| Retreat Descriptions |
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April 15-20: Presence, Intimacy & Radical Freedom: A TSK & Zen Approach April 15-20: Presence, Intimacy & Radical Freedom: A TSK & Zen Approach
The Traditions We Draw On Jack Petranker is founder of the Center for Creative Inquiry, past dean of the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, and author of When It Rains Does Space Get Wet? He will draw on the teachings and practices of the Time, Space and Knowledge Vision and his own work in the field of first-person consciousness studies. Ron Purser is a long time student of Buddhist teachings and the Time Space Knowledge (TSK)Vision. A professor of management at San Francisco State University, he has a special interest in the contemporary relevance of Buddhism to social issues and transformative education. He is the co-editor most recently of 24/7: Time and Temporality in the Network Society . userwww.sfsu.edu/~rpurser Cost: $350 (includes lodging and vegetarian meals) May 3-8: Opening the Senses Retreat
This retreat makes use of the full range of Kum Nye exercises to enable us to integrate a rich array of positive feelings into body, senses, and mind. The retreat includes a private Kum Nye massage session to promote relaxation. Cost: $675 (includes housing and meals). Instructors: Donna Morton and Santosh Philip, assisted by the Kum Nye staff. Retreat begins Monday with lunch and concludes Saturday with dinner. May 2-8: Healing Body, Healing Mind
Based on Kum Nye – a Tibetan Yoga, developed by the Tibetan Lama Tarthang Tulku - this work enhances the energetic flow of feelings and sensations in the body. The bodies’ natural response is towards healing and wholeness. In order for healing to occur, the energetic pathways of the body must be open and flowing. Kum Nye opens blockages in the body and re-establishes the healthy flow of energy throughout the body. Kum Nye facilitates awareness of body, breath and mind and initiates a process of mind healing without psychology. The first three days of this workshop is for Body Workers only. They will be introduced to the exercises, theory, and techniques of Kum Nye and Kum Nye Massage. There will be plenty of opportunity to give and receive this powerful work. The last three days will integrate participants who want to experience a deep immersion into the healing environment of Ratna Ling, Kum Nye massage and exercise. Guests will have time to truly unwind, relax and heal in our cottage suites, which include dining/living rooms, fireplaces and incredible views of the surrounding redwood forests. Therapists will be able to practice their new techniques on the weekend retreat guests. These guests will receive two massage sessions a day as well as group meditation, Kum Nye practice and theory, and the opportunity to work with their hands on our sacred text project. The last session will be on Friday afternoon, with a celebration dinner Friday evening. Cost: May 5 -7: Healing Body, Healing Mind Participants Retreat - $450 for room and all meals Class qualifies for CEU's. May 21-23: Essential Practices for Well-being
Cost: $350 ($275 for students) includes lodging, meals, and all instruction. Begins with a 4:30 PM orientation on Friday, May 21, and continues through Sunday lunch. Instructor: Erika Rosenberg. Continuing education credits are available for MFT’s and LCSW’s June 25-28: Death and Dying
All of us, at some point, must encounter the death of a loved one. The Tibetan Buddhist teachings have marvelous insights and practices on how to be during the process of a loved one dying and what to do after their death. We also encounter the realization that our own time is limited. Becoming aware of this certainly will awaken our energies, senses and open the mindIn this weekend seminar, you will receive an introduction to the Tibetan insights on “death and dying” and be able to practice some of the suggestions of these teachings. It is fascinating to know that we are living on borrowed time. Knowing this teaches us how to be with others and ourselves in the certainty of death. Learning the teachings on “bardo” will be the heart of this short intensive. We will use readings and practices from Gesture of Balance by Tarthang Tulku, Living Without Regret by Arnaud Maitland and we will discuss the layout of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Please contact us for how to prepare for this weekend. June 30 - July 4: Lineage of Light Our whole being can wake up and merge into a brilliant, unified field of awareness. -Tarthang Tulku, Hidden Mind of Freedom The fullness of our being, luminous and free, reveals itself through visualization and dream yoga practices. A mirror-like equanimity arises; all things, inner and outer, dance with a new sense of harmony and light. Cost for week: $360 (nonresidential); $550 (residential). Begins Monday morning and ends Saturday at 4:45 PM. Instructors: Sylvia Gretchen and the Nyingma Psychology staff. Retreat is part of the following Certificate Programs: Nyingma Psychology Program; Two-Year Nyingma Studies Program. This advanced retreat is part of a longer Dharma Studies retreat taught mostly at the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley. Please contact the Nyingma Institute directly at (510) 809-1000 for further details and prerequisites. July 19-24: Touching Wonder and Facing Fear
Moments of deep inspiration teach us that there are wondrous dimensions to our bodies, minds, and the world around us. Yet, we also know that our capacity for the extraordinary is often dimmed by fears and conditioned responses. In this retreat, meditation and movement practices help wake us up to inner spontaneity. At the same time, awareness exercises focus us on a new kind of emotional honesty: one that sees emotions as doorways through which we can pass freely. Fear is the gatekeeper that we must befriend and overcome. Cost: $675 (includes lodging and vegetarian meals) Instructors: Sylvia Gretchen and the Nyingma Psychology staff. Retreat begins Monday with lunch and concludes Saturday with dinner. Prerequisite: Familiarity with meditation and an openness to exploring consciousness in an experiential manner. August 1-6: The Self in Question: a TSK Retreat
Sponsor: Center for Creative Inquiry For more information on this retreat, please visit: creativeinquiry.org August 20-22: Introduction to Kum Nye Kum Nye comprises a series of simple but effective healing exercises that work to relieve stress, transform negative behavioral patterns, promote balance and health, and increase our enjoyment and appreciation of life. The exercises are based on theories of the gross and subtle energy systems of the body, which underpin Tibetan medicine and the body-mind disciplines of Buddhism. In modern times, confusion, chaos and overstimulation have become such a feature of daily activity that we are often too tense and charged up to enjoy life. Kum Nye works to counter this effect: opening our sense and our hearts so that we feel satisfied and fulfilled, able to appreciate every aspect of our lives more fully. By practicing Kum Nye, we can enrich the quality of our experience as we learn to live more harmoniously. The movements, postures, breathing exercises, and self massage techniques in this workshop will introduce the participants to new ways of experiencing life in the body. Cost: $120 (includes lodging and vegetarian meals) August 26-29: Opening the Field of Awareness
Cost: $375 (includes lodging and vegetarian meals) Begins with dinner on Thursday and continues through Sunday lunch. Instructors: Sylvia Gretchen and Barr Rosenberg. Sept. 10-12: Joy and Spaciousness
Cost: $275 (includes lodging and vegetarian meals) Begins with dinner on Friday and continues through Sunday Instructors: Sylvia Gretchen and Jack van der Meulen. Continuing education credits are available for MFT’s and LCSW’s Sept. 24-26: Mind in Nature
Living in our fast-paced, supercharged world, we lose touch with our own spirit, our own capacities for joy and wisdom. Always looking outside ourselves for fulfillment, we use up the resources of our precious planet and waste our own capacities. There is another way to experience our being, based not on isolation but connection. In other cultures and times, human beings have lived as part of nature, knowing that human intelligence does not separate us from the world, but brings us into intimate communion with it. In this program, we will learn to slow down and appreciate the world around us. We will start with the simplest facts of our embodiment: the breath, the senses, and the feelings that flow through our body. We will explore what it means to live in a world alive with meaning, where time and space measure out intimacy instead of distance. We will ask what it would be like to find aware- ness in all that appears, so that mind and nature come together as one. Much of the time we will practice outdoors. Part of the program includes a nature hike on Saturday with a poetry reading by our speical guest Elizabhet Herron (artist and poet). Instructor: Jack Petranker, a senior student of Tibetan lama Tarthang Tulku and former Dean of the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, is founder of the Center for Creative Inquiry and author of When It Rains, Does Space Get Wet? His first wilderness experience was in 1969. His interests include consciousness studies and the self in community. Cost: $195 (includes lodging and vegetarian meals) To find out more visit the Center for Creative inquiry at www.creativeinquiry/programs October 8–10: Dream Yoga and Authentic Communication
Cost: $275 (includes lodging and vegetarian meals) Begins with dinner on Friday and continues through Sunday lunch. Instructors: Sylvia Gretchen and Barr Rosenberg. October 15-17: Healing , Mindfulness & Compassion
The program will offer personal experience and reflection on how this integrative approach can be applied in the health care setting. Practitioners from a variety of disciplines, including medical, nursing, chiropractic or other healing art, will gain an increased repertoire of skills. Those who are exploring these practices from a patient’s perspective will gain insights in how to become more active partners in their healing process. Tibetan practices will include Kum Nye yoga, meditation and visualization. The healing relationship will be explored using the Balint group process – a case presentation method that explores the complex factors in the provider/patient relationship. At the retreat Western medicine will be presented from an integrative perspective combining conventional and complementary approaches. We envision the retreat as the first in an ongoing dialogue between Tibetan and Western approaches to healing. This course has been Approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing, Sutter Medical Center of Santa Rosa, Provider No. 12064; for 10 contact hours. This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the Institute for Medical Quality and the California Medical Association’s CME Accreditation Standards (IMQ/CMA) through the Joint Sponsorship of Sutter Medical Center of Santa Rosa (SMCSR) and Integrative Medical Clinic Foundation. SMCSR is accredited by the Institute for Medical Quality/California Medical Association (IMQ/CMA) to provide continuing medical education for physicians. SMCSR takes responsibility for the content, quality and scientific integrity of this CME activity. Sutter Medical Center of Santa Rosa designates this educational activity for a maximum of 10 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity. This credit may also be applied to the CMA Certification in Continuing Medical Education.
October 21–24: The Heart of Purity
A mind that dwells on the flaws of the world encounters them inwardly as well. A mind that judges others as being right or wrong will be beset by inner judgment. In this retreat, we will strive to reach through the turbulence of acceptance and rejection to their source, discovering there the heart of purity and the heart of sameness. Cost: $375 (includes lodging and vegetarian meals) Begins with dinner on Thursday and continues through Sunday lunch. Instructors: Sylvia Gretchen and Barr Rosenberg. Based on writings of Rongzom Mahapandita and Longchenpa’s Kindly Bent to Ease Us. Prerequisite: Consent of instructors. For those with a background in Buddhist studies looking for an advanced approach. October 29-31: Lawyering: The Human Dimension:An MCLE Program This program is intended for attorneys and their guests. It offers 13 hours of MCLE credit (8 hours in ethics, three hours in substance abuse, and 1 hour in bias). Optional sessions introduce Buddhist meditation and movement exercises. To download a descriptive brochure or to register, please go to the CCI website (www.creativeinquiry.org). The program starts Friday afternoon and ends with lunch on Sunday. Cost: $800 (one guest stays free)
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This workshop is about conducting presence and embodying intimacy. Taught by three highly experienced teachers from different traditions of knowledge, it will use inquiry, improvisational encounters, and creative dialogue to go beyond what we all already know. The emphasis will be on activating a dynamic aliveness--available right now--that carries over into every moment of our lives.
This six day retreat for Body Workers will alter their experience of giving a massage into a new world of awareness, and offer new ways to restore and sustain their wellbeing and that of the client. By incorporating mindfulness of the practitioner and inviting the recipient to participate mindfully as well, the experience of giving and receiving a massage is transformed into an appreciation of the energetic flow of experience. Each session is unique and fresh.
Spend a weekend at the beautiful Ratna Ling Retreat Center mastering ways to enhance your well-being. Experiential practices, including meditation, imagery exercises, and Tibetan Yoga, will help calm body and mind, expand the senses, and open the heart. The workshop will lead you through these practices in gentle, but effective ways that require no previous experience with meditation.
If we could extend our knowledge, we might be able to open wide the channels between senses and mind, and discover new dimensions of experience that we could evoke whenever we wished. Tarthang Tulku, Knowledge of Freedom
A program open to anyone who has participated in at least one CCI online TSK programs, or by consent of the instructor. We will look at how the freedom that space offers is shut down through the mechanisms of thought and our commitment to stories focused on the self. We will explore ways to restore that freedom by restoring the openness of space, activating the dynamic of time, and inviting the light of knowledge. We will do a lot of structured practice, both together as a group and individually, much of it outdoors—in the woods, on the beach, and face-to-face with the vast blue sky.
Practices that focus on how the senses interact with mind and self can help to free us from the ordinary chain that leads from perceptual process to dissatisfaction. In this retreat, we learn to rest within the open space of awareness, “seeing,” “feeling,” and “knowing” beyond interpretations or labels.
Gentle Kum Nye movement and breathing practices enhance a sense of spaciousness and develop joyous feelings. Practicing mostly outdoors, we invite the beauty of nature to foster and expand inner joy.
A Three-Day Exploration into Who and How We Are
Meditation and visualization exercises from the Tibetan tradition bring a special awareness into the dream state that helps us use dreams to cultivate insight. The instructors will introduce practices that stimulate lucid dreaming, along with exercises that release tension in the head and neck, enhancing our ability to listen well and speak truly.
Set amidst the coastal redwood groves of northern Sonoma County, this retreat will combine a Western medicine perspective, a focus on increased understanding of the practitioner/patient relationship and Tibetan traditional practices to develop a refined and holistic approach to healing.
“Since everything is but an apparition, perfect in being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter.” -Longchenpa, Kindly Bent to Ease Us