Welcome to our 2021 Programme
15 July 2021 update
What a joy that Gaia House is now open for residential retreats! After 14 months of shutdown, it has been truly wonderful to have our first retreatants back at Gaia House this summer.
Below you’ll find our schedule of upcoming residential and online retreats. We do hope you’ll be able to join us soon.
Please click here for information on what we’re doing to create as supportive and safe a retreat environment as possible, under the covid regulations that are still in place.
*Please be aware that whilst we are in the process of re-opening 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.
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 with a long waiting list. You can still join the live-streamed retreat.
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 with a long waiting list. We aren’t currently taking bookings for this retreat.
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 now full but you can still join the waiting list.
ONLINE
Online: Joy of Mindful Living: Summer Family Gathering
With Sari Markkanen
14-15 August 2021
This Summer family gathering offers sessions for parents, carers, grandparents and families. The schedule will include lovely opportunities where the whole family can practice together. Themes for this retreat are mindfulness infused with a lot of kindness and cultivation of joy and appreciation. Families are introduced to practices that they are invited to explore outside of the guided sessions, this gathering offers lovely and meaningful ways to spend summer days together.
RESIDENTIAL
Residential: Personal retreat
supported by Laura Bridgman
18-21 August 2021
For people with experience of silent meditation retreats at Gaia House or elsewhere and with an established meditation practice, an extended period of solitary meditation is an excellent way to develop one’s practice, deepen one’s understanding and foster greater self-reliance. Gaia House offers a rare opportunity to undertake an independent silent personal retreat in a supportive environment with guidance from respected international teachers.
ONLINE
Online retreat: Rainbow Dharma: A retreat for the LGBTQI+ community
With Katrin Auf der Heyde, 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.
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 with a long waiting list. We aren’t currently taking bookings for this retreat.
RESIDENTIAL
Residential: Personal retreat
supported by Laura Bridgman
6-11 September 2021
For people with experience of silent meditation retreats at Gaia House or elsewhere and with an established meditation practice, an extended period of solitary meditation is an excellent way to develop one’s practice, deepen one’s understanding and foster greater self-reliance. Gaia House offers a rare opportunity to undertake an independent silent personal retreat in a supportive environment with guidance from respected international teachers.
ONLINE
Online course: Dependent Origination: A Path of Liberating Insight
With Zohar Lavie
Wednesday evenings: 8, 15, 22 and 29 September 2021 from 6.00pm – 8.00pm
A four week course for experienced meditators who have been practicing for at least a year with a minimum of attending at least one 5-day retreat.
The understanding of dependent origination lies at the heart of the buddha’s teachings of awakening. It is an infinite journey of deepening wisdom and wellbeing. This course is an opportunity to delve into these teachings, and to explore their application in our practice and our lives.
RESIDENTIAL
Residential retreat: Exploring the Brahmaviharas: Kindness, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity
With Laura Bridgman and Ajahn Jutindharo
16-22 September 2021
The four Brahmaviharas are the Buddha’s primary heart teachings – different aspects of our heart’s innate capacity for love freed from personal attachment. We will explore the view, attitudes, and qualities that bring forth these qualities, looking at the conditions that support them as well as the obstacles or barriers that hinder them.
These aspects of love are a natural and innate potential that are usually obscured to some degree. We will discover their place in our practice and what effect and significance they have in our lives
This retreat is open to all, including beginners and those with experience.
RESIDENTIAL
Residential retreat: Yoga and Meditation: Awakening in Stillness and in Movement
With Martin Alyward and Gail Alyward
Monday, 27 September – Saturday, 2 October (5 nights)
*This retreat will open for bookings soon*
This retreat will interweave meditation practice with mindful movement.
Two movement periods each day, anchored in mindful breathing and including some classical yoga postures, will alternate with silent and guided meditation and meetings with the teachers. Both practices will be orientated towards exploring and freeing habit patterns, and bringing awareness and inquiry into all moments and activities of life.
Save the date
ONLINE
Online: Intimacy with Feelings: A Creative Exploration of Vedanas
With Gina Sharpe and Martine Batchelor
Saturday, 25 September 2021
2pm-6pm (BST) ♦ 3pm-7pm (CEST) ♦ 9am-1pm (EDT)
This meditation workshop is dedicated to a creative and meditative exploration of vedanas. Gina Sharpe and Martine Batchelor will lead some short guided meditations and enter into conversation to discuss cultivating intimacy with feelings. During this workshop, there will also be two meditative exercises involving watching a film.
RESIDENTIAL
Residential retreat: The Richness of the Heart
With Kirsten Kratz
7-10 October 2021
Wisdom teachings encourage us to look deeply and with love into our experience, with all its complexities, challenges and contradictions.
When we approach our existence with kindness and courage, the limitless potentials of this human heart are gradually unveiled. There may be liberating insights, small and big, into how we can relate to life in more skillful, fearless, compassionate and creative ways. The moments of our life become richer as we can begin to discover our innate potential for compassion, openness, love, and joy.
This retreat is open to all, including beginners and those with experience.
ONLINE
Online: Everyday Dharma: Insight Meditation and Qigong retreat
With Norman Feldman and Brad Richecoeur
Wednesday, 13 October – Sunday, 17 October 2021
On this retreat, the sitting practices of Insight Meditation and the standing and movement of Qigong are integrated into a form that invites and supports us in gently exploring ways in which we define and limit ourselves. This is particularly in the context of being at home, and yet also alongside others. From this practise, insight can effortlessly arise into our true nature and free us to live in a wiser and more compassionate relationship with our inner and outer world.
This retreat is suitable for all levels of experience and health.
RESIDENTIAL
Meditation Day: A Deeper Calm than Stillness
With Jenny Wilks
Saturday, 16 October 2021
This day retreat offers an opportunity to explore how the practice of meditation and mindful awareness can support us in cultivating more calmness and clarity of mind and heart. This can gradually free us from unhelpful and reactive tendencies, and enable us to maintain steadiness and well-being in the midst of the ups and downs of life.
Open to people who are new to meditation or who have some experience and would like to refresh their practice.
RESIDENTIAL
Personal retreat: November Solitary
With Christina Feldman, Yanai Postelnik and Kirsten Kratz
- 2 – 30 November (28 nights)
- 2 – 16 November (14 nights)
- 16 – 30 November (14 nights)
This retreat is a rare and precious opportunity to engage in an extended period of individual meditation without interruption. Regular teacher interviews and Dharma talks are offered, and guidance is available in Insight Meditation (Vipassana), tranquillity (Samatha) meditation, Loving-kindness (Metta) and the other Brahma Viharas. Each participant has a single room, and is offered the possibility to be in solitude or to sit with a small community retreating at Gaia House during this time.
Previous experience of at least three week-long residential teacher-led silent meditation retreats and completion of a Personal Retreat Application Form is required in order to be able to attend this retreat. For the two-week retreats, previous experience of at least two week-long residential teacher-led silent meditation retreats is required.
