May You Be Well - Timeout

Dear Rest Friends,

This weekend I am taking time out to rest and renew. I am grateful that a dear friend gifted me the “Welcoming the Unwelcome” three-day retreat with Pema Chodron. I have followed Pema Chodron for many years. Her teachings have taught me skills that continue to help get me through rough times. Her wisdom, authenticity, humor and kindness make her a perfect teacher for these times.

Many of you know I take silent retreats at least once a year. I missed this year’s Contemplative Prayer Retreat. This was the worst year to miss! Retreats offer me solace, clarity and energy. The timeout from daily concerns and the stillness and quiet reconnect me with something larger than myself. Retreats re-energize me and refresh my spirit. They bring back joy and point me to what is right with me and the world.

If you have not tried a retreat yet, now is a good time to do so. A silver lining in this chaotic time is our ability to try new things virtually - where we can remain anonymous and still participate. I am happy to report that virtual experiences can still be intimate. They can make us feel connected in these times of isolation.

“Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great.”

— Leonard Bernstein

May you find some deep rest and enjoy a timeout in the week ahead.

Love,
Marcela 

Timeout retreat

Listening/Reading/Learning/Supporting

ART Mindfulness Programs - Bob Stahl, PhD, has founded eight Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programs in medical centers in the San Francisco Bay Area and is currently offering programs at Dominican Hospital, El Camino Hospitals in Los Gatos and Mt. View, and Good Samaritan Hospital.  He serves as a Senior Teacher for Brown University's Mindfulness Center.  He also was a Senior Teacher for the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School prior to its closing. Bob teachers MBSR Teacher Trainings and Insight Meditation retreats worldwide and is the guiding teacher at Insight Santa Cruz and a visiting teacher at Spirit Rock. He is coauthor of 5 books:  A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, Living With Your Heart Wide Open, Calming the Rush of Panic, A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook for Anxiety, and MBSR Everyday.

Bob is a fantastic teacher. I have attended his retreats and he is a master teacher and a humble and wise human being. Here is a calendar of his retreats https://www.mindfulnessprograms.com/multi-day-mindfulness-retreats-with-bob-stahl

iRest Research Institute with Richard Miller, Ph.D. - Founder, Executive Director and President of the Board of Directors iRest Institute Richard Miller, PhD is a clinical psychologist, author, researcher, yogic scholar and spiritual teacher. For over 40 years, Richard Miller has devoted his life and work to integrating the nondual wisdom teachings of Yoga, Tantra, Advaita, Taoism and Buddhism with Western psychology. Among his mentors were Jean Klein, T.K.V. Desikachar and Stephen Chang. Richard is the founding president and CEO of the iRest Institute, co-founder of The International Association of Yoga Therapy and founding editor of the professional Journal of IAYT. iRest Institure offers quality trainings and retreats. I have been practicing yoga nidra with Richard Miller’s recordings for years. I have also attended his retreats. He and his training team are excellent teachers and experienced retreat guides. Here is an upcoming retreat with Ford Peck, a senior trainer - https://www.irest.org/event/irest-meditation-immersion-2020-october

Another great episode of On Being with Krista Tippett - an interview with Michael McCarthy on Nature, Joy and Human Becoming - Mc Carthy is a journalist and a naturalist who has a refreshing and intriguing perspective on protecting nature by letting the joy we get from nature fuel our approach to defending it. Totally worth a listen. “The sudden passionate happiness which the natural world can occasionally trigger in us may well be the most serious business of all,” Michael McCarthy writes. Tippett who has interviewed hundreds of authors says her copy of McCarthy’s book has the most notes and underlines than any other she’s read.  https://onbeing.org/programs/michael-mccarthy-nature-joy-and-human-becoming/