Choosing a Meditation Retreat in Canada
No Comments
Wondering whether you’re ready for a meditation retreat?
There are many things to consider, such as “where are you actually at with your meditation practice?”
- This event has passed.
Ignite Your Spiritual Life (Online)
May 2, 2020 @ 10:00 am - June 6, 2020 @ 11:30 am UTC-6
An Online Course
May 9th – June 13th, 2020
Saturdays: 10:00-11:30am MDT *Click here to see your timezone
Recordings available for those who cannot attend live
Includes a half-day at home retreat on June 6th
The Biggest Certainty...
Is that the future is uncertain.
Right now, you may be grieving the loss of a way of life, or, perhaps you’ve tasted a new way of doing things and don’t want to return to the ‘status quo’.
Whether it’s concerns about money or sharing a small space with others, COVID-19 has forced all of us to step out of our comfort zones and onto shaky ground.
How do we adjust to this new normal?
A beautiful aspect of being human is the way that we support, create and collaborate with each other. In short, we are social beings.
Social distancing is essential for flattening the curve. And yet, in doing so, something is lost. A part of our humanness is lost.
In a way being in isolation is like being placed in a meditation retreat you didn’t choose. Being alone is difficult. Especially when the mind is also weighed down by financial, health or relationship concerns.
Reframing isolation into opportunity
Ignite Your Spiritual Life is designed to help you turn your home and daily life into a supportive structure.
During our fifteen years of leading meditation retreats, we have studied the art of creating spaces that are supportive when you’re alone and when you are sharing space with others.
This course will guide you in principles that help you have a consistent meditation practice, reframe negative thoughts and habits and re-connect with what’s most important to you.
If you can't be in a space you love..
Love the space you’re in.
It is likely that you are missing a particular space right now. Perhaps it’s your favourite cafe, workspace or yoga studio. This course will help you adapt to your current situation and turn any environment into a space that supports your needs.
This course is about establishing a consistent meditation practice (the inner) and getting your life (the outer) more in line with your spiritual aspirations, we’ve made each session a balance of this inner and outer work.
We start with a guided meditation or mindfulness practice to support a deepening daily reflective practice, and then give fresh practical tips for integrating it into your daily life.
Each session is lively and interactive, including breakout sessions for discussion in groups, sharing via the chat function, and time for Q&A. We offer home “play” exercises (we prefer this to home “work” as the exercises are designed to be exploratory and fun!) for trying outside of the weekly sessions to explore and integrate the topics.
Course Structure
Week 1: Creating a supportive space for your growth
- Three supports for being more mindful and present in daily life.
- The missing element. Understand what a spiritual container is, why it’s often forgotten, and why it’s so important to achieving your goals.
- Contacting that “aaahh” feeling that a well-created space can instantly create
Week 2 : Transforming habit and making friends with structure
- Fresh awareness – tools for getting out of auto-pilot mode.
- Loosening and transforming unhelpful habits.
- Harnessing the power of ritual.
Week 3: Quieting the monkey mind
- Calming internal dialog and chatter.
- Cleaning up draining conversations and speech patterns.
- The power of forgiveness.
Week 4: Part 1: Cleaning up big areas of your life frees up energy
- Identifying big areas in your life that drain your energy.
- Beginning to ease the common drain and tension around money.
- Exploring your vision and purpose.
Week 5: Part 2: Cleaning up big areas of your life frees up energy
- Working with distractions and overload.
- Developing a healthy relationship with time.
- Learning to “do nothing” – the importance of making space to play.
Week 6: The power of community
- Meditations to strengthen kindness and compassion.
- Embracing healthy relationships.
- Bringing it all together – how a strong community and spiritual container is a launchpad for your growth.
Our Five Principles
These are the principles that have made Clear Sky into a place that wakes people up and supports their practice. We’ll lead you through these five simple yet empowering principles that have been time-tested over centuries.
As well as the core content on each of the principles, each webinar will include meditations and exercises to try in your daily life.
Meet Your Course Teachers
Karen McAllister
As Clear Sky’s Chair of the Board and Director of Business Development, I’m passionate about teaching the much-ignored principles of nurturing the factors – like honor your space, structure, and communication – that create the conditions we need to wake up more in daily life. I see how I learned and embodied these principles in my different roles at Clear Sky, as the centre went from self-starter to second-stage growth. This is what I call “the hands-on way of doing an MBA with a spiritual bottom line!”
In my free time, I love travelling, speaking Portuguese and reading history, architecture, and art books.
Duncan Cryle
Through 15 years of teaching meditation and mindfulness, alongside an active career working all over the world, I’ve learnt a lot about an integrated spiritual path.
As a founding member of Clear Sky in 2004, I’m amazed at the power that working together in compassionate service has for enriching and widening spiritual growth. Combined with a dynamic relationship and a challenging career, I have fun with a wide-ranging and holistic approach to spiritual growth. The spiritual container is a key aspect to this and I’m delighted to teach and share this course.
Meet Your Course Hosts
I love plunging into things and that’s exactly what I did with Clear Sky.
Now based in Nelson B.C., I'm part of a wakeful and innovative team where I'm delighted to say that meditation, mindful collaboration and teamwork are an integral part of my work day.
I'm passionate about diving deeper inside, understanding what it is to be a wholesome, spiritual being - a being that is participating in the creation of an abundant life and that believes in the powerful ideal of service for the benefit of all. What an incredible journey!
Living and spending time at Clear Sky has put me in all kinds of roles. Through the teachings and community, I can see clearly that where I thrived and where I've struggled can be directly related to each of our new principles in some way. Can't wait to share them with you!
My life transformed upon meeting Clear Sky's founding Teachers, Doug and Catherine Sensei.
Their profound teachings inspire me to better myself and our centre so that we may be a beacon of compassion, community and equanimity in our rapidly changing world.
Quiz: What area of your life is holding you back?
See how you’re doing in terms of the Five Principles, and get simple tips for using them to free up energy. Take the quiz now.
The course had a big impact on me. It helped me organize my life, the way I relate to others and contributed to making more assertive choices.
I learned how to better deal with my emotions, specially my anxiety. Now, I understand I am a better person and for that I’m very grateful.
I think this course is a beautiful, utterly grounded and relevant way of making the spiritual life very real and integrated with how we are living every day of our lives. It lays an important foundation for a meditation practice that can actually go somewhere and lead to a well-rounded and truly fulfilling life.
It's really, really brought me back home to myself. I found myself in the past very scattered and would put off all the important things, the spiritual aspects of life, the mindfulness and so on, just to blast through my day and get things done, but now I am really taking pause. I still don't get everything done, but I don't get everything done in a much more calm and soulful way.
Course Cost
We offer this course on the basis of dāna. If you’re not familiar with dāna, you may have come across related approaches such as “pay from the heart.” Dāna is a Sanskrit term that translates as generosity in English. It’s radically different from the transactional way we normally interact in the world – where we give to get something back, either a service or thing. Instead, with dāna, we give as a mutual exchange of generosity. It’s our joy to offer this course, and we trust you’ll match our time, energy, and passion by giving an amount of money that feels good and healthy to both you and us.
As for our part in this pay from the heart model: since we have expenses hosting the classes and we are investing significant amounts of volunteer (service) time and our combined experience in creating, teaching, and administrating the course, we are setting the minimum amount at $120 CAD. All proceeds will go to Clear Sky center.
We highly recommend taking time to check in with your heart on an amount that feels good. Find the amount you feel balances and honors your aspiration for this course, the energy we are giving to deliver the course, and what is sustainable for you.
In this pay from the heart exercise, you might also consider what you pay for different things as a matter of course: a night out with friends, a session with a chiropractor or acupuncturist, or an hour with a life coach, for example.
You’ll see equivalent live courses offered for between $120 and $360 CAD. Over six, 90-minute classes, this represents an average of $20-$60 per class.
Why do you use a dāna-based model?
The practice of generosity is central to spiritual unfoldment, whatever path you follow. In our own Buddhist lineage, teachings have always been given on the basis of dāna, and we are committed to this practice and its development in the West. Dāna is also a radical and – we believe – viable economic alternative to capitalism, which our planet would really benefit from. We all know there must be something better than capitalism or its hungry cousin, consumerism. We maintain that, together, we can offer a financial model that is based in life-affirming mutual support. Please join us in co-creating this promising economic alternative.
Still not sure? Fill out this online form and we’ll get back to you.
Blog
How Good Posture Brings Good States
2 Comments
When we asked Jordan to write something about his experience as a Karma Yogi at Clear Sky, we didn’t know a poet lurked within. And yet if you know this gentle man, then perhaps you’re not surprised at all.
Wellness retreats in nature as an antidote to anxiety
6 Comments
Ever wondered how the best wellness retreats work?
Wellness retreats heal anxiety and nurture our whole being, because the environment has been consciously prepared for the purpose. Mindful attention to detail, both inside and outside, tell the body and mind it is time to relax.
