The courses and retreats listed here are led by the teachers on the Teachers page. The page is current - listings appear in date order and are taken down one day after the start date. Buttons take you to the relevant websites with all information and application processes. To view past retreats and courses in order to get a sense of the range of offerings over time, please click the button below.
Past Retreats and Courses
The Buddhist meditation tradition identifies and names several hindrances to meditation: ill will, sensory desire, sloth & torpor, restlessness & worry, and doubt. Beyond these, there are also defilements, or unskillful tendencies of the mind, such as anger, greed, and delusion. We are also subject to the "eight worldly winds" — pain and pleasure, gain and loss, praise and blame, and fame and disgrace — that impact on us in different ways throughout life. When encountering these challenges, it is easy for the inner critic and unskilful reactivity to arise in relation to them.
In this five-session course, we will approach these teachings and qualities of the mind with compassion and curious investigation. Our intention is to understand these tendencies more deeply and to cultivate skillful ways of relating to them with wisdom and kindness.
With Rob’s formulation of ‘ways of looking’ as the ground, Catherine will lead a weekend of practice and reflection to support us to shape and tune our ways of looking to open to more meaningfulness and beauty. Come along to deepen your working understanding of Rob’s teachings and to engage some of its possibilities - for the richness that they bring and for the sanity that they lend us in this changing world.
This retreat is hosted by the MIndfulness Network. It is suitable for practitioners directly interested in Rob’s approaches as well as being for those coming from Mindfulness based programmes. The teaching will be offered on a dana basis. Bursary assisted places available from The Mindfulness Network.
In this course we will explore the practices of vastness of awareness. Through these practices we may notice how the mind can appear to us in meditation as a bright, spacious, unshakable and sky-like space.
These expansive meditative states are revered as potent meditative vehicles and are described as containing all the noble qualities of mind and heart. Such beautiful perceptions support a natural and nourishing sense of compassion and samadhi to arise. From this basis we will start opening to the freedom that comes through sensing the Empty malleable nature of phenomena, the self, and even awareness itself.
Emotions and mindstates fabricate and colour all experiences and perceptions of ourselves, others and the world, as well as potentially influencing many of our actions and decisions in life. They are natural aspects of our being, and as such form an important part of our meditative exploration. As meditators, we are given a particular opportunity to draw close to our inner life while being supported by skillful and kind ways of looking.
Over this five week course we will cultivate the skill of recognising emotions, meeting and holding them skilfully, as well as learning to see their fabricated and empty nature. These practices will support our hearts’ capacities to hold the difficult, as well as developing a delicacy of attention in meeting the lovely. Through our practice we can begin to explore what freedom can mean in relation to emotions and mindstates.
