Daily guided contemplations, lyric philosophy, sacred convocations, collective insight practice, 4-postures meditation, attending & attuning practices, flow movement exercises, music & chanting. Lovingly prepared local food.

June 5 – 9 Retreat
Recognizing Your Natural State 

Suggested Resource: Jan Zwickey, Lyric Philosophy

We have been denatured by modern society. We live upside-down lives. Yet our natural state is always accessible. It operates beneath that shell of self that has been constructed by social forces. We spend too much time trying to improve that shell-self. We even try to transform the shell-self. We want to wake up, clean up and grow the shell-self up. But the shell-self is the wrong place to be.

In this first retreat we will learn how to recognize our natural state, which allows us to let go of the shell-self and all its predilections for delusion.

Aug 7- 11 Retreat
Obtaining the Natural State

Suggested Resource: Warren Heiti, Attending: An Ethical Art

Modern meditation practices are based on either (western style) conceptual or (eastern style) phenomenological analytic exercises. Analysis means deconstructing ordinary experience in order to isolate the variables. Analysis inevitably leads to fragmentation of experience into either abstract, psychological or phenomenological parts. We are then left to piece the parts together by constructing an over-arching metaphysics. In this retreat we practice the art of attending to experience as a whole. This is a delicate empirical approach that was directly explored and philosophically developed by the American pragmatists.

Attending enables you to obtain the natural state even in situations that are precarious or riveting and deepens your understanding of the wisdom that is inherent in the natural state.

Oct 2-6 Retreat
Abiding in the Natural State

Suggested Resources: David Hinton:Wild Mind, Wild Earth
Liu Ming, Wuwei: The Heart of the Daodejing

In the true state of natural abiding, the body is not merely a basis. It is also the wisdom, virtue, and fruition of life itself. Fruition is abiding in the body, postures and gestures as a whole. This experience leaves us open to reality as it is, and the freedom of spacious choice. The feeling of abiding in the natural state is not a transcendent idea, or an arrival. It is a return to the direct experience of the limitless aliveness of the body as undifferentiated awareness.


Each Retreat is 4 nights and includes all meals.
The Retreat fee is $1180/retreat.
The 3-Retreat Series is $3200.

Yearly paid Pop-Up School subscribers receive 10% discount on all retreats.