Tap into the sweetness of summer at this online weekend of meditation, movement and community connection.
Join the Consciousness Explorers Club teaching team as we bask in the summertime spirit at this virtual version of our annual Meditate! Celebrate! Activate! summer retreat.
We’re done retreating, this is an advance! We still meditate a fair bit in silence, we don’t mess with that tried-and-true formula. But we’re also interested in the lived application of our meditative insights, in how to act from the sanity that emerges in practice. So we explore self- consciousness too, we explore movement and dance, we explore the weird and terrifying psychic territory of other actual human beings.
Retreat Schedule TBA.
Teachers & Location & Dates
Teachers are Erin Oke, James Maskalyk, Jude Star, Kevin Lacroix, Tasha Schumann, Luke Anderson, Mark Greenspan, Oliver Rabba, Stephanie DeBou and Jeff Warren. Retreat begins on the evening of Friday, August 6th, and wraps up in the evening of Sunday, August 8th.
Participants are encouraged to attend as many sessions as possible, but we understand if time zone or life calls you away sometimes! Please design a retreat experience for yourself as best suits your life and practice.
Fees & Registration
This weekend retreat is being offered on a “pay what you’re able to” model, with a wide sliding scale to accommodate all income ranges. The funds will go toward supporting the CEC and helping to expand programming and extend the benefits of practice to more people. The CEC is a registered not-for-profit with the mission of making meditation and personal growth practices fun and accessible to all.
Zoom link for the workshop will be provided upon registration.
Register via Eventbrite HERE
What to Expect
NOTE: The below text is for our 4-day in-person summer retreats, so not all these elements will be present. Nevertheless, the spirit remains the same!
Meditation
We sit in MEDITATION throughout the day, a mix of solo and guided excursions into sound, energy, openness, silence, gratitude, and rest, as well as more dynamic movement and nature meditations. Each of these is an adventure into a different corner of human experience, a fresh inquiry into who and how we are, a unique exploration of consciousness. As the meditation and the silence settle our minds, we begin to make contact with a nice stillness …
Activation
… thus opening a space for our ACTIVATION sessions. Here we build on our meditation insights by playing with them in community. So: how to work with the energy of our self-consciousness, how to trust our own spontaneity and creativity, and finally how to help others by using our own honest direct experience as both teacher and guide.
Celebration
we wish to make a human partyThe CELEBRATION here is what emerges naturally when there’s trust and relaxation and the right proportion of irreverence. So: we might recreate embarrassing moments with theatre props, or explore the deranged richness of our imaginations in an evening drum-journey and art practice, or we might explore movement and dance – eyes open or closed – maybe with the instruction to dance like robots, or barn animals, or whatever it takes to free ourselves from the social pressure to look “good.”
Basically we have a good time. And why shouldn’t we? What else is meditation for if it can’t deliver on that?
Meditate, Celebrate, Activate
Sit to find the freedom, move to warm it up until its so hot you got to let it out, spread it out, which takes you back to a Consciousness Explorers first principles: Meditate, Celebrate, Activate.
Repeat.
What to Have With You
- Loose-fitting, comfortable clothing for meditation and movement practices.
- Meditation cushion or bench
- Journal, books
We strive to be an open and inclusive community, accepting and supporting diversity in age, race, physical and mental abilities, as well as sexual orientation and gender identity.
Register via Eventbrite HERE
Testimonials
“The CEC retreat was a great experience, unlike any other. More of a conscious community coming together to share in a smorgasbord of activities, all centered around, well, centering. Can’t recommend it enough, and can’t wait for the next one!” – Steven
“I expect most meditation retreats to involve a whole lot of sitting in silence to find what it means to be truly present. Now here’s the magic of a CEC retreat: it calls on you to walk (or dance) that state of presence off the cushion, testing ‘out there’ with your fellow practitioners. It takes guts to inject crazy dance moves, lucid dreams, and laughter into a retreat. But guts is something the CEC has loads of and the results are remarkable – presence goes from passive to active, making it something I can realistically try to attain while yelling at a car on my roller blades.” – Katrina
“This was my first overnight retreat focused on meditation and it was amazing. For me, the silence was hard but important… helpful to realize that my head is filled with voices that behave like a frat party… and so good to learn, practice, and gain more strength at being with and making space around my inner world. The blend of open-hearted sitting, focused learning, community, celebration, and activation was the perfect bouquet of experiences to create some important “turns” in my inner journey and start September with a renewed, deeper practice and more open engagement.” – Cate