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

Date & Time Details: Check-in is from 3:00-5:00 on the first day of the retreat. The retreat will close mid-morning on the last day of the retreat.

PRICE: We offer a sliding scale structure. The price for this retreat ranges from $810-$1,260 (not including dana). (Learn more)

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

SHUTTLE SERVICE: Shuttle Service is available for this retreat. (Learn more)

SCHOLARSHIP / FELLOWSHIP AVAILABILITY: All awards have been made for this retreat. No longer accepting applications for scholarships or fellowships.

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Program is fully booked

Affectionate Awareness as a Path to Liberation

With Michele McDonald and Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey

August 10 - 19, 2018

Program is fully booked

During this intensive silent retreat, participants will learn to develop their heart’s capacity for liberatory clarity and pervasive tenderness with a unique integration of Vipassana (insight) and Metta (lovingkindness) practices. Michele and Jesse are enthusiastic about supporting yogis with a depth of both technical rigor and spacious ease.  Yogis will be supported by daily instruction periods with time for questions and answers, individual interviews with both teachers, nightly dhamma talks, a vigorous schedule of sitting and walking meditation, as well as free time in the afternoons to silently explore the beauty of the landscape on their own. Come 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. 

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