sprawling wilderness, wetland, and meadow.

See Below for where to stay options.

 

With guided meditation instruction and practice in our temple barn, time for personal contemplation and insight, and a retreat structure that supports our wandering minds, we peer into the reflections that appear in our mind.
Mindfulness grounds our attention into the present moment and reminds us to come back when we drift away.  Practicing compassion is both a inner feeling response to suffering, ours or another, as well as  offering  kind actions that arising from our heart’s empathy.  During this weekend of group practice,  we will also reflect on our relationship outwardly to the world of all beings that support us, where we find our gratitude and the realization that we are not separate but rather interconnected in web of interdependence.

In this retreat you will:

• explore your mindfulness practice in both sitting and nature walking sessions
• unravel the threads of compassion and kindness as distinct skills in opening our hearts
• enjoy local, mostly organic meals, and contemplative community living
• explore and encounter nature on its own terms
• choose your stay with either camping or B &B options
  

Where to stay:

 

Faculty:
(Revs.) Andrew & Angie Blake
( CYT) Maxine Iharosy 

Plan to arrive in the area between 2-4:30pm on Friday. We will gather at the Barn Temple  at 5pm, followed by dinner and our evening session.  Morning sitting begins at 7am and breakfast, lunch and dinner will be served here to support your inward time.  Program ends by 4:00pm Sunday.