“Participating in the Integrating Mindfulness course has been one of the most transformative experiences of my life. It has helped me cultivate greater awareness and compassion and provided me with practical tools for managing stress and anxiety. I am deeply grateful for the Clear Sky community and support provided by the course.” – Artin
Taking a pause out of the busyness of life is essential for healthy balance and growth.
If you are struggling to integrate your meditation practice with the constant distractions and challenges of daily life, this weekend retreat may be for you.
Based on Clear Sky Center’s Five Principles of a Mindful Container, learn how to manage your time and energy, develop supportive habits and build a regular meditation practice.
Many people do a meditation retreat to handle burn out, but then go back home quickly end up being overwhelmed again. What’s unique about this retreat is it offers a middle way. It combines restorative meditation time, with time to reflect on what changes you could make to manage your energy better and for long term sustainability.
Note: This retreat can be attended onsite or online. We encourage onsite participation where possible so you can enjoy additional meditation and grounding exercises in nature on Clear Sky’s beautiful 310 acres..
Registration Deadline:
In-Person: Saturday, September 9th, 2023
Online: Friday, September 15th, 2023
Meditation
& Daily Life
focus area
Interactive
Workshop
practice
Weekend
Retreat
Duration
All
Levels
Skill Level
In-Person
& Online
format
Bring Mindfulness to all areas of your life
In our post-COVID world, people are struggling with time management, distraction and feeling pulled in several directions.
Attention deficit disorder is the name of the day. Despite having a meditation or mindfulness practice, you find yourself being pulled here, there and everywhere.
The new normal is a frazzled, distracted, cut-down, fractured state.
Along with this, we also hear people struggling with isolation and loneliness. It is hard to make meaningful connections when we are all constantly running and primarily interacting online.
Taking a pause out of the busyness of life is an essential part of healthy balance.
We all need a supportive environment to gain new insights and growth. We all need space to step back, reconnect with ourselves and our meditation practice, and take time to reflect on how we spend our time and energy. By examining your structures and routines, you can make specific changes to help you integrate more spaciousness in your life.
It’s especially healing to do this with experienced guides and like-minded people so we can benefit from the support of group connection.
There are big areas of my life I needed to look at that I didn't know I needed to. I am more aware of them now, and have perspective on how to bring daily mindfulness to them. Now I have a technique to structure my life and prioritize the things I actually want to do, and a dialogue technique that is helping in my relationships. Integrating Mindfulness allows you to think about issues in a different way (such as money!). Insightful and nourishing." - Daniel
"I was hesitant to commit to another course when things are already so busy, but thankfully I committed and encountered incredible wisdom! Now I have an increased awareness of the healing power of community. I'm cleaning up my money relationship, building better habits, and learning how to deal with blind spots. Integrating Mindfulness provides teachings and practical opportunities for application: anyone wanting to take up the spiritual path would benefit" - Ben
Using Clear Sky’s Five Principles of a Mindful Container, this retreat will help you craft a life more in line with your vision and values.
By focusing on creating healthy structures and routines, you will have the opportunity to identify where your time and energy leaks away.
Meditations and exercises will help you reconnect with your core values and design structure and habits in your life to support them.
We are here for you. We care deeply for your state. We want you to be held, focused and have the experience of being in a clear, aware, blissful and loving state.
We want to help you understand what you need and to take care of yourself. A depleted mind and body cannot be of service to the world. Only through healing yourself can you truly be of service to others.
What to Expect:
The weekend will be a mixture of group and individual meditation time, instructional classes/Q&A, breakout groups, practical exercises to explore, and free time to reflect and enjoy nature.
Group meditation sits will help you reconnect / strengthen your meditation practice
Breakouts/group discussion allow you to make connections, build community, and share and learn with like-minded people.
If attending at Clear Sky Center: along with wholesome local organic food, you can expect personalized meditation guidance (eg. posture), time to explore our 300-acres of walking trails and healing exercises and meditations outside.
If you cannot come in person: we will give you guidelines to craft a supportive home retreat, based on the same five principles we use here at Clear Sky to create an amazing space for transforming struggle and embracing vitality.
Join Karen and Duncan for a weekend retreat and:
- Understand how to create a supportive container in your life for your daily meditation
- Reconnect and deepen your meditation practice
- Gain a very clear picture of your blocks around time management and how to shift these
- Create good habits to better manage your energy and time to go to what you value the most
- Learn how to integrate meditation and stillness into your daily life
Based on Clear Sky’s Five Principles, Integrating Mindfulness helps you build a sustainable meditation practice that permeates your body, career, relationships and all other areas of your life.
You can learn more about our Five Principles here and get our free pdf overview by clicking the link below.
"Mindfulness is like turning on a light in a dark room. The power of awareness lets us see what is there - in our bodies, emotions, mind, workplaces, homes and relationships. Seeing what is there gives us the freedom and the courage to make deeply impactful changes. I've found it helps craft our lives, environment and structures in a way that deeply supports connection and growth".
Meet the Teachers
Karen McAllister
As Clear Sky’s Chair of the Board and Director of Business Development, I’m passionate about teaching the much-ignored principles of nurturing the factors – like honor your space, structure, and communication – that create the conditions we need to wake up more in daily life. I see how I learned and embodied these principles in my different roles at Clear Sky as the center went from self-starter to second-stage growth. This is what I call “the hands-on way of doing an MBA with a spiritual bottom line!”
In my free time, I love travelling, speaking Portuguese and reading history, architecture and art books.
Duncan Cryle
Through 30+ years of personal practice and 15+ teaching meditation and mindfulness, alongside an active career working all over the world, I’ve learnt a lot about an integrating mindfulness into daily life. As a founding member of Clear Sky in 2004, I’m amazed at the power of a beautiful, natural and dedicated space for supporting people to deepen their meditation and feel more connected. Alongside. my Clear Sky work, I hold a director position at a large software company where I also run a volunteer global mindfulness program to 1000s employees. I was formerly one of the pioneers of IBM’s mindfulness movement. I’m passionate about how mindfulness-based approaches can transform how we live and work together, and be of better service in the world.
Guided Meditations with Karen and Duncan
Body Scan with Karen McAllister (10 minutes)
Transforming Difficult Emotions with Duncan Cryle (9 minutes)
About Clear Sky
Located in the BC rocky mountains, we offer over 300-acres to deepen your practice and reconnect with nature.
Founded by Qapel Doug Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat Sensei, we are home to students from around the globe who are dedicated to co-creating a supportive and innovative space for awakening in our modern world.
In adherence with our quadruple bottom line, we source our food as local and organic as possible.
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW on how to get here, what to bring and what to expect.
FAQs
Pricing:
The base price of the course includes accommodation at Clear Sky, lunch and dinner on Saturday 16th June, and breakfast and lunch on Sunday 17th June, as well as a course fee to cover the basic costs of running the course.
Accommodation is available in shared rooms or in a private cabin. The base price is between $199 to $247 CAD depending on the accommodation option selected. There is a 10% early bird discount on this for those booking before August 27th.
You are also welcome to arrive instead on Friday night to start the retreat fresh, and/or stay an extra night on the Sunday to give yourself time to integrate before leaving. You can select these options on the booking page, as well as booking a pick up/drop off from the airport if you need one.
Read more: Staying with us (Clear Sky Meditation Centre)
Dana / Pay-from-the-heart
The base price covers the cost to run the retreat, and does not include any fees to the teachers. The teachers offer their time and guidance on the basis of dāna (generosity).
Dāna is a Sanskrit term meaning “generosity”, and is the traditional way in which Buddhist teachings are offered. With dāna, we give as a mutual exchange of generosity. You may have come across this in the form of “pay d the heart”. It’s the teachers joy to offer this course, and we trust you’ll match their time, energy, and passion by giving an amount of money that feels good and healthy to both you and us.
The booking form includes a box for offering dana. We suggest a range from $60-300 CAD according to your means.
For more information on dāna click here.
Dana / Pay-from-the-heart:
This retreat is offered on the basis of dāna (generosity).
Dāna is a Sanskrit term meaning “generosity”, and is the traditional way in which Buddhist teachings are offered. With dāna, we give as a mutual exchange of generosity. You may have come across this in the form of “pay from the heart”. It’s our joy to offer this course, and we trust you’ll match our time, energy, and passion by giving an amount of money that feels good and healthy to both you and us.
We suggest a range of $120-360 CAD. And we request a minimum contribution of $120 to recognize the administrative/logistic costs and support for running the retreat.
For more information on dāna click here.
If you are taking this retreat online, we will provide guidelines to help you create a supportive environment and structure.
In general, we request you devote your full attention to the retreat for the weekend, including:
- Block out the retreat duration from appointments and activities, so you can be focused on the retreat for this entire period, using this time and participating in the retreat as if you were at Clear Sky in person.
- Participate in all of the daily classes and group practices via online streaming (class recordings will be available on pre-agreement for those in a time zone where live attendance is not feasible)
- Set up a quiet space or location where you can focus on the retreat, and not need to engage in conversation or work with others.
- Set aside your phone, digital devices and other distractions.
- If there are enough people in the same time zone as you, you could also make a cohort to meet to do a group practice throughout the retreat.
- We welcome any questions. Please feel free to contact duncan@clearskycenter.org.
Specific times may change but the below gives an initial guide to the expected schedule. Times are in MST Mountain Standard Time.
Saturday 16th:
9.30 am – Welcome / intro class
10.30 am – Group meditation
11.00 am – Break
11.15 am – Class and group exercises / Q&A
12.15 pm – Break
12.30 pm – Lunch , time for rest, walking, individual meditation
2.30 pm – Afternoon class and exercises/Q&A
3.30 pm – Group meditation
4-6 pm – Open time for exploring exercises, or onsite / land activity
6 pm – Dinner
7.30 pm – Q&A/short class and group meditation
Sunday 16th:
7.30 am – morning group meditation
8.30 am – breakfast
9.30 am – class and exercises/Q&A
10.30 am – Group meditation
11.00 am – break
11.15 am – Free time for exploring the exercises and individual meditation
12.15 pm – break
12.30 pm – lunch, rest, walking, individual practice
2.30 pm – Afternoon class and exercises
3.30 pm – Group meditation
3.30- – 4pm – Closing circle
Click here for details on how to get here, what to bring and what to expect.
We aim to make our retreats as accessible as possible.
As a centre run entirely by Karma Yoga (selfless service), retreat fees only cover food, accommodation and the equipment required to offer them online.
The teachings themselves are offered on the basis of Dāna (pay-from-the-heart).
For some, this is still a barrier of entry.
If you are seeking financial assistance to attend a retreat, please complete a Scholarship Application form.