Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Retreat

Join us for a mindfulness retreat that incorporates teachings from the Jewish mystical tradition.  The retreat is an opportunity to deepen your own mindfulness practice regardless of any prior connection to Jewish practice. It is a model for how mindfulness can be integrated into other spiritual traditions and is open to people of all backgrounds and prior experience with mindfulness meditation.

Over the last twenty years meditation has entered Jewish life in a way accessible to Jews of all or no denomination.  Originally this was in reaction to meditation practices that came to the west from the east. But, with an openness to spiritual wisdom from all sources that characterizes some contemporary Jewish circles, a new synthesis has been created that honors the practice and teachings of mindfulness meditation. These teachings can augment theory that originated in Jewish mystical circles, allowing for a rich hybrid practice.  Seeing all of existence as a manifestation of the Divine, the four foundations of mindfulness offers the possibility of directly knowing the Divine that the kabbalists and Hasidic sources called devekut. This retreat will introduce those who attend to this synthesis and enrich both their Jewish and mindfulness practice.

Using the vehicle of silence and contemplative practice, this retreat will invite you to look deeply into your own life, as you cultivate greater wisdom, joy and compassion.  The deep work allows each of us to see more clearly how we become overwhelmed and shut down, hurting ourselves and those around us in the process.  The clarity possible through these practices allows us to experience the movement from "small mind," the narrow place of "mochin de'katnut," into an expanded perception (mochin de'gadlut) of the Divine presence that pervades all of life including Awareness itself.

The retreat includes daily periods of prayer, chant and meditative movement.  Daily instruction in meditation will help guide both beginning and advanced practitioners into the sacred space of the retreat process.  Throughout the retreat we will maintain social silence. There will also be times for questions and answers as well as small group and private interviews with the teacher. The weekend will include an observance of Shabbat that shows how Shabbat can be a central time for honoring being over doing.