Love, Sexuality, and Awakening: Women's Retreat

The theme of this retreat is exploring various facets of love and sexuality as part of a path of awakening. This meditation and Insight Dialogue retreat provides teachings, safety and opportunities for inquiry, understanding and integration of these topics—all ones that are critical to our health, well being and full embodiment on the path of awakening.

We will begin the week using the foundations of mindfulness in silent practice to root ourselves in body centered awareness. This will give us a touchstone for various experiences of love and access to our life force. After a few days of silence, we will introduce sessions of Insight Dialogue. Insight Dialogue, developed by Gregory Kramer, is a structured process of meditation in dialogue with another that stabilizes the qualities of meditation while speaking and listening together. In Insight Dialogue we rest together in mindfulness, investigation and compassion. These allow us to more deeply explore the intersection of awareness, love, longing and life force as part of the process of awakening.

This will be an eight precept retreat in which we refrain from killing, harming, stealing, sexual activity, incorrect speech and substances which cloud the mind, with two main meals and a light evening snack.

ELIGIBILITY: This retreat is suitable for anyone self identified as a woman who has a regular meditation practice and has done a 7-day mindfulness retreat.

SCHOLARSHIP: There are provisions to support those who may not be able to cover costs. Please inquire with the registrar.

DANA: The teachings are offered on a Dana basis. Dana is the Pali word for generosity and is the Buddhist practice of giving to one’s capacity.

SPONSORED BY: Awakening Truth, a 501(c)3 organization based in Colorado with the intention of supporting Buddhist nuns, bringing the teachings into the modern world and building a training monastery for Forest Tradition Bhikkhunis.

About the Teachers

Sharon Beckman-Brindley, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and a meditation teacher who leads retreats internationally, integrating western psychological understandings with the wisdom teachings of Buddhist psychology. She is a senior teacher of Insight Dialogue and also a guiding teacher in the Insight Meditation Community of Charlottesville, VA. Sharon is a stepmother and a grandmother who lives with her husband of 40 years and their two very spoiled cats.

Amma Thanasanti Bhikkhuni blends rigor with gentle loving encouragement to find your own way – finding a balance between fierce holding of the Dhamma and compassion, tenderness and empowerment. She has been teaching meditation internationally since 1996. Shakti Vihara is the hermitage where she lives in Colorado Springs.