Grounded and Spacious:
A Retreat In Movement and Stillness 

Let us welcome 2025

deeply rooted in embodied presence and connected with our naturally warm-hearted, spacious awareness

 

with Erin Geesaman Rabke and Carl Rabke
Offered Live Online

(recordings will be provided for those who cannot join live)

 

Please Join us on Saturday and Sunday,

Jan. 4-5, 2025

 sessions will be held at:

7 - 9 am MT
1 - 4 pm MT
6:30 - 8 pm MT

 

 

Please join us for a live online retreat to welcome 2025 in movement and stillness, two embodied gateways to the calm, vital, and spacious presence that is always present underneath the choppy waves at the surface of our busy lives.

  We will practice deepening the qualities of groundedness and spaciousness both in sitting meditation, in mindful movement, and then of course, take those resources into how we live our daily lives. 

  During this weekend retreat, we will explore how our embodiment, our felt connection with the Earth, and our access to the spaciousness inherent in awareness can provide a refuge during challenging times.

We aim to practice together not in a way that invites the bypassing of struggles either inner or outer, but rather in a way that deepens our intimacy with life as it is while rooting us in inner resources that can help us to show up for our lives with centered, uncontrived, compassionate, wholehearted presence.

Through gentle and transformative movement lessons, we will explore how the sitting posture of meditation can help deepen your access to groundedness, vitality, spaciousness, ease, and compassion, and how the sitting posture itself can be more aligned, comfortable, and natural than you may have ever imagined.

 

 

 "Erin and Carl Rabke are two of the most awake, compassionate, and embodied practitioners I have worked with. Both of them bring inspiration, subtlety, and exquisite nuance to their instruction. They are deeply in touch with their audience and I would entrust anyone to their reliable hands.” 

–Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi, author of Everything is Workable and The Zen of You and Me

 

 

 

Through the course of the day, we will alternate between sessions of sitting meditation and guided Feldenkrais-inspired movement lessons, as well as having generous breaks during which you can take care of yourself and inhabit your ordinary life. Weaving these together is a profound gift. 

Movement and stillness, each deepening and enriching the other.

 

The movement lessons we'll explore are specifically designed to support you in experiencing greater comfort, ease, alignment, naturalness, and vital embodied presence in your sitting posture. Whether you like to sit in a chair, on a kneeling bench, or a cushion; whether you are new to meditation or have practiced for decades; regardless of the particular meditation tradition you may come from, these lessons can improve the ways you sit in meditation for the rest of your life.

 

 

" I meditated for years, but find that the level of awareness required to notice the subtle difference in sensation when I rotate my pelvis with a relaxed jaw versus clenched jaw is taking my mindfulness to a whole new level. The absolute best part of the lessons is Erin and Carl.  Their infectious enthusiasm and curiosity about the movement of the body keep me coming back.  They have an impressive depth of understanding of anatomy, kinesiology, spirituality, and social justice which they weave into the lessons in a strikingly beautiful way.  Even though I have yet to meet them in person, I feel deeply connected and seen by them.  They offer clear explanations and guidance while leaving plenty of space for my own experience and explorations. "

– Linda Raven, Radical Life Coach

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I have known Erin Geesaman Rabke and Carl Rabke for about a dozen years as students, friends, and colleagues. They integrate deep somatic understanding with their devoted meditation practice in ways that are very helpful for both very experienced and novice meditators.

Speaking as the founder of The Embodied Life School, with more than 45 years of experience as a Feldenkrais teacher and a nearly 50-year practice of Zen meditation, I can wholeheartedly recommend their teachings. I can also attest to their integrity as both teachers and human beings."

–Russell Delman Founder, The Embodied Life™School

 

 

Many meditative traditions refer to our “natural mind” or the “natural state.”

What if the posture of meditation could feel like sitting in your most natural, uncontrived body?

Your most authentic self, having arrived at home in your body and in the present moment, fully at ease.

As the Zen teacher, Suzuki Roshi said, the posture is not something that simply supports the practice of meditation. Inhabiting the posture is none other than the practice itself.

When we are fully inhabiting our embodied selves as we sit in spacious silence, we are fully inhabiting our meditation and the vast expanse of being.

The time-tested, brilliant technologies of sitting meditation and mindful movement offer potent gifts that are deeply needed during times like these. 

 

 

 

 

Each of these sessions will be recorded and will be provided to all registrants in an easy-to-navigate online classroom.

You're welcome to sign up even if you are unable to attend each session or any of the sessions live. All registered participants will receive all the recordings. 

We will also have time for group sharing, questions, reflections, and processing together.

 

 

 

Tuition for this retreat is offered on a sliding scale to accommodate people of differing financial means.

Before registering, please read our cancellation policy here.

The standard tuition for the weekend is $195.

Click here for one payment of $195

Click here for 3 monthly payments of $67

The reduced rate for those who cannot afford the basic tuition is $125.

Click here for one payment of $125.

Click here for 3 monthly payments of $42

The rate for those with greater means who can help us make the lower-price tuition available to others is $265.

Click here for one payment of $265.

Click here for 3 monthly payments of $89. 

 

 

"I love the schedule and format of this retreat. An immersion into the felt sense experience, with repeated Awareness Through Movement lessons followed by sitting practice. A loving way to let “heart-mind” take center stage.

It was very penetrating and supportive for shifting out of the heaviness of burdensome thoughts ... and experiencing that glimpse of “awareness” in the present moment. And the retreat did, indeed, hold many of those glimpses.

I experienced, more profoundly than ever, a perspective outside thought. That felt sense, I suppose, which holds the entry to the present moment. ...or clears the obstructive fog from clouding the present moment. I look forward to your next Intensive plunges into felt sense awakening.

With much love and gratitude,

Alane Fry McKenna"