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
Application for Being Blessed by the Land of Vallecitos: Gently Held Self-Retreat
With Anne Cushman and Carole Melkonian
May 25 - June 1, 2023
We invite you to be our guest at Vallecitos this spring for self-retreat time on the land gently held by our beloved visiting teachers, Anne Cushman and Carole Melkonian. Please join us to connect with your practice alongside the depth and magic of the land. We are offering you the simple experience of being on […]
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Application for Belonging, Connection, and Nature: Coming Home Together
With Erin Treat, Solwazi Johnson and Yong Oh
June 2 - 7, 2023
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. Awakening from the delusion of separation through practice and […]
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Resting in Nature: A Retreat for People of Color
With JoAnna Hardy, Anushka Fernandopulle and Devin Berry
June 9 - 15, 2023
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 with very little time for silence or rest— but many people of color in this country are […]
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Application for Retreat 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 TBA
June 18 - 24, 2023
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[…]
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Deepening the Natural Path to the Heart’s Liberation: A Vipassana Retreat for Experienced Practitioners (June)
With Erin Treat and Brian Lesage
June 25 - July 1, 2023
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. Inspired by the […]
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Awake in the Wild: Meditation in Nature Retreat
With Mark Coleman and Robin Craig
July 2 - 8, 2023
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. This […]
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Sacred Sound, Insight, and Silence: Meditation and Music in the Deep Woods
With Jennifer Berezan and Erin Treat
July 9 - 13, 2023
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. Woven throughout the meditation practice, participants will engage in a wide […]
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Cultivating Joy: An Intensive Retreat for Mental Health Professionals
With Bill Morgan, PsyD, Susan Morgan, MSN, RN, CS and Ron Siegel, PsyD
July 13 - 20, 2023
These have been challenging years for many of us, from which we’re just beginning to recover. Might some joy, as well as peace and tranquility, be welcome right now? In the West, we often focus on the dukkha aspect of the Buddha’s teaching. We notice all the ways that our difficulties accepting reality create suffering. But we often neglect the experience of sukka […]
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Mindfulness in Education Retreat
With Erin Treat and Kate Munding
July 21 - 26, 2023
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. Please join us for […]
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Application for Affectionate Awareness as a Path to Liberation
With Michele McDonald and Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey
August 1 - 15, 2023
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 […]
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Deepening the Natural Path to the Heart’s Liberation: A Vipassana Retreat for Experienced Practitioners (August)
With Erin Treat and Brian Lesage
August 16 - 23, 2023
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. Inspired by the […]
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Application for Restoring Connection: A LGBTQIA Community Dhamma Retreat in Nature
With Victoria Cary, JD Doyle and René Rivera
August 24 - 31, 2023
During this 7-night silent retreat we will collectively create a supportive container for LQBTQI-identified folks to explore the Dhamma, and practice meditation. This retreat will be silent, mostly outdoors, and on the beautiful land of Vallecitos. We will offer dhamma talks, meditation, group hikes, heart-centered practices, and chanting. These practices will be offered in a […]
A Love Supreme
With Vinny Ferraro and Hakim Tafari
September 1 - 6, 2023
Our time will be spent exploring the Buddha's heart teachings aka "the sure heart’s release." We’ll look at cultivating different expressions of love and working with what gets in the way. Together we’ll practice taking refuge in the natural radiance of the unobscured heart. This path of awakening leads us towards the wisdom of how […]
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Waking up to Wisdom through Mindfulness and Kindness
With Dave Smith and Cheryl Slean
September 7 - 16, 2023
During this 9-day Insight meditation retreat, we will learn to develop a greater sense of presence and ease through the revolutionary practices of the dharma. Vipassana meditation (insight or mindfulness practice) unites the stillness of concentration and the immediacy of moment-to-moment awareness, helping us see clearly, and intuitively understand the truth of experience within and […]
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Cultivating Insight: A Simple and Powerful Practice
With JD Doyle, Erin Selover and René Rivera (Assistant)
September 23 - 30, 2023
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. The practice of insight invites us to look deeply, to understand the nature of suffering, and to allow our inner wisdom to blossom. As we develop this inner knowing, […]
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Meditation, Nature, and Awakening
With Peter Williams and Chas DiCapua
October 1 - 8, 2023
This retreat engages two powerful forces for happiness – insight meditation and immersion in nature. Insight meditation has been the key practice for accessing the profound wisdom of the Buddhist tradition for 2500 years. It is extraordinary in its simplicity, its lack of dogma and, above all, its results. When we take the meditation practice […]
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