Deepen and refine your meditation practice with this retreat led by experienced teacher and practitioner Susan Allen.

This yoga retreat offers 5 days of meditation practice and discussion, both indoors and in the beautiful open spaces this property offers. An opportunity to begin a daily practice for life or to deepen an existing practice that has stopped progressing. There will be optional yoga classes for those interested.

5 days of time just for yourself – to restore, to nourish and to learn. Meditation will change your life, developing a calmness of mind, a poise of character and as a foundation for flourishing and the fulfilment of your highest potential.

What will we be practicing?

The meditation practices will be taken from the Tibetan Buddhist Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions. These will be presented in a secular fashion with a particular emphasis on how to bring these practices and principles into your daily life.

There will be three main areas of practice.
1. concentration and tranquility practices
2. emptiness of self, thoughts and emotions practice
3. resting in awareness

1. Refining concentration, increasing cognition of when the mind wanders
Almost all meditation techniques have a concentration component. Whether it is following the breath, mindfulness of body sensations or concentration on an object such as sound or mantra. On this retreat you will learn refinement techniques to improve the stability of your concentration or mindfulness. These are called intensifying practices – used to bring greater awareness to background thoughts as well as to the dullness that can develop in the mind when meditating. If your meditation progress is stagnating then this improvement in looking more closely at the object of your concentration will enable you to start progressing again. It is through this increased focus that we experience a stilling of the fluctuating of the mind; a tranquility and clarity arise.

2. Moving beyond identification with self, thoughts and emotions
Emptiness practices are a central component of Buddhist meditation. Emptiness means ‘a construction of mind.’ In our meditation, and of course in our daily lives as well, we get caught up in, and strongly identified with our thoughts and emotions. On this retreat we will introduce emptiness of self, emptiness of thought and emptiness of emotion practices. This does not mean having no self, thoughts or emotions but rather realising experientially how our thoughts and emotions are things that the mind is constructing. We examine the form and substantiality of the self and thoughts and in this way loosen our identification and attachment to them.

3. Resting in awareness
Much of our daily life we tend to be busy thinking, to operate a lot out of thought. However when we learn to still the fluctuations of thought we are able to shift to spending more time in awareness, an awareness that is still of the busyness of thinking. When we operate out of awareness there is no reactivity, we feel less self-centred and more connected to others; we are less tossed around by the turbulence of our thoughts. On this retreat we will then practice taking this off the cushion as we interact with others and the nature around us.

Receive personal guidance around your meditation habits so you keep progressing
Each of us have our habits that we develop in our practice, some serve our meditation and others don’t. With this retreat Susan will encourage you to be observant and disciplined in the habits that support your practice and bring more awareness to those that don’t, both on and off the cushion. Personal suggestions will be given to each student so that you can be inspired to develop this life changing and abundant practice.

The retreat is hosted by one of NZ’s most experienced yoga and meditation teachers, Susan Allen. Susan has been teaching meditation for 20 years and has an authentic passion for sharing this transformative practice with others.

For more info and bookings contact Susan Allen

https://yogaretreats.co.nz/coromandel-2023/ 

or ph: +64-21-222-6550

email: [email protected]