Join us for a personal retreat mid-week and some optional gentle yoga and meditation.  Enjoy the tranquillity of the space and embrace the art of doing nothing – seriously. This time out offers a slower rhythm, allowing you to step back from the busyness of life and find peace within.

As winter softens into spring, we invite you for three days and two nights of dedicated Zen practice at the Buddhist Retreat Centre. Inspired by the spirit of a traditional Zen sesshin, this midweek zazenkai offers an opportunity to settle deeply into stillness, simplicity, and wholehearted presence. A zazenkai is an informal gathering of practitioners who commit to sitting together with sincerity and quiet resolve. The emphasis is on silent practice rather than instruction, allowing participants to discover the clarity that emerges through sustained sitting. It offers a taste of sesshin without the intensity of a full week, creating a spacious yet disciplined container for meditation, silence, and contemplation. Here in the valley, we honour this tradition by returning, again and again, to the breath, the body, and this very moment. Each moment of practice is unique and complete, asking nothing of us except our willingness to be present. Whether you are new to Zen or have an established meditation practice, you are warmly welcome. Bring your breath, your body, and an open heart as we welcome the arrival of Spring together.

“Whenever your heart space, your mind space, and your body space are all present and accounted for at the same time, you can experience pure presence, a moment of deep inner connection with the pure, gratuitous Being of anything and everything. It will often be experienced as a quiet leap of joy in the heart.” -Richard Rohr

Through somatics, movement, mindfulness, music and poetry, let’s tune and harmonize the instruments of body, mind and heart.

Our bodies, minds and hearts are the instruments of perception through which we experience the world. When those are open, spacious and free, our experience of life is marvelous and joyful.
This weekend we will explore a variety of modalities to see where we might be contracted, clouded, or tight in body, mind and heart and gently open and expand into their true nature. These include gentle somatic movement for releasing tensions in the body, exercises for developing nervous system flexibility, yoga nidra deep rest practice, meditations that focus on the 3 centres and music and poetry inspired by these. We will look at the role of stress in developing tensions and how to work skilfully with stress.

During this retreat we will experience the larger systems that shape and support human life. Through Family and Systems Constellations, we will explore how family patterns, loyalties, and inherited dynamics continue to influence our relationships, choices, and inner life. This allows us to see patterns clearly, and to emerge with a deeper sense of connection to ourselves and our ancestors.

Alongside this, we will draw on nature-based systems and rhythms, the African medicine wheel, cycles, symbol, art, and music. The intelligence of the natural world, reminds us that healing and orientation arise through rhythm, relationship, and attentive presence. Together, these two streams meet in a larger supportive holding field.

In our fast paced lives, we need the time to find quiet and calm. With this quiet we find the resilience to face the world and all that comes our way. Through Asana (posture), pranayama (breath control) and meditation practice as well as periods of silence, we give ourselves time to uncoil and find space mentally and physically. This space gives breath to our emotional well-being. This retreat is suitable for yoga students who would like to experience Iyengar yoga and those who would like to deepen their understanding and practice of Iyengar yoga.

Zhan Zhuang (‘Standing like a Tree’) Chi Kung is unlike most other Chi Kung styles, in that with the exception of changing from one static posture to the next, as well as a few gentle steps to finish off one’s practice, the practitioner remains absolutely still, whilst cultivating a mind like still water. Regarded by many contemporary Masters as the most powerful of all Chi Kung practices, it opens all of the nine energy portals in the body, and encourages one’s Chi (life force) to flow powerfully throughout one’s entire being, to work its magic on the internal organs. In this retreat Paul will teach the Six Posture Zhan Zhuang Set, which assists in developing a strong physical structure as well as creating a greater supply of healing Chi to promote health, vitality and an increase in physical energy. The benefits of Zhan Zhuang also include the cultivation of a better posture as well as reducing tension in one’s muscles, thereby assisting the practitioner to live their life in a more relaxed manner.

This workshop is an invitation to reconnect with your inner strength, clarity, and self-trust. The lioness symbolizes power, intuition and authentic leadership. Through Guided imagery, nature-based rituals and reflective dialogues you will explore what nourishes your strength, what you are ready to release, and how you wish to shape your path forward. The retreat draws on biophilia - our deep connection to the living world - and uses the lioness as a symbol for empowering yourself. By reconnecting with your inner wisdom, you gain access to inner resources such as courage, resilience and inner stability. This workshop is for women who feel the call for change, who sense that more is possible and wish to move toward  a good future with clarity and trust.

I wait for the mountains and rivers to reclaim their shapes.
There is no light in the deepest hours of the night.
Yet, I know you are there in the depth of the night. (Thich Nhat Hanh)
In this writing retreat amid nature, we explore the bond between writing and meditation. We write and meditate on the many changes and transformations we experience as we journey along the river of our lives. We consider how creativity steadies the boat and how writing helps us dip the oars into dark water so we may navigate the river safely.

This Life so short, this craft so long to learn (Chaucer)
This retreat is for those who wish to begin or develop a piece of writing. We listen, observe, attend and allow the text to take us where it wants to go. We get out of the way so we can be spoken and written through. We move between input and silent writing time. Like the potter, we spin, shape and fire our words so they can find their simple beauty.

This 5 -7 night Open the Heart And Still the Mind retreat is an immersion into nourishing and ennobling silence and is an opportunity to cultivate and deepen your meditation practice with the heart-based focus of metta and self-compassion, with a particular focus on burnout and healing into well-being. The retreat now offers a 5 to 7 night option and is fully CPD accredited, including 3 ethics points.

Sue offers an integration of the psychological and spiritual dimensions of this path of compassionate awareness, combining more than 40 years of meditation practice with her extensive experience as a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist. In response to the prevalence of emotional depletion & burnout which Sue is encountering, she has shifted the focus of this retreat to meet this growing need to understand the role of self-compassion as a protection against burnout, depression and anxiety.

We will draw on the support of nature and the teachings that are revealed by practising in the exquisite environment of the Buddhist Retreat Centre, where the truths of impermanence and our inter-connectedness express themselves daily, through the beauty and wisdom of the ever-changing conditions.
We will cultivate a safe and nourishing home within, inspired by the wisdom and practices of the Brahma Viharas (the Four Immeasurables), which deepen our capacity for loving- kindness (metta), spacious inner freedom, appreciative joy and compassionate wisdom and action.

In addition to the silent and guided meditations in all postures, there will be daily qigong, gentle yoga and additional, optional massages offered to enhance our embodied experience. Sue will include short, individual sessions throughout the retreat, as well as time for reflection, journaling, walks in nature and deeply replenishing rest.

A 30-50 minute pre-retreat individual session via Zoom/Whatsapp is required for newcomers or if you have not attended one of Sue’s residential retreats before. This provides greater containment and enhances and deepens the silent retreat experience for yourself and for the group. The fee for this will be the 30-50 minute medical aid rate and will be reduced if you are not on medical aid. Please contact Sue on to arrange a time.

CPD accreditation for Health, Mental Health and Allied professionals is confirmed (includes ethics) with an annual admin fee of R475.