Big Bear Retreat Center

07/19/2025

Compassion for Couples, next weekend! Last chance to join: registration closes this Monday! Limited last minute spots available.

Join us for this special couple’s weekend workshop retreat, Compassion for Couples: Holding Ourselves and Others with Kindness, July 25-27.

Teacher update! Dr. Steven Hickman will be joining the retreat teaching team. Join Michelle and Steve as they lead a beautiful weekend of connection, self reflection, and cultivation of compassion and kindness.

During this weekend, we will practice mindfulness and compassion to build relational skills through a combination of:
❤️ meditation
❤️ experiential exercises
❤️ didactic learning
❤️ discussion

You’ll spend time cultivating compassion with your partner, and you’ll also have time to share what you are learning in the supportive community of other couples learning alongside you. 

Compassion for Couples is a wonderful opportunity for you and your partner to build a strong and healthy foundation for your relationship and develop the skills to help navigate the difficulties that arise within us and between us.

Genuinely loving relationship is the practice for which all other practices are preparation. It’s likely that you already know how much we all need healthy, well connected relationships to thrive…but also that relationships can be really challenging.

Compassion for Couples is a wonderful opportunity for you and your partner to build a strong and healthy foundation for your relationship and develop the skills to help navigate the difficulties that arise within us and between us. Compassion can help us hold ourselves and others with kindness, even in the midst of difficulty. And that creates the resilience we need for our relationships to thrive.

With compassion at the core of our relationships we can risk being vulnerable with each other. After all we need to be seen and accepted for who we truly are for connection and intimacy to flourish. Find your way back to each other or safeguard the connection you already have by joining us for Compassion for Couples.

12/17/2024

This week’s Lunchtime Mindfulness will be offered by Heidi Bourne. All are welcome, free to join. Online Wednesdays at 12pm PST.

In March 2025, Heidi will be leading (with Laurie Cousins ) the Sacred Path of Connection and Belonging, a nature retreat for female-identified folks. Heidi is the founder and guiding teacher of Pacific Mindfulness and she teaches regularly at Spirit Rock Meditation Center.

See you Wednesday for a chance to pause, practice and connect in community.

12/10/2024

This week’s Lunchtime Mindfulness will be offered by Kimber Simpkins. All are welcome, free to join. Online Wednesdays at 12pm PST.

Kimber recently led a beautiful retreat on the land with .somatics, Ancestors Welcome Here.

This week, Kimber will offer a practice on Equanimity.

See you Wednesday for a chance to pause, practice and connect in community.

11/24/2024

“Energy is our most precious resource, for it is the means through which we transform our creative potential into meaningful action.” Tarthang Tulku

The New Year is a powerful threshold. Buddhist traditions have long emphasized the importance of setting clear and conscious intentions in our spiritual life and engagement in the world. In this New Year’s retreat you will be invited to listen deeply, reflect, restore, and create new possibilities. You will be guided through a unique journey of embodiment – bridging dharma and dance, stillness and motion, personal and collective awakening.

Awakening in the New Year with Deborah Eden Tull and Enrique Collazo: A Dharma and Dance Retreat
December 30, 2024 - January 4, 2025


The transition to a New Year beckons with possibility and renewal. If we open to this invitation with wonder, curiosity, and courage, we can touch into wise-hearted guidance within and also the embrace and support of the entire cosmos. All are welcome; experienced meditators and those new to practice, and experienced dancers and those new to movement/embodiment practice.

11/10/2024

This retreat is a few weeks away. If you’re considering it we very much recommend. You’ll be held with an incredible teaching team, community, and container on the topic.

Ancestors Welcome Here: Healing Practices for White Practitioners Committed to Racial Justice
December 3 - 8, 2024
With Ream, Kimber Simpkins and Em Morrison

**Join us for this special retreat offering in silence and relational practice**
**Sliding scale, flexible payment options**

In a container of silent and non-silent practice we will explore healing, and the action we can take to end injustice in the world, with the support of our wise and loving ancestors, the Earth and all our relationships.

We all come from people who lived in interdependence with each other and connection with the Earth. Welcoming and honoring ancestors is an ancient spiritual practice found in many cultures and traditions, including those of European lands. This retreat invites a reconnection to our lineages through meditation, healing and repair, so that we can know ourselves and our inherent belonging more deeply.

Practices we will be in together include: directly engaging with our ancestors of lineage, including those we inherited by birth and those we claim such as spiritual and political lineages, working with unhealed patterns in order to relate more wisely and compassionately to ourselves and our people, inviting connection with the Earth through tending our relationship to land and spirit by offering gratitude, and listening and receiving the Earth’s wisdom. This ancestral healing work makes it possible for us to more fully embody our commitment to racial justice.

11/05/2024

The Dharma of Desire: From Longing to Loving Presence
with Trudy Goodman and Lisa Ernst
November 13 - 17, 2024 (Thursday - Sunday)

Registration closes this week (Thursday November 7th at 11:59pm PST). We look forward to seeing you here next week if you’re already signed up, and invite you to consider joining us.

What does it mean to shift from longing to loving presence? Trudy offers more on this theme…

~
Dear Friends,

So much of the teaching I received early in my practice was about the dangers of desire and longing, that this was just clinging and attachment. It felt wrong to want anything – if I want something, I’m refusing to accept things as they are. It’s true that desire, when not seen mindfully, can occlude our clarity and ability to be present with experience, which is what we practice being able to do.

What lies underneath the wanting? I know for me personally, sometimes I find myself opening the refrigerator looking for a snack, hopefully something sweet or chocolatey, without being mindful about why I’m distracting myself, maybe turning away from a challenging task or tricky email. There’s nothing wrong with sweets or chocolate, in moderation of course; but too often, using substances for comfort leads to unhealthy or unskillful habits.

The healthiest longing is for awakening! Don’t you long to be awake — clear, unconfused, able to handle the experiences you’re having? I know this is something I’ve wanted in my life. Wouldn’t it be good to be at ease in your own skin, in your relationships with different kinds of people? The desire to learn how to be calm and relaxed, to feel unworried and open-hearted wherever you are is healthy and wise.

I invite you to join us this fall for a deeper dive into this topic at Big Bear Retreat Center, The Dharma of Desire: From Longing to Loving Presence, November 13-17, 2024.

Sincerely,
Trudy Goodman
~

09/20/2024

Join us tomorrow Saturday 10:30am PST for this special live online event with Diana Winston. This special live Q&A will be a chance to connect, learn more about the teachers, and about the upcoming retreat on the land and online. A recording will be available on our YouTube channel after.

To register and join Saturday’s event, visit bigbearretreatcenter.org/upcoming-retreats (link in bio)

Diana, Booker and Vadan (movement) with will be leading the Awakening Mindfulness and Compassion retreat October 1-6. Online and in-person options to attend the retreat.

❤️

09/08/2024

08/14/2024

"There is no need to control our thoughts, because when we practice we have committed ourselves to letting them be—not judging them as good or bad, spiritual or not spiritual, helpful or harmful. Is there any other activity that can accommodate the mind and its various arisings in this way?"

Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche's advice for time management: organize your schedule, let go of distractions, and make a clear aspiration to practice.

07/24/2024

You Are Enough ❤️
August 18, 2024 10 am - 12 pm PST
*A special dana offering of mindfulness and sound healing*

Through guided meditation, a sound bath with crystal singing bowls, lo-fi hip hop and more, meditation teacher and musician Ofosu Jones-Quartey (aka Born I) will deliver a special offering designed to help you deepen your self-compassion practice and share practical tools to bring self-kindness and self-compassion into your daily life. The goal of this event is for you to truly experience and understand that You Are Enough.

To register for this retreat please visit: https://bigbearretreatcenter.org/retreats/1139/you-are-enough-mindful-self-compassion-soundbath-music

07/18/2024

6 years ago today, the land that our beautiful center is on was purchased! ♥️

We’re deeply grateful to all that have helped us create this container of respite, expansion and curiosity. We are also honored to have teachers, organizers, retreat managers and attendees that return every year. We’re excited to see how this center continues to evolve and meet the needs of those looking for connection and healing. Thank you! 🙏🏽

07/03/2024

"As humans we have an intuitive leaning into this direction, there is a part of us that knows that when we come into contact with things as they actually are, there is a harmony there. There is a relief in being in harmony with things as they actually are." - Celeste Young

Ayya Santacitta and Celeste Young held an online retreat, The Dharma is Made for These Times: An Exploration of the Four Distortions of Perception.The 4 Dist...