Harvard Spring Retreat
April 14th – 17th, 2022
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 31st
All applications received after then date will be put on a wait list.
Number of participants
Capped at 55
Cost
$50
Financial assistance is available
Duration
4 days, 3 nights. Attendance at the whole retreat is required.
Transportation
Transportation provided from Cambridge Campus
Harvard Spring Break Retreat Staff
Nina Bryce
Nina [she/her] supports people in cultivating embodied presence as a way of coming home to themselves. She is a mindfulness facilitator rooted in multiple lineages of meditative practice, including both stillness and movement. Starting with her spiritual roots in her Jewish-Buddhist upbringing in a family of meditators, through her teen years as a student and eventually teacher of yoga, and into her training in Buddhist spiritual care and secular mindfulness education, Nina is grateful for a life path that has allowed her to explore contemplative practice in many forms. Nina holds a Master of Divinity, focused in the Buddhist Ministry Initiative, from Harvard Divinity School. Through her graduate studies as an M.Div, she is trained in facilitation of multifaith contemplative practice, interfaith chaplaincy, and leading mindfulness programs in both religious and secular settings, ranging from teen camp at a monastery to the cancer floor of a hospital. Her formal meditation practice and teaching has been shaped most by the Insight Meditation tradition, in which she was raised and continues to practice, and by the Plum Village tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. Nina is also trained as an RYT-200 yoga teacher in Vinyasa and Kundalini yoga, and her approach to leading mindful movement is informed by both yoga and modern dance. Nina is currently training as a non-denominational Spiritual Director with Still Harbor. She completed the iBme Mindfulness Teacher Training in 2018, and has been involved with iBme teen and college mindfulness retreats since 2014. She especially loves LGBTQIA+ mindfulness community, both as a participant & as a facilitator. As a Mindfulness Director with Mindfulness Director Initiative, she currently leads mindfulness programs at Harvard College. Nina is energized by working with young adults, because she believes that these years are ripe with potential for inquiry into core questions of who we are and how we relate to the world. She is inspired by the way that youth long for, and create, spaces where they can reflect honestly on their experiences, learn to take care of themselves and others, and build authentic, loving communities that support deep well-being and freedom.
Eric Busse
Eric Michael B. is a teacher, facilitator, and researcher with a passion for transformation and justice. Informed by years of intensive meditation practice across a range of traditions, Eric specializes in teaching mindfulness and other contemplative practices to help individuals and communities navigate issues related to power, ethics, difference, and complexity with creativity and care. After studying performance and critical race theory as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin- La Crosse, Eric earned a Master of Bioethics degree (M.B.E.) focusing on trauma and health equity from Harvard Medical School, a Master of Divinity degree (M.Div.) in social ethics and contemplative studies from Harvard Divinity School, and an interdisciplinary graduate certificate in child protection from the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. Eric currently studies the intersections of embodiment, mortality, and moral development as a doctoral student at Fielding Graduate University. He has collaborated with iBme in various capacities since 2015, and he’s a proud graduate of iBme’s Teacher Training Program. Eric is a lover of dance who believes in the power of art, community, and contemplative practice to change the world. His personal practice and professional collaborations strive to honor the wisdom of philosopher and community organizer Grace Lee Boggs: “To transform the world, we must transform ourselves.”
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.
In partnership with:
