Please join us for a live online retreat 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 take those resources into how we live our daily lives.
During this day-long 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.
"Meditation is about a compassionate openness and the ability to be with oneself and one's situation through all kinds of experience.
In meditation, you're open to whatever life presents you with.
It's about touching the Earth and coming back to being here.
While some kinds of meditation are more about achieving special states and somehow transcending or rising above the difficulties of life, the kind of meditation that I've trained in and that I'm talking about here is about awakening fully to your life.
It's about opening the heart and mind to the difficulties and the joys of life - just as it is.
And the fruits of this kind of meditation are boundless."
~ Pema Chödrön
Throughout the day, we will alternate between sitting meditation sessions and guided Feldenkrais-inspired movement lessons. We will also have generous breaks during which you can take care of yourself and inhabit your ordinary life. Weaving these together offers profound gifts.
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 fourteen 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.
"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"
Embodied meditation practice will support you in growing a sense of stable presence, a warm heart, and mind that can be spacious and open enough to welcome anything. Embodied meditation will help you see clearly that your thoughts are just thoughts. Embodied meditation helps us flip the dynamic - so that our thinking minds are in service to our deeper values rather than our deep hearts being hijacked by ungrounded thinking. Embodied meditation will help you to grow stability like a mountain, spaciousness like the sky, warmth like the sun. The world needs people who can embody such qualities.
Brilliant Feldenkrais lessons will help you grow a new and deeper relationship with your embodied self, your capacity to learn, your ease in sitting, your attentional flexibility, and your sense of possibility. Feldenkrais lessons powerfully support us to embody mindfulness in every moment and every movement. It's also a potent training in the powerful practice of slowing down and tuning to the wisdom of the body underneath the thinking mind.
Poetry woven throughout our gatherings brings beauty, poignant insight, and touches our deepest hearts.
A life-giving community circle offers the power and beauty of authentic human connection, solace, laughter, powerful wisdom, deep care, and love. We learn so much from each other.
"Erin and Carl’s retreat provides an incredible and rare opportunity to come face to face with our own embodiment in our daily routines, gently opening and encouraging new layers of insight and awareness. Held in the presence of two spacious awakened hearts, practising from home at intermittent times throughout the morning, afternoon, and evening, this retreat provides profound and lasting insight into our embodiment in our daily routines. With the combination of movement, sitting, teachings through poetry, and Erin and Carl’s own poetic imagery we are offered a gigantic, gentle, sweeping, and playful push on the swing of deep exploration into the spaciousness of embodiment. As we share our felt experiences, our connections with others deepen, and our creativity becomes more alive. I highly recommend these teachers and their offerings."
–Leana Shantz, Alberta, Canada
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.
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The standard tuition for the retreat is $125. Click here to register.
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The reduced rate for those who cannot afford the basic tuition is $85. Click here to register.
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The rate for those with greater means who can help us make the lower-price tuition available to others is $165. Click here to register
Schedule:
Morning Session 7-9 AM
Afternoon Session 1-4:30 PM
Evening Session 7-8:30 PM
All sessions are recorded if you can not attend live.
All registered participants will receive recordings of all sessions - and you'll have indefinite access to the recordings.
