Uncontrived Mindfulness 2025

Awareness is crucial to Insight, but a dharma perspective is even more important. Without ‘Right View’ informing what we’re aware of, we run the risk of reinforcing ‘wrong views’. Wrong views are naturally present in the unenlightened state, but we can train ourselves to become aware of those ideas and distortions through learning to watch our minds. Mind watching reveals how we are relating to whatever is happening in experience, whether it be a thought, an emotion or arising through one of our senses.

Through the input on this retreat, tools will be offered to help us relate in ways that don’t create further suffering for ourselves or others. This is a receptive way of practising that lends itself to cultivating a continuity of spacious mindfulness within daily life with an emphasis on awareness outside of formal practice times. We’ll practice in different postures – walking, sitting, standing, and lying down – with encouragement to stay present to whatever is happening in any moment. This approach to awareness is deceptively simple but profound, with kindness as an implicit thread running through it and understanding a potential in every moment.

The retreat will largely be in silence although there will be opportunities to talk about your practice and to benefit from hearing from others as we practice together.