Harvard Spring Break Retreat
March 15th – 20th, 2020
Prindle Pond Retreat Center in Charlton, MA
This retreat is ONLY for students enrolled at Harvard University.
Connect with yourself in community
Step outside your daily routines in an on-campus retreat uniquely designed for all members of the community: students, staff, professors, spouses, and colleagues in all schools. Learn the foundational practices for cultivating mindfulness and compassion and expand your capacity for focus, freedom, joy, and tolerating discomfort. Be guided in practical ways to sustain your practice in everyday life.
Who is this retreat for?
Anyone with an open mind and heart who is willing to try something new and do their best to be themselves and accept everyone else in being themselves. You leave an iBme retreat with mindfulness practices and communication skills that you can practice in everyday life to continue to learn, grow, and cultivate your inner life.
Learn the fundamentals
Meditation
Using a variety of formats and teaching frameworks, we impart lessons in self-awareness, compassion, and offer techniques to increase concentration and focus the mind.
Mindful Movement
Spend time each day with a small group of peers, connecting and deepening authentic relationships with other teens who are experiencing the world in similar and different ways from you.
Inner Stillness
Being on retreat offers a rare opportunity to experience a life without constant distractions. We create a technology-free environment that flows back and forth between silent and social times.
Suggested Age
This retreat is ONLY for students enrolled at Harvard University.
Application Deadline
March 1st
All applications received after then date will be put on a wait list.
Number of participants
Capped at 55
Cost
$100
Financial assistance is available
Duration
6 days, 5 nights. Attendance at the whole retreat is required.
Transportation
Transportation provided from Cambridge Campus
Harvard Spring Break 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.
Dan Vazquez
Dan fell in love with mindfulness in his early 20s when he was having what people nowadays call a quarter-life crisis. Everything on the outside seemed fine: a graduate of Harvard, he was working for the LA times in Mexico City, in a great relationship, making good money, had lots of friends, but something didn’t feel right from the inside-out. There was a nagging sense that “there’s more to life” than just succeeding and “making it.” Dan went on a search for something that would help bring clarity, reduce suffering and bring greater ease.
In his search, Dan met a Zen monk living on Stone Island off the coast of Mazatlán who taught him a simple meditation practice. He felt like he had been on a long journey in the desert without any water, and somebody had finally offered him a glass of water—the cool, refreshing taste of mindfulness; of being present to whatever was happening without being caught in it and pushed around by it; of touching into a loving, caring awareness at the very core of our being.
Dan was inspired to explore the practice of mindfulness in northern India, where it originated 2,600 years ago, and lived for 10 months in the foothills of the Himalayas. He worked in a school, practiced regularly, and gained clarity about his life path: to help others awaken to the potential we all have to cultivate inner peace and meet life with courage, wisdom, grace, care and love.
Dan has been a teacher, school administrator, educational consultant, coach, and entrepreneur. He teaches mindfulness and other practices that lead to well being in wide variety of contexts from schools to corporations.
Marvin G. Belzer
Marvin G. Belzer, PhD, has taught mindfulness meditation for over fifteen years and is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center. For many years he taught a semester-long meditation course in the Department of Philosophy at Bowling Green St. University, where he was a Professor of philosophy. He and Diana Winston were instrumental in developing week-long mindfulness retreats for teens in the mid-1990s.
Prindle Pond Retreat Center
Prindle Pond Retreat Center sits on 500 wooded acres on the shore of Prindle Pond, one of the most beautiful small lakes in central Massachusetts. The peaceful hilltop site and modern rustic accommodations make it an ideal place for an iBme retreat. We’ll enjoy the views from inside, explore the outdoors as well, and gather for nourishing meals in the Dining Room. Our rooms are all close by, creating a supportive environment for solitude and social time.
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