Welcome to our 2021 Programme
20 May 2021 update
It’s been truly wonderful to welcome a limited number of retreatants back to Gaia House this week for our first personal retreat block in more than a year.
We are now delighted to share with you our programme of summer group retreats, taking place during July and August, with teachers including Yanai Postelnik, Laura Bridgman, Gavin Milne, Zohar Lavie, Nathan Glyde, Jaya Rudgard and Alan Lewis.
We have taken enormous care to ensure that our retreat environment and procedures are as safe as possible, and the signs are good that we will be able to proceed with these retreats as planned. Please click here for more detailed information on how we hope to co-create as supportive and safe a retreat environment as possible, under the covid regulations that may still be in place.
Our beautiful retreat site here in Devon is ready for your return and the Gaia House service community is very much looking forward to welcoming you back – we’ve really missed you!
We do hope you’ll be able to join us.
Please scroll down to view our 2021 Programme (May – August), which includes our upcoming residential group retreats alongside our continuing online offerings.
*Please be aware that whilst we are in the process of re-opening over the next couple of weeks our team is very busy so it may take a little longer than usual to respond to any enquiries you may have. Please make your booking via the website, unless you are enquiring about a FAB Fund or Young Persons’ place. Thank you!*
A note on dana/generosity
None of your registration fee goes to the teacher(s). Gaia House teachers rely on the generosity of students for their livelihood. There is an opportunity to make a dana offering to the teachers at the end of each event.
May our practice serve the welfare, happiness, and safety of all life.
ONLINE
Online course: Wellspring of Well-being
With Nathan Glyde
10, 17, 24 June, 1 and 8 July
The Buddha’s teachings for the radical reduction of stress and distress, open up a deep, reliable, and nourishing wellspring of well-being. This profound yet accessible harmonisation can be called a blameless happiness. Blameless in its impact: for it neither negatively affects us nor others near or far. And blameless for how it arises: not through habitual patterns of competitive greed and ignorant harmfulness, but through wise, kind, and skilful ways of relating. On this five week course we will explore ways to find, cultivate, and sustain joyful states of mind.
This course is for those with an existing meditation practice.
ONLINE
Online course: Foundations of Meditation
With Juha Penttilä
Monday evenings: 14, 21, 28 June and 5 July
Whether you are new to meditation or you wish to revisit the foundations, this course aims to support beginning a regular independent meditation practice. Over the four weeks, we will look at topics such as; finding a good posture, cultivating basic mindfulness and the hinderances to meditation along with other topics. Each week will include guided meditation, teaching and the opportunity to ask questions.
RESIDENTIAL
Residential retreat: The Heart of Wisdom and Kindness
With Yanai Postelnik, assisted by River Wolton
6-11 July 2021
The Buddha’s teachings offer a pathway to discover inner peace, freedom and the compassionate heart. This Insight Meditation retreat will focus on cultivating a quality of wakeful presence that embraces our heart, mind and body with kindness and wisdom, and supports us to re-connect with what is most important in our lives.
Please note: As this is our first group retreat since re-opening, to ease the opening process, this retreat is for people who have already participated in a Gaia House retreat and have some familiarity with the house. Our other summer residential retreats are open to those of you who are new to Gaia House – we very much look forward to welcoming you.
This retreat is nearly full or has recently become full. We are operating a waiting list to prevent overbooking.
RESIDENTIAL
Residential retreat: The Refuge of Awareness
With Laura Bridgman and Gavin Milne
16-18 July 2021
This retreat will explore the feeling tone of Dukkha (suffering) which brings with it the idea: ‘I am not okay,’ and this causes us to react in all sorts of ways. Yet it is only a partial perspective we take to be valid. In the immediacy of awareness a more spacious view is available; one that can bring compassion for the suffering of this very perspective, rather than perpetuation of it. Awareness is intimate but not personal, seeing the struggling derived from identifying, judging and reacting, yet not flowing down those familiar grooves. In any moment we are aware, we weaken rather than strengthen such habit patterns. When suffering is not ‘who I am’ or wrong, we no longer need to be the one to fix it or reject it. Then a closer receptivity towards this feeling tone of suffering is possible, inviting us to discover the transformative power of awareness itself, and take refuge in it.
All levels of experience are welcome.
This retreat is now full but you can still join the waiting list.
RESIDENTIAL
&
LIVE-STREAMED
Residential retreat: Coming to Life – Waking up to Intimacy with Existence
With Zohar Lavie and Nathan Glyde
23-29 July 2021
On this retreat we will creatively explore the practices of calm abiding and insight. Calmness stabilises the journey to the heart of life; allowing us to open to the full diversity of our existence, while also coming closer to all of life. From here we can come away from habits and learned tendencies as we adjust our way of relating to life, bringing insights alive, releasing tension, and opening to freedom. This retreat will also be live-streamed from Gaia House.
All levels of experience are welcome.
The residential retreat is now full but you can still join the waiting list.
RESIDENTIAL
Residential retreat: Inside-outside – The Mystery of I, Me, Mine
With Jaya Rudgard and Gavin Milne
3-8 August 2021
A look both playful and serious at the Buddha’s teaching of anatta or not-self. This retreat will explore through contemplation and investigation of our moment-to-moment experience different ways the self-construct arises, changes and disappears.
All levels of experience are welcome.
This retreat is now full but you can still join the waiting list.
RESIDENTIAL
Meditation day: Natural Ease in Practice – Exploring Intention and Effort
With Laura Bridgman
13 August 2021
This day of practice will be based in a conscious self-care (metta) and compassion, and letting go into a grounded sense of relaxed, present moment awareness. Then there can be a natural connection with and curiosity towards our momentary experience whether it is conflicting thoughts and habits, or wholesome qualities, allowing us to deepen our understanding of the nature of our heart/mind.
All levels of experience are welcome.
This retreat is nearly full or has recently become full. We are operating a waiting list to prevent overbooking.
ONLINE
Online retreat: For the LGBTQI+ Community
With Katrin Auf der Heyde, assisted by River Wolton and Bernat Font-Clos
19-22 August 2021
In this retreat, the first of its kind in the history of Gaia House, we hope to co-create a space of acceptance, reflection, connection and support in which to cultivate mindfulness, embodied kindness and wisdom through insight meditation. A community of shared intention and practice allows us to make greater peace with ourselves and our lives, and to grow our capacity for freedom.
We welcome anybody who self-identifies as lesbian, gay, bi, trans, non-binary, gender fluid, bi-gender, gender diverse, gender non-conforming, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, agender….. and more.
Save the date
RESIDENTIAL
Residential retreat: Settling with What Is
With Laura Bridgman and Alan Lewis
26-30 August 2021
All too often in our daily lives we are gripped by a stressful momentum – feeling a sense of lack and incompleteness, we strain towards some imagined future circumstance which we hope will provide relief from the stress we feel. However, the essence of practice is to see and know, as purely as we can, our direct experience in the moment, finding resolution right within what IS, rather than trying to push past our current circumstances. On this retreat we will emphasise a settling back into being present with what IS, so that the deeper layers of being become apparent, and the need to strive for something “other” is allayed.
All levels of experience are welcome.
This retreat is now full but you can still join the waiting list.