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Come and gather together for a deep dive into the practicalities of awakened living. Your everyday human life is the laboratory as we explore the myth of the separate self, unexplored trauma patterns, and living the deepest truth of nondual reality.

You are welcome as you are with your fears, doubts, shame, and questions - and simply to share space with like-minded friends. Together, we lovingly embrace our humanness as we expand into pure openness, overflowing appreciation, and deep connection with all of Life.

Gail Brenner, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and lover of truth with a fire that burns brightly. She brings to this work years of experience with individuals and groups and is known for creating the safety and trust needed for this deeper exploration.

Addressing trauma and how we hold it is essential to seeing through the illusion of the separate self. Join this powerful three-session retreat as we create a safe and supportive healing community to do this deeper work that unfolds on the path of awakening. You are welcome just as you are with your fears, doubts, shame, and questions. Through practices, inquiries, and experiments during and between our sessions, we’ll learn to untangle these patterns and find our way home to the ever present, relaxed, open space of inner aliveness. Gail Brenner, is a clinical psychologist and lover of truth with a fire that burns brightly. She brings to this work years of experience with individuals and groups and is known for creating the sense of safety and trust needed for this deeper exploration. She is the author of three books, including the award-winning, The End of Self-Help.

In this 4-part series we will take a fresh look at what the process of embodying spirit entails. In the first meeting we will explore the importance of spiritual embodiment, what the body is, the process by which the body becomes infused with the light of awareness, the role of conditioning, and the practice of welcoming the body from Presence. The three following meetings we will apply these insights to the most common areas of subtle somatic contraction as we embody spirit: the heart area (self love and acceptance), the solar plexus (control), and the base of the spine (survival). There will be guided meditations, talks, group meditative inquiries, and experiential conversations.

John J. Prendergast, Ph.D., is the author of The Deep Heart and In Touch, a retired Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology at CIIS, and a retired psychotherapist. He studied for many years with the European sage, Jean Klein, as well as with Adyashanti, and offers online and in-person retreats.

We gather, invited to leave our convictions and spiritual beliefs at the door of our shared space.

Together we welcome our direct experience and let it gradually reveal its palpable yet un-nameable, source and reality.

We will not engage with the singularity of our psychology and history. However, in the immediacy of our inquiry, layers of resistance that keep us trapped in the cage of thinking will surface in the form of raw feelings, sensations, and emotions.

In this sacred process something is touched and shared, the openness is made palpable, the One source of all experience begins to flow through, and we partake in the mystery of our humanity and divinity.

Ellen’s deepest intuition was confirmed when she met her teacher in the non-dual tradition, Francis Lucille. Hearing his words, she recognised the eternal, limitless and universal nature of our shared reality. Over the years, this understanding has continued to unfold and to touch all levels of experience.

We gather together to honor what is, compassionately being with inner and outer challenges, inviting beliefs, emotions and thoughts to know themselves also as presence, so the body can self-liberate from history and habit.

This return to naturalness is all-welcoming, and inclusive of the body-mind, and anything caught in discomfort. There is a potent relaxation when we function as the Heart, pervading that which contracted to serve, or from shock. Solace and serenity are revealed as the body sheds the unneeded, allowing natural joy to shine anew.

Pamela Wilson evokes through dialogue, inquiry and her very presence the qualities of unconditional love and radical acceptance. She is celebrated for her ability to open the heart and create a space in which long-cherished struggles and notions about one’s identity relax.

The calendar might tell us that a new year is approaching, but in truth, there is only this moment, now, free and uncaused, completely fresh and new, emerging from and infused with love. In any moment, we can turn away from our minds to recognize wonder, delight, mystery, and inspiration.

Come and join this two-day retreat as we explore the potential of living the freedom that we are in our everyday lives.
We will investigate the myth of the separate self, the power of the thinking mind to divert us, and the possibility of living the moments of your human life with awareness, freedom, acceptance, and love.

Gail Brenner, Ph.D. is your guide on this journey. She is a clinical psychologist and lover of truth with a fire that burns brightly. She brings to this work years of experience with individuals and groups and is known for creating the sense of safety and trust needed for this deeper exploration.