This is an excerpt from Trudy Goodman’s InsightLA blog about the value of meditation retreats:

We live in a culture that doesn’t teach us how to nourish ourselves in truly fulfilling ways. Taking a day or a week or a month or more for retreat, at home or in a group, can provide the protected, safe space we need to deepen our trust in experience, to discover what we really want in this life, and to fall in love. We fall in love with life, with the miracle of awareness, with this vast reality we inhabit together.

As lay people devoted to a life of mindfulness and awakening, we are creating beautiful contemplative forms that allow us to weave loving awareness into our everyday lives. Learning from our teachers and ancestors, we respectfully bow to the ancient wisdom traditions while experimenting and inventing our own.

The forms of our Vipassana/Mindfulness/Insight meditation retreats have matured to allow us to attune our inner rhythms to the immense current of universal life flowing through us, as us. Finding our way on retreat requires some patience, but it’s well worth it. Yes, it takes effort to stop, to let our guard down, and feel safe enough to let the heart open and the bodymind unwind. Then effort surrenders to relaxing more and more in the wholeness of life as it is, and from this relaxation there can be an illuminating encounter with unknown parts of ourselves, and with the mystery of being – DIVE IN!

For the full post, go here.