Hosts: Melissa B Appleton and Suniti Dernovsek
Join Melissa and Suniti this September for our annual retreat on Salt Spring Island. Stowel Lake Farm is a thriving organic farm, retreat center, and community, located on 100 acres of mixed forests, fields, rocky outcrops and rolling hills. The food, the facilities and the land are an exceptional venue to meet all the right elements of retreat.
This retreat is in the spirit of Zen, Buddhism, and tending to the body with love. It will be about the simple treasures of practice. Beautifully bare bones. Our time together will be a blend of traditional yoga practice, silence, stillness, connection, breath, sound, the ground and deep rest. Together we are gently resurrecting bodies of goodness.
Spirit of Zen was designed to offer a good taste of the tradition, ritual and form of a Buddhist meditation retreat while also considering accessibility for those who feel more monastic forms of retreat present barriers to attend. We offer this retreat with the heart of a householder, deep respect for the complexities of 21st century living and those who have experienced trauma.
Suniti and Melissa met leading a Zen retreat in the Canadian alpine with Michael Stone. Endless giggles, creativity and liberating conversations keep them coming back together. Suniti and Melissa share curiosities about relationships, marriage, intimacy, parenthood, aging, work, community life and broadening perspectives in tender ways.
This retreat welcomes diversity in gender, race and form. There will be four bursaries offered to people of the BIPOC and LGBTGQ+ community as a means to remove financial barriers to participation for those whose lived experience is perpetually laced with institutional bias and discrimination. We are grateful for the generosity of former retreat guests who make this possible. An application for bursary is available here: (link) and completed forms can be sent to our retreat coordinator, Melissa at melissaberryappleton@gmail.com. Individuals representing marginalized people who are actively engaged in outreach or social justice initiatives are highly encouraged to apply, in the hopes that these teachings may ripple out to the communities in which you serve.
