October Retreat
Awakening Together: An Introduction to Insight Dialogue Meditation
A Zoom retreat with Jan Surrey and Marsha Lawson
Saturday, October 23; 9:30 am – 3:30 pm with liberal breaks during the day, including 75 minutes for lunch.
This is a sangha-building gathering, a retreat for Valley Insight practitioners.
Insight Dialogue is conducive to building and strengthening spiritual friendship and community. It is an interpersonal meditation practice. With a foundation in silent meditation, it incorporates mindful listening and speaking, while weaving together meditative awareness and Buddhist teachings. Its purpose is to develop mindfulness, compassion, and liberating insight within an interpersonal field. Because small groups are intrinsic to the form, this type of meditation is very well suited to Zoom.
To register or for more information, please contact Retreat Manager Deb Steele at ValleyInsightRetreat@gmail.com.
There is no registration fee. To offer dana to the teachers, please go to the Support page.
Our guest teachers:
- Jan Surrey is a dhamma teacher, author, and psychotherapist. She was authorized as an Insight Dialogue teacher by Gregory Kramer and the Insight Dialogue Community teacher’s council in 2015. She now serves on the council, devoting herself to training new peer leaders, facilitators, teachers and retreat teachers in the Insight Dialogue tradition.
- Marsha Lawson is an authorized Insight Dialogue facilitator who has been practicing and offering ID, and studying and practicing vipassana meditation since 2009. She facilitates an Insight Dialogue group in her hometown of Medford, Massachusetts and co-facilitates Insight Dialogue groups with others.
In this 11-minute video, you’ll see a sample of how teacher Phyllis Hicks guides participants in a short Insight Dialogue session, with several pairs of participants practicing, speaking, and listening together.
You can find more information about Insight Dialogue here. Greg Kramer, the founder of Insight Dialogue, has 6 short audio talks here on Dharma Seed.
A DIFFERENT WAY TO PRACTICE – A GUIDED NATURE WALK
First Tuesday of the month at 10 AM.
November 2, and December 7, 2021
Meets in person; participants will be advised of location when signing up.
Note: Each walk will last approximately 1.5 – 2 hours (and no longer than 2 hours), based on whatever conditions we find. Walks will be weather dependent.
Why not put your technology aside for a time and step outside to rediscover your connection to the natural world? Let yourself relax into nature’s rhythms and open your senses to the richness of trees and rivers, sights and sounds. Be restored.
This practice will be a guided contemplative walk held with a small group. The walk will be conducted primarily in silence, allowing you to sink into your experience. The pace will be relaxed, but participants should be able to walk a few miles, possibly on uneven ground. The location is to be determined, but it will be in the Hanover-Lebanon-Norwich area.
In accordance with Valley Insight’s current COVID-19 policies, all participants on these nature walks must be fully vaccinated. Group size will be limited to 7 participants and social distancing will be honored as well. More information on Valley Insight’s policy will be posted soon.
Teacher: Lee Steppacher
Contact Lee (shepstep@comcast.net) with questions or to sign up.
Past Retreats:
2021
Feb 27: Manny Mansbah, Faith, Trust and Confidence: Discovering Ease, Empowerment and Fidelity with Practice On and Off the Cushion (on Zoom)
2020
December 4-6: Doreen Schweizer, Changing our Relationship to the Known World (on Zoom)
April 25: Oren Jay Sofer, Holistic Spirituality: How to Speak to Anyone with Truth and Kindness (half-day retreat) (on Zoom)
February 29: Judson Brewer, The Factors of Awakening and Reward-Based Learning (Dharma talk; listen to a recording)
January 20: Shaila Catherine, The Art of Not Clinging
2019
December 14: Doreen Schweizer, Calming Down and Seeing Clearly
September 28: Peg Meyer and Lee Steppacher, Taking Your Practice Outside
August 10: Ajahn Jayanto, Finding Our Real Home
June 29: A Day of Silent Reflection
May 11: Manny Mansbach, Mindful and Brave: Discovering Courage and Fearlessness in an Age of Heightened Anxiety
March 10: Alexis Santos, When Awareness Becomes Natural: Lessons I Learned from Sayadaw U Tejaniya and Beyond
2018
December 8: Doreen Schweizer, Tis the Season: Joy . . . Its Place in the Ethical and Meditation Practices of the Early Buddhist Insight Tradition
October 14: Lee Steppacher, Awake in the Wild
September 22: Ajahn Jayanto
May 19: A Day of Silent Reflection
March 10: Rae Hausman, Learning the Skills of Resiliency
January 13: Manny Mansbach, What Would the Buddha Say?: Developing Skillful Speech for Life’s Challenging Conversations
2017
December 9: Doreen Schweizer, Gladdening the Heart
October 14: Lee Steppacher, Awake in Nature: A Daylong Retreat with Lee Steppacher
September 9: Ajahn Jayanto, Buddhism as an Ethical Path
March 26: Shaila Catherine, Developing Right Concentration
January 28: Manny Mansbach, Five Spiritual Powers
2016
November 19: Andrew Olendzki, Untangling Self: A Buddhist Investigation of Who We Really Are
September 10: Ajahn Jayanto
January 24: Shaila Catherine, Liberating Attitudes
2015
December 5: Doreen Schweizer, Practicing Tranquility in a Busy Season
September 26: Ajahn Jayanto, So this is how it is, right here.
June 14: Peg Meyer and Landon Hall, Everyday Mindfulness
March 13-15: Doreen Schweizer, Who Are We? Softening the Edges of Self with Mindfulness and Kindness [Weekend retreat at Wonderwell, Springfield, NH]
2014
December 13: Ajahn Jayanto, Transforming Our Relationship to Difficulty
October 3-5: Leigh Brasington, The Beautiful Mind: Deepening Concentration Through Jhana Practice [Weekend retreat at Wonderwell, Springfield, NH]
February 28-March 2: Doreen Schweizer, Sustaining Mindfulness: Establishing Clear Awareness and Compassion as the Foundation of Our Lives [Weekend retreat at Wonderwell, Springfield, NH]
2013
April: Winnie Nazarko, The Cultivation of Kindness and Wisdom
2012
March: Chas DiCapua, Awakening Within Your Relationships