City Retreat
Taking Our Practice from the Seat to the Street
Gearing up for the holidays - Yay!? Nay!?
Either way… it can be a lot.
Before we head into the beautiful, busy, joyful, complicated, and sometimes completely overwhelming holiday season, City Retreat is an opportunity to slow down, reconnect, and practice taking care of ourselves, not by escaping our lives, but by learning how to meet them.
Together we’ll practice finding a little space within it all - the peaceful, calm eye of the shit storm, while exploring how mindfulness can help us notice what’s happening, allow what’s here,
and respond with greater clarity and care. Because the practice isn’t about creating a perfectly peaceful life. It’s about learning how to be in relationship with the life we actually have.
SIT.Feel.Heal. City Retreat November 13–15
Friday, November 13 | 7:00–9:00pm
Saturday, November 14 | 10:00am–4:00pm
Sunday, November 15 | 10:00am–1:00pm
$240 - $300
What does our practice look like when we get up from the cushion and step back into our lives?
City Retreat is a weekend of meditation, reflection, connection, and practice centered around three simple aspects of our relationship with experience: Notice what is happening.
Allow what is here.
Respond with greater clarity and care.
Mindfulness practice helps us become more present for our lives, not so we can escape difficult experiences, get rid of uncomfortable feelings, or perfect ourselves, but so we can learn to meet what is happening with curiosity, compassion, and a little more space.
Throughout the weekend, we’ll explore how practice can support us in noticing our thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and habitual patterns; allowing our experience to be here without immediately pushing it away or getting swept up in it; and creating enough space to consider how we want to respond.
We’ll pay particular attention to the transitions.
The simple transition of closing our eyes and moving from an outward experience toward an inward one. Opening our eyes again and noticing the world around us. Standing up from the meditation seat. Walking out the door. Getting into the car. Arriving home. Moving from stillness into conversation, responsibility, distraction, relationship, and the rest of our everyday lives. What comes with us?
Rather than trying to hold onto a particular meditation experience, we’ll practice noticing when we feel connected and when we feel disconnected. When do we reach for distraction? What is happening inside just before we reach for the phone, the screen, the food, the activity, or whatever else might pull our attention away? And if we are trying to escape something, can we meet that with curiosity rather than judgment? Maybe distraction is exactly what we need right now. Or maybe we can stay with what’s here for another moment, another breath, and see what happens.
Through guided and silent meditation, contemplative reflection, movement, discussion, and relational practice, we’ll explore how awareness can move beyond the meditation seat and into our relationships, our work, our communities, and the ordinary moments of our lives.
This is Living Dharma - recognizing that everything can become part of our practice when met with awareness and presence.
Rather than stepping away from life for an entire weekend, City Retreat is intentionally designed as a come-and-go retreat. The time between sessions isn’t separate from the retreat. Walking to your car is part of the practice. Going home is part of the practice. Waking up the next morning is part of the practice.
Living Dharma - where our daily lives and the city we live in becomes part of the retreat.
This is what we mean by taking our practice from the seat to the street.
No particular meditation experience, spiritual tradition, or belief is required - all are welcome. Come as you are, bringing whatever traditions, beliefs, questions, or lived experience are meaningful to you. Participate in the ways that feel supportive, and explore what it means to meet ourselves, one another, and this messy thing called life with greater presence, curiosity, and compassion.
A Commitment to Yourself, Without Rigidity
City Retreat is designed as a full-weekend experience. Registration includes Friday evening, Saturday, and Sunday.
While this is intentionally a come-and-go retreat, we ask participants to register for the weekend as a whole rather than for individual sessions. Think of it as making a commitment to yourself, without rigidity. Set the intention to participate in the full weekend and to make space for practice. And then, just like the practice itself, stay curious and responsive to what life brings. You may need to leave early, arrive late, take a break, care for your family, rest, or simply recognize that you’ve had enough for the day. That doesn’t mean you’ve stepped outside of the retreat. In many ways, that’s where the retreat begins.
What happens when you walk out the door? When plans change? When you get tired? When you reach for your phone? When you’re suddenly back in traffic, at home, with family, or standing in line for coffee? Rather than trying to maintain a particular state of mindfulness or calm, we practice noticing our relationship to whatever comes next. The practice continues between the sessions.
Sliding Scale Registration
$240 — Supported Rate
For those who need a little financial support to make the weekend accessible.
$280 — Sustaining Rate
Reflects the actual cost of offering the retreat.
$300 — Pay It Forward
For those with the means to contribute a little more and help make the supported rate available to others.
Everyone receives the same retreat experience. Simply choose the rate that best reflects your circumstances.
If cost is a barrier to participating, please reach out. We don’t want finances to be the reason you can’t join us.
We will provide snacks - Tea - Filtered water for the whole weekend.
Saturday - Bring a Lunch. We will be eating together at the Center as part of our practice