Urban Retreat Days | Saturday's fortnightly | 9am - 1pm (AEST)
Price: $44 Standard / $19 Concession
Next Retreat:
Equanimity - in the face of uncertainty
When: 24th April, 2021
With: Timothea Goddard
Equanimity is a central part of Buddhist psychology and we can approach the cultivation of it in two main ways:
Our view
One is through our view: that is how we see things, our role in making things happen, and our place in the world. Our view often leads to lots of suffering. For example, a dear friend of my mothers, at 82 had the painful loss of her husband who had been very ill for a long time. She rang my mother, and said “Why me, why did this have to happen?”. I am sure we can all see that her death-denying and context-denying view was causing much of her shock and pain. We can really get more clear about aligning our view with how things actually are, and therefore suffer less.
Our practice
Second, we can cultivate equanimity through our practice. Ken McCloud writes:
“Equanimity is radical permission to feel. Equanimity is a dropping of internal friction with respect to the flow of these six senses: hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, the feeling body and the thinking mind. As a state of radical openness, equanimity is equivalent to love.”
In this retreat, we will explore and refresh both of these ways of cultivating more balance and equanimity in our lives.
We want to be inclusive, but this day of practice will suit people with some experience and knowledge of mindfulness practice - for example like the learning that happens in an eight-week program. So if you have some experience of practice - do feel free to register (even if you haven't done MBSR, MBCT or MiCBT.) If you haven't done any mindfulness training yet, have a look at the MBSR page to find a course near you. This will be a better fit, than leaping into a retreat day.
Some feedback from our first online retreat:
"A week has gone by since your life-enhancing retreat. I am so impressed that you made it feel like a real retreat, with all the important elements, even the personal conversations. I love all your mindfulness of body practices which combine elements of other fine traditions to create a dynamic experience of moving and stretching, which the body adores. The whole day created a wonderful sense of peacefulness and spaciousness, in the midst of all that is happening globally."
"Gratitude Tim, and everyone, This is lovely. Feels very grounding, and the weirdness is offset by seeing your familiar face and hearing your voice."
"I got so much out of the day. I’m surprised myself. Once I got over the feeling of sadness of missing being in a retreat together with the warmth & connectedness that comes with that, I realised how much is the same - a warm and engaging host, great content, familiar teachings from my previous MBSR courses - there is a warmth and connectedness that comes with those things."
