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Working with the Eight Worldly Winds: An Online ‘Householder’ Retreat

Online Program
Dates: May 02, 2021 - May 08, 2021

Instructor(s): Susan Morgan, Bill Morgan

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Program Description:
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Alone together, in our own and shared worlds, we will learn how to frame the day and intersperse moments of mindfulness practice throughout, in real time and in good company with others. 

Together we will focus on the existential and unavoidable Eight Worldly Winds: Pleasure and Pain, Gain and Loss, Praise and Blame, Fame and Disrepute. How can we negotiate these ever changing vicissitudes of life with balance? How can we remain upright when unfavorable winds are blowing through the internal and external landscapes of our lives? We will address these challenges through reflections and mindfulness exercises offered each day of the retreat. 

For many of us, bringing mindfulness into our daily lives is a significant challenge. Without significant instruction from our teachers about how to move through our non-retreat days mindfully, we often flounder and get discouraged soon after leaving retreat.

This online retreat is specifically designed to address this disheartening practice dilemma by offering meditative handholds for engaging mindfulness in daily life. During this precarious time, with fear and anxiety still running high, making meditation practical and relevant to our lives feels more important than ever. Over one full week, two practice periods will ‘bookend’ each weekday, in the morning and in the evening, with a more expanded time for practice and reflection on the first evening and final morning. This leaves the weekday afternoons as a time to mindfully attend to the activities and commitments of a typical week.

    About the Instructor(s):
  • Susan Morgan, CNS, is a psychotherapist in Cambridge, MA. She is a board and faculty member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy and contributing author to Mindfulness and Psychotherapy. Susan has a longstanding meditation practice and recently completed a four-year meditation retreat at the Forest Refuge. She has been leading retreats, primarily for caregivers, for the last 15 years. Lovingkindness and mindfulness of the body are integral to her teaching.

  • Bill Morgan, Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Cambridge, MA. He has participated in many intensive retreats in meditation practice over the past 40 years and recently completed a four-year meditation retreat at the Forest Refuge in Barre, MA. Together with Susan Morgan, he has been leading mindfulness retreats for 15 years.