July Online Mindfulness Retreat for All Ages (East)
Friday, July 17 @ 6:30pm – Sunday, July 19 @ 3pm (EDT). Online via Zoom.
Cultivating Calm and Resilience through Community
What better time to immerse in a mindfulness retreat — from home! We’ve adapted our signature style to the online environment to bring you a meaningful and transformative retreat experience. Participants of all ages are welcome. You’ll learn skills for sustaining a home practice and bringing more ease and compassion into your life and relationships. Join on your own or with others.
This unique retreat weaves iBme’s relational approach with periods of silent guided meditation, yoga, small-group discussion, workshops, and wisdom talks.
We know from experience that iBme’s relational mindfulness approach works for people of all ages. We invite everyone — teens, college students, adults, elders — including members of the same family, to come together in this retreat to practice, learn, share, and transform. In addition to whole-group sessions, we will also be dividing into small groups based on age and life stage. In this way each population will have the opportunity to reflect with their peers on the particular realities they are facing at this time.
Feedback from our most recent online retreats:
“This experience made a challenging time much more manageable. The opportunities to connect with others in meditation, movement, conversation, emotion, social connection, mindful practice, dance, and thought were so precious. What an amazing gift.”
“Thank you, Thank you from the bottom of my heart. What you are doing could not be more important and the skill of the teaching that you offer is fantastic.”
“I feel so grateful to have a meditation practice and community right now as we “shelter in place” in California. In-person social interactions (outside of those with my partner) have been very limited so these chances to connect mean a lot. Yay for Zoom!!”
What does the retreat consist of?
During this retreat, we will be fully immersing ourselves in a contemplative space for three days. We ask that you commit to this as fully as possible, particularly to the small-group discussion periods. This online retreat will include periods of:
- guided mindfulness meditation
- instruction on integrating mindfulness into daily life
- small-group periods for discussion and social connection, and
- workshops on various topics such as mindful eating; restorative yoga; mindful communication; and how to use digital technology wisely (with a focus on the pressures of the current moment).
All participants will receive ongoing, personalized support and practice advice in small groups from highly experienced meditation teachers and mentors, just like we provide on our in-person retreats.
How can I prepare?
We encourage you to create a designated practice space for yourself (and any family members you are participating with) that will be uninterrupted during your retreat time and have as much silence as possible. You should let your family and friends know that you won’t be available — but this retreat will not require complete isolation such as on a traditional silent retreat. We also encourage you to separate as much as possible from the use of technology (other than for the purposes of the retreat!), although we will devote a small amount of time each day, as a group, to practice checking the news and our personal messages in a mindful way (for those who wish to do so).
We are excited to provide these new offerings at a time when mindfulness practice can be particularly supportive and when many of us can benefit from opportunities to connect deeply with others in a compassionate and authentic space.
Please note that while this live retreat is scheduled toward those in the EDT time zone, it is open to participants in all time zones.
Retreat Staff
Jessica Morey
Jessica Morey began practicing meditation at age 14 in the Insight Meditation Society teen retreats. She returned every year for 6 years and then participated for 10 years in an IMS young adult mentoring group. Jessica has attended longer (1-3 month) retreats in Asia and the US and is a founding board member and lead teacher for iBme teen retreats. Before joining iBme, Jessica worked in clean energy and climate policy and finance. She holds a BA in Environmental Engineering from Dartmouth and Masters degrees in Sustainable Development and International Affairs. She wrote an article in the February 2014 Mindful Magazine, “Finding My Way,” about her experience learning and benefiting from mindfulness throughout her young adult years. She is an avid yoga practitioner and skier and loves dancing in any form.
Sara Shapouri
Sara Shapouri has been practicing meditation since 2008 and participated in numerous retreats at the Insight Meditation Society, including a 3-month silent retreat. Sara also sits on IMS’ Board of Directors. She graduated from the University of Virginia’s School of Law, with a particular interest in human rights and social justice. Her desire to promote the welfare of children has taken her around the globe, including legal reform advocacy for incarcerated children in Bangladesh, analysis of the plight of child soldiers in Sierra Leone, and a published policy paper on child sexual abuse and exploitation in Iran.
Zac Ispa-Landa
Zac Ispa-Landa has practiced and studied insight meditation for 13 years and has accumulated over 90 days of silent retreat experience. He is a graduate of the iBme Teacher Training program and has been staffing iBme teen and college retreats since 2017.
He is a senior lecturer in the School of Environment and Natural Resources and a professional affiliate in the Leadership for Sustainability Program at the University of Vermont.
As an ecologist, naturalist, and meditator, Zac has deep respect for interdependence, diversity, complexity, self-organization, compassion, and the healing power of awareness. He is particularly interested in the role contemplative practices can play in undoing systems of oppression and creating conditions for collective liberation and sustainability. In both his professional and personal life, he aspires towards embodied compassion, joy, and wisdom.
Learn the fundamentals
Meditation
Using a variety of formats and teaching frameworks, we impart lessons in self-awareness, compassion, and offer techniques to calm the mind, build emotional resilience and savor joy.
Relational Mindfulness + Practice Support
Spend time each day with a small group, connecting, learning compassionate communication and deepening authentic relationships and getting personal support for your meditation practice. Small groups will be based on aged (eg. teens, young adults, adults) and facilitated by experienced staff.
Inner Stillness
Being on retreat offers a rare opportunity to experience a life without constant distractions. Together we will create a technology-limited environment that flows back and forth between silent and interactive times.
Cost and Accessibility
Cost
$250 for full tuition
$50 – $250 sliding scale for economic hardship
We are asking for a registration payment for this retreat for two reasons, the first is to create a solid container of commitment and community from participants. In this way, we can have regular small groups, structured workshops, and a sense of practice community in our virtual meditation hall. The second is so that we can financially support our teachers and mentors who are committing a large amount of time and energy to hold the container of the retreat.
We remain deeply committed to equity and accessibility and with this in mind have established a sliding scale for tuition. If your family earns $100,000 or more per year, then we request that you pay the full price of $250 for the weekend. If your family earns less than $100,000/year, you may self-select an amount to pay based on your particular circumstances. We ask that you be as generous as you are able. If you cannot afford the discounted fee, please email registrar@ibme.com and we will find a way to make it work for you.
15+
Application Deadline
July 17, noon EDT
Cost
$250 for full tuition • $50 – $250 sliding scale for economic hardship
Duration
3 days, 2 nights