People of Colour Retreat

Teachers

DaRa Williams has practiced vipassana meditation for 25 years and serves as an IMS guiding teacher. She is also a certified coordinating trainer for Aboriginal Focusing Oriented Complex Trauma Therapy and maintains a private psychotherapy practice in the New York City area. "It is my experience that meditation and the Dharma are ideal for transforming suffering. Awareness, wisdom and a compassionate heart become the vehicle for transformation, connection and freedom."

Jeanne Corrigal has been practicing since 1999, is a graduate of Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leader Program, and joyfully leads the Saskatoon Insight Meditation Community.  Jeanne is Métis, and one of her first teachers in loving presence was Cree Elder Jim Settee. She is a participant in the 2017-2021 IMS teacher training program.

Matthew Hepburn, Matthew first embraced the Dharma through the Dalai Lama’s teachings on wise action and the virtues of living an ethical life for the benefit of all beings. Seeing his day-to-day life immediately benefit from training in ethics and compassionate action, he began sitting his first silent retreats at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) with Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein.

Based in the Boston area, Matthew has had the great fortune to have IMS as a primary place to support his retreat practice, and Cambridge Insight Meditation Center (CIMC) to support his practice in daily life. At CIMC he has studied with and received invaluable mentorship from Narayan Liebenson, Larry Rosenberg, and Madeline Klyne.

Matthew’s natural way of teaching is to approach mindfulness from a primary orientation of compassion & kindness, and help practitioners discover confidence (and wonder) in the immediacy of freedom available in this moment. He has a strong interest in intentionally developing relationship to make the unconscious conscious, especially in the service of transforming conditioning we inherit through our social locations (e.g., gender___, race, sexual orientation). For the last several years he has lead and learned from multiple affinity-based communities exploring privilege, identity, internalized oppression, and compassionate engagement.

Since 2012, Matthew has taught in spaces ranging from schools and prisons to fast-growing tech-startups. He now enjoys a full life of bringing Buddha-dharma and contemplative practices to people in both broad and deep contexts: He teaches classes and builds ongoing relationships with new & dedicated students as a core teacher at CIMC, and spreads the development of wisdom and wellbeing to wider audiences through his work in content development at Ten Percent Happier.

Matthew Hepburn is currently a participant in the 2017-2021 IMS Teacher Training Program, and finds continued inspiration growing with, and learning from, the deepening friendships blossoming there.

Jozen Tamori Gibson, a meditation practitioner and guide, began formal meditation practice in 2004 through Zen while living in Japan, joined by a Theravada practice in 2010. Currently, Jozen is the Director of Community and Youth Engagement with the Brooklyn Zen Center (BZC), where he also serves as co-facilitator for the BZC People of Color sangha (community). He is also a member of the center’s male-bodied/identified sangha engaged in Undoing Patriarchy and Unveiling the Sacred Masculine, and Program Director for the Awake Youth Project. With certifications in Mindfulness Facilitation through the Mindful Awareness Research Center at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior and in 200-Hour Yoga and Wellness with Breathe for Change (RYS), Jozen lives to provide and nourish contemplative mind-heart-body alignment practices and spaces grounded in health, engaged anti-oppression and liberation for all beings. In 2017 he entered into the Insight Meditation Society Dharma Teacher Training program. Jozen shares his path of interdependent liberation by honoring the wisdom and compassion of all his teachers, highlighting his mother, Akimi, and his dharma root teacher, Pamela Weiss. 

Registration Information

LOCATION: Loyola House, 5420 Highway 6 North, Guelph, Ontario.

All of the rooms at Loyola House are single rooms with a sink. Washrooms are shared.

ARRIVAL TIME: 3:30-5:30 pm, Monday, April 13. The retreat will conclude by lunch on Thursday, April 16. Everyone is welcome to stay for lunch

COST: TNI is dedicated to offering affordable rates to all. TNI retreat fees are on a sliding scale basis that allows participants to pay according to individual means. Fees do not include compensation for the teachings, and teachers rely on the generosity of retreatants for a sustainable income. There is an opportunity to offer dana (donations) to the teachers at the end of each retreat. The deposit is included in all of our fees.

* You Choose Rate - So that TNI can offer this form of financial assistance to as many as possible, please be as generous as you can when choosing your rate, at or above $40 per night ($120 minimum total).

** Scholarship Rate - TNI offers scholarships of up to a 50% reduction of the low rate on our sliding scale to those who request it. For this retreat, the low rate is $395. You can ask up for a scholarship of up to 50% of this rate. For example, if you ask for a 50% scholarship, you would pay $200.