Discover a Deeper Way of Living
Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center offers a retreat for almost everyone. Our schedule carries a generous offering of Insight Meditation Retreats, retreats that invite participants to consciously explore their experience of wild nature, and retreats that are designed for specific populations. On our schedule you will find retreats for educators, people of color, women, men, and mental health professionals, to name a few. We are here to help you find a retreat that is right for you.
“I am so much more aware of the path I want to be on and the power of the sacred in my life.”
– Cristina Mormorunni
Upcoming Offerings
Awake in the Wild: Meditation in Nature Retreat (Summer)
With Mark Coleman
June 3 - 10, 2022
This retreat will be spent meditating outdoors in the natural beauty and mystery here at Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center. Whether it is during sunset meditations, listening to the soothing sounds of the river, or sitting graced in the stillness of the aspen trees, we will open to the profound serenity and wisdom of nature[…]
VIEW PROGRAMRecovering from the Full Catastrophe: An Intensive Retreat for Mental Health Professionals
With Bill Morgan, PsyD, Susan Morgan, MSN, RN, CS and Ron Siegel, PsyD
June 18 - 25, 2022
This intensive residential retreat, set in the wild mountains of New Mexico, will offer calming and settling practices to soothe and heal our nervous systems. We’ll explore the stressors of this past year, making room to acknowledge and release some of the ragged, unmetabolized emotions that may have accumulated[…]
VIEW PROGRAMDeepening the Natural Path to the Heart’s Liberation: A Vipassana Retreat for Experienced Practitioners
With Erin Treat and Brian Lesage
June 26 - July 3, 2022
Join us in practicing the timeless teachings of the Buddha as a pathway to inner peace, freedom, and the compassionate heart. This retreat is designed to offer support for experienced practitioners in insight meditation, known as Vipassana in the Buddhist tradition, which has been a foundation of Buddhist teachings for 2,500 years. […]
VIEW PROGRAMCultivating Insight: A Simple and Powerful Practice
With JD Doyle and Leslie Booker
July 4 - 11, 2022
During this week-long silent mindfulness meditation retreat, we will cultivate the quality of awareness that supports us in attending to every moment with kindness and acceptance. Through this simple, yet powerful practice, we are invited to look deeply, to understand the nature of suffering, and to allow our inner wisdom to blossom. As we develop this inner knowing, we bring greater freedom to[…]
VIEW PROGRAMBelonging, Connection, and Nature: Coming Home Together (Registration page for BIPOC-identified persons including BIPOC-identified mixed race persons)
With Sebene Selassie, Erin Treat and Solwazi Johnson
July 12 - 17, 2022
This retreat emerged from the relationship between its teachers as a result of many years of being together in dharma practice, teaching, and spiritual friendship. And this retreat invites the participants into relationship — with themselves, each other, the land, and all beings everywhere without exception[…]
VIEW PROGRAMBelonging, Connection, and Nature: Coming Home Together (Registration page for white-identified persons)
With Sebene Selassie, Erin Treat and Solwazi Johnson
July 12 - 17, 2022
This retreat emerged from the relationship between its teachers as a result of many years of being together in dharma practice, teaching, and spiritual friendship. And this retreat invites the participants into relationship — with themselves, each other, the land, and all beings everywhere without exception[…]
VIEW PROGRAMFinding Freedom in Nature: A Retreat for People of Color
With Sebene Selassie, La Sarmiento and Yong Oh
July 18 - 25, 2022
The teachings of the Buddha connect us to our own true nature which is freedom. We are nature wherever we go — whether we live in the heart of a large bustling city or in a rural environment — but many people of color in this country are often the most removed from land that is not ravaged by colonization. This retreat offers us an opportunity to experience the liberating power of retreat in[…]
VIEW PROGRAMMindfulness in Education Retreat
With Erin Treat, Syra Smith (Choctaw-Chickasaw) and Lisa Kring (Assistant)
July 26 - 31, 2022
Mindfulness meditation offers powerful antidotes to school-related stressors and is a support for compassionate engagement inside and outside the classroom. Retreat practice can cultivate practices of presence in body, heart, and mind in a way of responding to oneself and also to the larger suffering of our communities and our world[…]
VIEW PROGRAMAffectionate Awareness as a Path to Liberation
With Michele McDonald, Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey and Darine Monroy (Assistant)
August 1 - 14, 2022
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[…]
VIEW PROGRAMSacred Sound, Insight, and Silence: Meditation and Music in the Deep Woods
With Jennifer Berezan and Erin Treat
August 15 - 19, 2022
The retreat will combine two ancient spiritual practices--meditation and music--as a path to opening one’s heart and uncovering one’s true nature. There will be guided instruction in the fundamentals of mindfulness meditation and dharma practice, including periods of sitting and walking meditation in silence[…]
VIEW PROGRAMComing Home to Ourselves Finding Refuge in Nature: Vallecitos’ First LGBTQI Retreat
With Victoria Cary, Shelly Graf and René Rivera
August 20 - 27, 2022
During this 7-night silent retreat we will collectively create a supportive container for LQBTQI identified folks to explore the dhamma, practice meditation, and discover what finding refuge and coming home means for us. This retreat will be mostly outdoors, silent, and on the beautiful land of Vallecitos[…]
VIEW PROGRAMRetreat as Ceremony: Mindfulness and Indigenous Presence for Wellness and Healing, A Retreat for Indigenous Peoples
With Bonnie Duran (mixed race Opelousas/Coushatta), Elvina Charley (Diné) and Syra Smith (Choctaw-Chickasaw)
August 28 - September 3, 2022
This retreat is open to Indigenous people from around the world. This residential retreat will provide a conceptual framework and practice guidelines for Mindful “Indigenous Presence” meditation—a way of coming into harmony with the present moment and our world—and provides space for acceptance, and the cultivation of clarity, confidence, resilience and strength[…]
VIEW PROGRAMWaking up to Wisdom through the Foundations of Mindfulness
With Dave Smith and Cheryl Slean
September 4 - 11, 2022
During this 7-day Insight meditation retreat, we will learn to develop a greater sense of presence and ease through the revolutionary practices of the Dharma. Focusing on the practices of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness and Metta (Lovingkindness), we’ll discover emotional balance and begin to free ourselves into the heart of wisdom and compassion[…]
VIEW PROGRAMBeing Blessed by the Land of Vallecitos: Fall
September 12 - 18, 2022
We invite you to be our guest at Vallecitos this spring. Please join us to connect with the depth and magic of the land as you support Vallecitos. We are offering you the simple experience of being on the land, safely using our facilities, and receiving 3 nutritious meals a day where you may choose to stay in a casita, yurt, the hermitage cabin or the middle house. Visit us and savor the quiet intimacy of being on the land with only 20 guests at a time. While you are welcome to be in silence during your stay, please know…
VIEW PROGRAMAwake in the Wild: Meditation in Nature Retreat (Fall)
With Mark Coleman
September 23 - 30, 2022
On this retreat we will meditate outdoors all day in the natural beauty and mystery here at Vallecitos. Whether it is during sunset meditations, listening to the soothing sounds of the river, or sitting graced in the stillness of the aspen trees, we will open to the profound serenity and wisdom of nature[…]
VIEW PROGRAMThe Wisdom of No Technology: Beyond our screens, the natural world and our deepest nature await.
With Don Usner and Dyanna Taylor
October 1 - 8, 2022
While trying to give the best to our work and personal lives, we often find ourselves facing unrelenting demands and the distraction of technological devices that hijack our attention. This retreat offers a pause—breathing space—and a chance to turn away from our computers, cameras, and not-so-smart phones, to recharge our capacity to create, and return to the roots of perception and inspiration[…]
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