A Women’s Sangha: Clarity, Compassion and Connection: Cultivating the Heart to Respond to Challenging Times
In honoring Black Lives Matter we will identify as a white affinity group (WAG)
An ONLINE Women’s Retreat
With Jean Leonard and Alice Robison
& Alice Robbins (Retreat Manager)
- Thursday October 22, 10:00 a.m. – Sunday October 25, 2020, 11:15 a.m.
- General Daily Schedule*:
*Retreat Schedule Notes:- All times are listed in MST Mountain Standard Time
- The teachers ask that you agree to a daily schedule which includes the three daily teacher-led sessions listed below (in bold), as well as four additional sittings at times of your own choosing. A suggested schedule will be offered to help you personalize your home retreat. You are welcome to modify the times between the teacher-led sessions as needed.
Thursday, October 22, 2020/Opening Day only
- 9:00 a.m. – Optional Technology “Open House” for those new to Zoom
- 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 Opening session
- 2:00 -3:15 p.m. – Guided meditation
- 5:00 – 6:15 p.m. Dharma Talk, followed by Meditation
Friday, October 23 and Saturday, October 24, 2020
- 9:30 – 11:00 a.m. – Introduction to day’s theme, guided meditation & Q&A w/ teachers
- 2:00 – 3:15 p.m.– Guided meditation; Community Connection
- 5:00 – 6:15 p.m. Dharma Talk, followed by Meditation
Sunday, October 25, 2020/Closing Day only
- 9:15 – 11:15 m. – Closing session
REGISTRATION PROCESS (Registration opens 8/31/2020):
- Register online at Rocky Mountain EcoDharma Retreat Center website. If you previously registered for the in person retreat, you will be offered a refund and will have the option of transferring and updating your registration for the virtual retreat.
- The teachings are offered freely. Your registration fee goes to support RMERC during this challenging time of being closed during COVID-19. There will be an opportunity to offer dana, the Pali word for generosity, to the teacher and manager at the end of the retreat. You can learn more about the tradition of dana here.
Retreat Description:
These are complex and uncertain times. With the COVID-19 pandemic we are facing not only a physical health crisis, but also financial, social and moral crises as well. How unique to be having a global shared experience. More than ever we are seeing our common humanity and how interdependent we are. White people are waking up to the systemic racial injustice this country was founded on which includes police brutality, financial inequity, and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 and the environmental crisis on people of color.
We are offering an opportunity to gather together as a white women’s sangha, (the Pali word for community). When women gather from different paths and stages of life, we can experience what it is like to envision and create a safe, powerful, and transformative space. Drawing upon the wisdom of the heart, this retreat will explore practices of embodiment and compassion to cultivate the resilience and readiness to engage. Come join the ongoing effort to build women’s sangha in which we will connect, rest, and replenish. As we take responsibility for, and cultivate clarity and compassion for, our own emotions and experiences, then our courage and commitment can emerge, allowing us to become agents for change.
Working within your home circumstances, retreatants are invited to participate with the daily schedule in the way that best supports using the retreat time as a period of intensified meditation practice. This retreat will include specific times when we will gather together for guided meditations, teachings, and connection in break-out groups. A suggested schedule will be offered to help you personalize your home retreat with practices such as sitting, walking in the nature of your own backyard, gentle mindful movement/yoga, journaling exercises, and group interaction. Support from the teachers will be provided. This retreat welcomes both those newer to retreat practice, as well as seasoned practitioners.
More information on identifying as a white affinity group (WAG):
Affinity Groups create the space for, in our case white women, to gather and recognize ourselves as a racial group. White supremacy, in the United States, has a structure and history that has internalized racism within us, and externally has created a framework of white privilege and systemic racism. The paradigm changing gathering of a WAG gives us space to witness and wake up to our own vulnerability and owning our conditioned white supremacy. We will safely explore and discuss and work with our conditioning together. For more on the creation of race in the United States please watch Race:The Power of an Illusion (film series)- CaliforniaNewsreel
“The human heart is the first home of democracy. It is where we can embrace our questions: Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinion? And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up, trusting our fellow citizens to join us in our determined pursuit – a living democracy?”
~Terry Tempest Williams
Teachers’ Bios:
Jean Leonard, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist and a registered yoga teacher in private practice in Louisville, Colorado with 25 years clinical experience. She teaches Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) classes and other mindfulness workshops throughout Colorado, and virtually nationwide, and is a mentor for Jack Kornfield’s and Tara Brach’s Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program, supporting students’ development as meditation teachers.
She has practiced yoga for over 25 years and vipassana meditation since 2003, and holds the Dharma as a sacred compass that guides her personal and professional life. She has completed the Mindfulness Yoga and Meditation Training (MYMT), the Dedicated Practitioner Program (DPP), and the Heavenly Messengers (HM) Program, and the Advanced Practitioners’ Program (APP) through Spirit Rock Meditation Center and feels deeply nourished by many years of long retreat practice. She studied MBSR with the Duke University Center for Integrative Medicine, and completed the Mindful Self-Compassion teacher training with Kristin Neff, Christopher Germer, and the staff of UCSD and has completed advanced supervision for MSC teacher certification. She has a particular passion in supporting women blossoming into wholeness and is delighted to be bringing together her love of psychology, yoga, meditation, Women’s Studies, and nature in facilitating women’s community building in the Dharma.
Alice Robison is a Restorative and Yin Yoga teacher and a dedicated Buddhist practitioner in the Theravada tradition. She has sat retreats at Spirit Rock, IMS, Forest Refuge, Barre Center of Buddhist Studies, Cloud Mountain, and participated in an EcoDharma retreat on the Green River with Impermanent Sangha. Alice was on staff at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, MA as a Retreat Support Fellow for one year, and has completed the Advanced Practitioner Program (APP) Dedicated Practitioner’s Program (DPP), the Community Dharma Leader (CDL) training and Mindfulness and Yoga Teacher Training (MYMT) at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA. She is also a Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy practitioner.
Alice wants to acknowledge the people, past, present and future, on whose traditional lands she lives, practices and works in the town of Bozeman, MT: The Apsaalooke (Crow), Northern Cheyenne, and the Blackfeet Tribe. She thanks the Indigenous Peoples for taking care of these lands, waters, and mountains. Currently, Alice lives with her Celtic musician husband, Tom, and is happy to be the mother of their daughter who now lives in Colorado. Alice is a co-founder of the Bozeman Dharma Center
Alice Robbins – A calling to be of service to support the Dharma was never on my radar until almost 20 years ago when I started helping my husband, Johann Robbins, with his silent meditation canoe retreats on the Green River in Canyonlands, Utah. Since then, upon deepening my meditation practice, I have had the great fortune to assist and manage many vipassana retreats, providing support for so many wonderful retreat participants. So being able to participate in the 2 nd annual Women’s Sangha with Jean and Alice is not only an honor but another calling for service from a deep, sweet place in my heart. Our sponsor and support, Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center (RMERC) has been part of my life since Johann and I first set foot on the land five years ago and started visioning its magic. Zoom retreats have been a different but equally fulfilling experience for me as we all navigate through these challenging times.
