Four Foundations of Mindfulness Retreat

2 - 7 April 2025 | Healesville, Vic, Australia
With Nique Murch and Timothea Goddard

This silent retreat is suitable for anyone wishing to deepen his or her practice and cultivate further understanding of the wisdom teachings underpinning mindfulness practices. These teachings and practices will emphasise connecting to embodied experience, quieting the mind, opening the heart, and developing clarity and insight in order to explore and release suffering.

We will also consider our relationship to the suffering in the world more broadly – in the light of the emerging climate crisis, growing habits of device immersion and how this affects ourselves and our loved ones. A question might be: how can we use our practice and wisdom to investigate and choose our own responses to these challenges? We hope to create some space to reflect together, and cultivate some intelligent and tender care for our own lives, for the human community and the natural world.

This retreat will offer silent periods of stillness and moving meditation, yoga as well as group and individual discussions with the teachers. Teachers will also offer daily talks and systematic meditation instructions that are imbued with the spirit of kindness and compassion. The quiet, continuity, spaciousness and good company will support you in developing an open, flexible and dynamic practice.

Prerequisites

Anyone is welcome to attend this inner adventure! However as this is a silent meditation retreat with intensive periods of practice, it will be beneficial for people to have had some practice of mindfulness meditation beforehand (e.g. having completed the 8 week MBSR, MBCT or MiCBT course). Do be in touch if need be to check your suitability before enrolling.

This is a device free retreat

In order for your heart, mind and nervous system can re-find its natural capacity for settling, we invite you to relinquish electronic devices and a constant state of being on and doing. Thnis allows for deepening. We'll ask that you refrain from using electronics, including phones, internet connected smartwatches, tablets, laptops etc during the retreat. Program staff will be happy to hold and safeguard your devices for the duration of the retreat if this is helpful to you. There will be of course an emergency contact number to give to your family should the need arise.

A regular wristwatch to keep time will be useful for the week.

Who is this retreat for?

for anyone wishing to deepen their practice and cultivate further understanding of the wisdom teachings underpinning mindfulness practices.

What the retreat offers

This traditional insight meditation retreat will offer silent periods of sitting and walking meditation, yoga as well group and individual teacher meetings..

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Details

Prices

Standard Rate
Standard Price - $1795 (ing GST)
*This is the usual rate for this type of event and the rate we ask you to select if you are able.

Supporting Rate
Standard Rate - $1895 (inc GST)
*This rate is slightly higher than the usual rate for this type of event. Selecting this option is a way of supporting others to attend mindfulness events that they otherwise might not be able to attend. If you are able to select this option the MTIA guarantees that the additional funds will be directly channelled into supporting others to access mindfulness teaching who otherwise couldn’t afford it.

Subsidised Rate
Standard Rate - $1695 (inc GST)
*This is a self-select funded rate whereby your place will be supported by other full paying participants. Please select this rate if you are in receipt of benefits or would find it otherwise inaccessible to attend due to the fee. We will not ask for evidence at this stage but may ask for evidence to support your claim in the future.

Date and Time

Dates
2 - 7 April 2025
Times
Arrive any time from 12:30pm. Starts 2pm Wednesday and concludes 2 pm Monday.

Venue and Catering

Maitripa Centre
528 Myers Creek Road
Healesville, VIC 3777

All rooms are single rooms.

Vegetarian Cuisine provided by Maitripa's in-house caterers.

How to get there

If you are arriving at Melbourne Airport and would like to share taxi / mini-bus transport costs to the Maitripa Centre, please let Caroline know and she will connect you with others so you can organise your transport together. Please book flights to be available to catch a bus / taxi by 11.00 am on the 2nd April 2024.

If you depart the Maitripa Centre at 2pm on 16th April you will arrive at the airport at 3.30pm, so book return domestic flights from 4.30pm (5.30pm for International flights).

On the 7th April 2023 allow 1.30 hours travel time in from the Maitripa Centre to the Airport.

**Please allow a little more travel time from Melbourne if you are travelling in peak times**

Refund Policy

A 90% refund will be issued if cancellation is received up to two months before the event.

A 50% refund will be issued up to one month before the event.

However, in either of those two circumstances, if a substitute person can be found so that MTI is not impacted financially there will be a full refund less 10% admin fee.

No refunds will be issued after 10 March, 2024 except in extenuating circumstances.

If you are in any doubt about your suitability for the retreat, do be in touch in advance before enrolling to avoid cancellation fees.

Notice of cancellation must be provided to MTI via email and will be confirmed via reply email. MTI cannot accept responsibility for correspondence that is delayed or for failure of delivery.

In the unlikely event the retreat is cancelled by the organisers, registration fees will be fully refunded. No liability will be accepted for travel, accommodation or other costs / expenses incurred by participants.

Teachers

Timothea Goddard

BA, Dip Psych (ANZAP) Workplace Trainer, Cert V, Yoga Teacher (YA500H)

Timothea Goddard is recognised as a pioneer in bringing MBSR to Australia over the past 15 years being the first in Australia to complete the training and be accredited as an MBSR teacher through the Center for Mindfulness, UMass Medical Center, USA; she maintains strong professional links with the international community. Timothea has worked in private practice for 30 years as a psychotherapist, educator and workplace trainer, having trained in humanistic, psychodynamic and body-based psychotherapy as well as comprehensive training in MiCBT, and basic training in ACT, Breathworks, .B, and Mindful Schools. She is also a Level II graduate in Internal Family Systems. Recently she has been accredited as a yoga teacher with specialist training in Trauma Sensitive Yoga. Since 2007, she has been offering MBSR training and supervision for health professionals and others.

Timothea also works with organisations to design and implement sustainable and effective mindfulness based programs. She is a long time student of yoga, Aikido and meditation and practices in the Insight tradition. She is the Director of Openground – an Australia-wide network of clinicians and teachers offering MBSR and related programs. She is involved in ongoing research projects in co-operation with post-graduate students in Australian universities on the impact on the MBSR program on anxiety, depression, empathy and self compassion. She is a founding director of MTI. She is passionate about pedagogy – the art of teaching and learning - and brings great curiosity about this process to her teaching and training.

Nique Murch

B.A. Dip.,Adult Education, Feldenkrais Practitioner, Dip. Mi

Nique has a rich background in adult education teaching movement, improvisation and critical literacies. She has practiced meditation in both Eastern and Western traditions over many years, experiencing first hand how effective ontological approaches can be in the management of stress and pain. She has trained in Mindfulness-based interventions with Openground, the Centre for Mindfulness (University of Massachusetts) and Breathworks in the UK. Nique has been facilitating MBSR since 2006, and tutors with the Mindfulness Training Institute of Australasia. She also works with the Humour Foundation - gleefully practicing radical simplicity as an elder clown with people in group residences.

What is a secular retreat?

Secular means "of our age".

We offer retreats that are open to people of any and no faith. Our retreats are informed by both ancient knowledge and contemporary understandings about human flourishing, including scientific findings about health and well-being.

While mindfulness is a natural human capacity, we draw explicitly on the very practical teachings of the Buddha, which describe experiences that are shared by all humans. We bring understandings from Buddhist psychology to inquire into the nature of suffering and how to incline the mind towards freedom. We bring an interest in the the fields of neuroscience and psychology which continue to expand our understandings of how to live a fulfilling life with less struggle, and to make links to practical teachings that have existed for thousands of years.

Our retreats makes the practical learning from Buddhism, as well as modern science, available in an ordinary, secular and accessible way that is applicable in your everyday life.

Awake. Alive. Present.