A Drop In The Ocean

A Drop In The Ocean

A Somatic Practice Retreat

Finca de la Jara, Costa de la Luz, Andalucia, Spain

May 20th – May 29th 2020

This retreat - will be a 10 day, community gathering of Dharma Ocean practitioners in rural Andalucia, Spain. This outdoor retreat will seek to deepen our most profound connection to the Earth, while exploring our relationship to the three kayas.

The retreat is about practice and the evolution of practice, from the individual to the whole, from Ego to Eco. It is a peer community event and a co-creation opportunity for Sangha practitioners.

This is intended to be a broadly based, structured retreat programme, created to reflect a pragmatic approach to developing our practice to be relevant to the way we live, work and interact in the World.

Aside from regular daily sitting practice, there will also be movement sessions based on the principles of yoga, tai chi and qigong to establish a firm grounding for somatic awareness in the body.

There will also be a host of unique opportunities to explore and practice meditation deep in natural wilderness and at a number of local, sacred sites of spiritual significance. These include the ancient cork forests of Andalucia, Paleolithic standing prayer stones, Neolithic burial tombs and ceremonial cave systems.

The evening programme will provide a space for listening, discussion and sharing including engagement with a curated programme of sacred music and poetry.

The schedule will allow for a generous amount of self-structured, free time for the mindful exploration of local culture, history and places of interest.

This will not be a silent retreat as the intention is to work on developing a sense of community between practitioners in an effort to establish a thriving support network once participants have returned home. Nevertheless, there will be mutually agreed spaces for silence outside practice.

As further details of the schedule are published, attendees will be encouraged to become involved in contributing to the programme.

The retreat centre borders the cork forests of Los Alcornocales, home to a vast array of flora, fauna and wildlife. While nearby cosmopolitan town of Tarifa, just 12km across the Straits of Gibraltar from Morocco, has a rich and fascinating history together with some of the best beaches in Europe.

The location is off-grid and self-sufficient with all power generated by the sun and the wind and all water pumped from a nearby well. All food will be fresh, locally sourced and organic.