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

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Exploring our relationship with experience

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:

  1. Notice what is happening. 


  2. Allow what is here.


  3. 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.

Attending to the transitions

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.

Living Dharma

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.

Snacks, tea and filtered water are included in your registration provided across the weekend. On Saturday, please bring your lunch - we will be eating together at the Center as part of our practice. You’ll receive further info about what to bring and how to prepare once you’ve registered.

We look forward to sharing some practice time with you!

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Meet your teachers

Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio
(she/they)

Kimber is a meditation teacher, spiritual mentor, and writer, who has shared Buddhist teachings and meditation practices for over 20 years. Her offerings braid self-compassion, body awareness, and social justice, with an emphasis on deepening our connection to ourselves and each other.

Kimber has completed extensive training through Spirit Rock, East Bay Meditation Center, Braided Wisdom, and more. She is a visiting teacher at Spirit Rock, East Bay Meditation Center, and Insight Santa Cruz, among others, and a Core Teacher at the Sit.Feel.Heal. Center. She enjoys supporting LGBTQIA+ community members through monthly sits and also works with white-bodied folks in understanding how to Decompose Whiteness in the world. Kimber has also undertaken a path of awakening around ancient Celtic ancestral ritual that has opened many doorways of insight and animism. 

Kimber is passionate about how mindfulness can help us better understand ourselves, soften habitual reactivity, and cultivate more compassion, joy, and meaningful connection in our everyday lives. She and her wife live in Santa Cruz with their family, including two dogs, two cats, and more chickens than she should admit to in print. 

A Little More About Kimber…

  • Every once in a while I stumble into that perfect intersection of poor sleep, irritation, distraction, physical discomfort, subtle anxiety about the state of the world, and ordinary inconvenience, that then erupts into a verbal reaction of deep-seated annoyance. In the aftermath, I might wish I could press reverse on whatever string of words just emerged from my mouth, or maybe retroactively mute it with a magic remote. Then I remind myself that these moments are part of being alive, showing up as a full, messy, imperfect human being who gets stressed, under-resourced, and overwhelmed sometimes.

  • The most gratifying place is in my relationships and deepening connections with friends and family. The ability to slow down and tune in to someone I care about, to feel their struggle and their joys, brings me a sense of belonging and wholeness I haven't found anywhere else.

  • Mantis shrimp tail, obviously. They are badasses of the sea, I love them. Colorful and hella fierce, a worthy combination. Plus they can see dozens of colors we can’t even imagine… wow!


Joe Clements
(He/Him)

Joe is the founder of Sit.Feel.Heal. and the Sit.Feel.Heal. Meditation Center in Santa Cruz, CA. A meditation teacher, mindfulness and emotional awareness coach, and longtime practitioner, Joe brings a down-to-earth, humorous, and sometimes irreverent approach to mindfulness.

Rooted in his own journey of recovery and personal growth, Joe’s approach emphasizes developing a more compassionate relationship with ourselves, others, and this messy thing called life. His passion is helping people take their practice from the seat to the street, where the real opportunities for awareness, curiosity, and compassion show up.

A Little More About Joe…

  • Stuck in traffic! And family gatherings where folks have had a few substances and suddenly want to have deep, meaningful conversations with me.

  • In my relationship with my son, Echo. Being a dad gives me endless opportunities to practice presence, patience, curiosity, and compassion.

  • A prehensile tail that spins like a helicopter so I can fly from place to place. Oh, and it would have a built-in umbrella that opens whenever I need some shade.

Got Questions?

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