Retreats

Discover a Deeper Way of Living Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center offers a retreat for almost everyone. Our schedule carries a...
  • Casita Supporting Rate – $1,665.00
  • Casita Actual Rate – $1,305.00
  • Casita Base Rate – $1,170.00
  • Yurt Supporting Rate – $1,665.00
  • Yurt Actual Rate – $1,305.00
  • Yurt Base Rate – $1,170.00
  • Tent Cabin Supporting Rate – $1,260.00
  • Tent Cabin Actual Rate – $1,080.00
  • Tent Cabin Base Rate – $945.00

Please note that outstanding balances will be automatically charged 30 days prior to your retreat. Please see our Registration Information to learn more.

Date & Time Details: Registration opens at 3:00 on the first day of the retreat. The retreat will close shortly after breakfast on the last day.

Price: We offer a sliding scale structure. Prices for this retreat range from $855-$1,237.50. (Learn more)

Dana: This is a dana based retreat. (Learn more)

Shuttle: Shuttle service is available for this retreat. (Learn more)

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Program is fully booked

Affectionate Awareness as a Path to Liberation Retreat

With Michele McDonald and Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey

July 26 - August 4, 2017

Program is fully booked

Develop your heart’s capacity for liberatory clarity and kindness with this unique integration of Metta (lovingkindness) and Vipassana (insight) practices. Experience the richness of quietude in the beautiful Vallecitos wilderness while cultivating the wisdom of Vipassana and the tenderness of the 4 Brahma Viharas: Unconditional Love, Compassion, Appreciative Joy, and Equanimity. Michele and Jesse are enthusiastic about supporting yogis with both technical rigor and spacious ease.

Michele has been teaching vipassana since 1982. She emphasizes a 6-sense door awareness steeped in reverence for our bodies and helps students find their natural entry points into stillness. She encourages a gentle strengthening of mindfulness and concentration so that people can access the peaceful depths of their experience in every moment with clarity, ease, and authenticity.

Jesse is the resident teacher for Vipassana Hawai’i and when off-island teaches across the US and Canada. His teaching aims to inspire the skills, determination, and faith necessary to realize the deepest human freedom and is especially moved to help deepen our relationship to sila, ethical conduct, as an unending exploration of moral integrity.

Teachers

Michele McDonald
Michele McDonald has taught Insight meditation since 1982 and teaches extensively throughout the United States, Canada, Burma, and various locations around the world. Michele has been a quiet pioneer having being the first woman to teach a formal retreat in Burma, side-by-side with a senior monastic figure, Sayadaw U Lakkhana, Abbot of Kyaswa Monastery. Having worked with a wide range of Asian and Western teachers, Michele is most inspired by her practice with Dipa Ma and Sayadaw U Pandita and more recently in Burma with the Mya Taung Sayadaw. She appreciates teaching at many levels of practice and has enjoyed…
Learn more about Michele McDonald
Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey
Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey’s teaching aims to inspire the skills, determination, and faith necessary to realize the deepest human freedom. He is a student of Michele McDonald and his approach is rooted in the tradition of Mahasi Sayadaw of Burma. As a teacher of Vipassana (insight) meditation within the broader context of Theravada Buddhism his teaching encourages an exploration of the relationship between ethics, insight, and action. Perpetually intrigued by the dynamics between inner and outer change, Jesse is a writer of numerous essays and author of Insurgent Heart: A Vipassana Manual for the Guerrilla Yogi. Links to his writing can be…
Learn more about Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey