Relaxing into the Ground of Being
With Silabodhi and Tejapushpa
September 5 - 12, 2025
This formless ground is variously called mind-as-such, big mind, awareness, no-self, source, true nature, Self, sunyata, Buddha-nature. Drawing on Dzogchen and Mahamudra texts to guide us, our starting point will be grounding ourselves in embodied meditation. As Padmasambhava said "Relax - do not force your mind or body' and "Know this one thing and everything is freed - remain within your inner nature, your Awareness". Recognising that we are trapped in self referential thoughts and beliefs that cause our suffering and separate us from the peace and freedom of our true nature: we will offer somatic and heart-based practices and…
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The Other Side Of Insight
With Paramananda
September 19 - October 3, 2025
Insight is often approached through various methods oriented to deconstructing our deep–rooted conceptions that support the idea of a fixed self. However, this approach may sometimes seem to neglect the importance of compassion, love and beauty in preparing the ground for insight to take root. On this meditation retreat, which will be conducted largely in silence, we will emphasise the role of emotion and collective practice as a way of opening the heart and expanding the feeling of self to include others and the world. Paramananda has been leading retreats for over thirty years and has a distinctive style that…
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Illumined by the Limitless: Shinran and re-imagining ‘practice’ **Order Retreat**
With Maitrisiddhi
October 3 - 12, 2025
What if we re-imagine ‘world’ as sacred, as ‘Buddha’, as compassionate towards us? What if we meet ourselves with total honesty, as flawed, karmically conditioned beings? What if we allow ourselves to deeply realise the ego’s failure to ‘manufacture’ awakening, no matter how hard we try? What if, instead, we entrust ourselves to our connection with the Dharma, and simply live our relationship with the sacred - with “Amida” or ‘the limitless’? And what if we awaken into knowing our finite selves to be illumined by the infinite? With his radical teaching of entrusting to Other Power, Shinran explored the…
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Compassion and Emptiness
With Tejananda
October 17 - 24, 2025
The Buddha taught the divine abodes – unconditional love, compassion, joy and equanimity – not just as states of calm, but as ways to liberate the mind. The Brahmavihara practices enable us to cultivate these qualities and to engage with our afflictive emotions – craving, hatred and ‘ignoring’ – in relation to them. In doing so, we’re already engaging with insightful perspectives. Sooner or later, we’re likely to start glimpsing the uncultivated, unlimited, unconditional nature of these qualities, free from afflictions. We’ll explore these possibilities in the first part of the retreat from a perspective of deep, embodied awareness and…
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Vajraloka Autumn Work Retreat
With Vajraloka Team
October 30 - November 3, 2025
Experience living and working with others in beautiful North Wales this autumn. We're looking for people to help us with some gardening, cleaning and decorating. A structure of daily work periods with meditation and ritual means you'll get to have a retreat, experience sangha and support Vajraloka. Anyone who has been on retreat at Vajraloka before, and can do physical work, is invited to come on a work retreat free of charge.
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Looking at the Nature of Mind **Order Retreat**
With Prakasha
November 7 - 16, 2025
When your body is rightly poised, and your mind absorbed deep in meditation, you may feel that thought and mind both disappear. Yet this is but the surface experience of Dhyana. With constant practice, one feels radiant awareness shining like a brilliant lamp. It is pure and bright like a flower. It is like staring into the vast and empty sky. This spacious awareness is limpid and transparent, yet vivid.' Milarepa In the story of the Shepherd's Search for Mind, a young boy meets the great yogin Milarepa at the entrance of a mountain cave. He is given a profound…
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The Awakening Heart and the Divine Abodes
With Rijumitra and Tejananda
November 21 - 30, 2025
Bodhicitta – the awakening heart – is both the heart–response of wisdom to the suffering of living beings everywhere and the urge to realise full awakening for the benefit of all. This retreat will focus on love, compassion, joy and equanimity – the four ‘divine abodes’ or brahmaviharas – in the context of cultivating bodhicitta. To support this, we’ll also introduce tonglen, the ‘sending and receiving’ practice which opens the heart to universal compassion. The divine abodes are also known as the ‘boundless states’,¬ because they are inclusive of all living beings without exception. The practices that we’ll explore together…
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2025 Practice Retreat 1
With Vajraloka Team
December 20 - 27, 2025
**Please note that this retreat runs from Saturday to Saturday** The main feature of these popular retreats is that they allow retreatants to follow the themes and rhythms emerging in their own meditation practice. In some ways they can be compared to going on solitary retreat while offering the support and structure that practising in the company of others can bring. While the practice retreats have no formal teaching input, the daily programme can be tailored to meet the needs of the individual, with support from Vajraloka team members. The simple programme has periods of morning and afternoon meditation with…
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2025 Practice Retreat 2
With Vajraloka Team
December 27, 2025 - January 3, 2026
**Please note that this retreat runs from Saturday to Saturday** The main feature of these popular retreats is that they allow retreatants to follow the themes and rhythms emerging in their own meditation practice. In some ways they can be compared to going on solitary retreat while offering the support and structure that practising in the company of others can bring. While the practice retreats have no formal teaching input, the daily programme can be tailored to meet the needs of the individual, with support from Vajraloka team members. The simple programme has periods of morning and afternoon meditation with…
More info ...
Satipatthana: the Buddha’s teaching on mindfulness
With Tejananda and Prajnapriya
January 9 - 18, 2026
The Satipatthana Sutta, one of the most influential of the Buddha’s discourses, shows how wakeful, insightful attention to body, feelings and mind can enable us to wake up to our true nature. This radically transformative teaching is described as a ‘direct path’ to the cessation of suffering. Offering effective approaches that address the alienation and disembodiment which characterise life today, it can restore a deep integrity of body, heart, mind and being. In this retreat, we’ll explore a number of practice approaches inspired by the original mindfulness teachings attributed to the Buddha that take awareness, insight and compassion ever deeper.…
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The Radical Embrace
With Singhashri and Balajit
January 23 - 30, 2026
How can we learn to embrace ourselves, others and the world more deeply and radically, with awareness and compassion? Together we will meet ourselves where we are, with appreciation and curiosity, inviting all our disparate selves into a space of acceptance and presence. We will draw on resources like grounding, nature, simple mindful movements, neuroscience and creative ritual. We’ll explore our capacity to discover and dwell in more expansive qualities of absorption and deepen our confidence to turn towards those places within us that are stuck, restricted and painful. Doing this, we’ll learn to liberate restricted energies, break the spell…
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The Brahmaviharas: a complete path
With Rijumitra and Tejapushpa
February 6 - 15, 2026
Do we dare to turn towards suffering or even the joy of the world? Do we dare to remain open to experience and see the truth of situations unfold? Do we dare to respond? Subtly, we turn away from life and dull down. This retreat will challenge this habitual response and give you the tools to turn towards experience and embrace it with the love and responsiveness of the Brahmaviharas. We will engage with the Brahmaviharas drawing out both their active and receptive components and show how they can be a complete path to awakening.
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Dhyana Through the Body – Re-evaluating Dhyana
With Tejananda
February 20 - March 1, 2026
“Quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states… one suffuses, fills, and permeates one’s entire body with rapture and pleasure born of seclusion, so that there is no part of one’s whole body that is not pervaded by it.” AN 5.28 On this retreat, we’ll be offering embodied approaches to dhyana (jhāna) that people have found to be helpful and effective. This may well involve questioning both our own views and approaches, and a good deal of what the tradition has to say about dhyana. Dhyana is far more than samatha, or mental calm. Recognising the liberative potential of…
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Relaxing into the Ground of Being
With Tejapushpa and Silabodhi
March 21 - 29, 2026
**Please note that this retreat starts on a Saturday** This formless ground is variously called mind-as-such, big mind, awareness, no-self, source, true nature, Self, sunyata, Buddha-nature. Drawing on Dzogchen and Mahamudra texts to guide us, our starting point will be grounding ourselves in embodied meditation. As Padmasambhava said "Relax - do not force your mind or body' and "Know this one thing and everything is freed - remain within your inner nature, your Awareness". Recognising that we are trapped in self referential thoughts and beliefs that cause our suffering and separate us from the peace and freedom of our true…
More info ...
Wake Up, Just Sit
With Rijumitra
April 3 - 10, 2026
+ Cittamoksa & Akshayapradipa "Just Sitting" is perhaps the most regal of all meditation practices. It could even be said that it goes beyond meditation. When asked how to practice "just sitting," Sangharakshita simply replied, "You just sit." This captures the essence. However, many find that "just sitting" often turns into endless mental chatter. This compulsive, deluded thinking, known as prapanca, is not the true nature of just sitting. Clearly, this is not what Sangharakshita intended. How do we truly embrace this simple practice? During this retreat, we'll explore direct and effective methods to quiet the mental noise. This will…
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Illumined by the Limitless: Shinran and re-imagining ‘practice’ **Order Retreat**
With Maitrisiddhi
April 17 - 26, 2026
What if we re-imagine ‘world’ as sacred, as ‘Buddha’, as compassionate towards us? What if we meet ourselves with total honesty, as flawed, karmically conditioned beings? What if we allow ourselves to deeply realise the ego’s failure to ‘manufacture’ awakening, no matter how hard we try? What if, instead, we entrust ourselves to our connection with the Dharma, and simply live our relationship with the sacred - with “Amida” or ‘the limitless’? And what if we awaken into knowing our finite selves to be illumined by the infinite? With his radical teaching of entrusting to Other Power, Shinran explored the…
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Entering Indra’s Net: Practising with Image
With Kavaradhi and Padmasagara
May 1 - 8, 2026
The intriguing image of Indra’s Net depicts a vast net with a jewel woven into each knot. Every jewel reflects every other jewel in an infinite myriad of singular images. In our minds many images arise, but how do we engage with image in a way that is opening and creative rather than constricting and proliferating. How do we incline to images that liberate and resource us as opposed to images that entice and fool us. With our meditation firmly grounded in right view, embodied awareness and metta, we can open up to the potency of image. On this retreat…
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A Vajraloka Taster
With Vajraloka Team
May 29 - June 5, 2026
Take your meditation to the next level! On this retreat we have dropped the requirement for having an established practice in order to attend. It has been created to cater for those who are curious, enthusiastic or just want to spend time at an established Buddhist meditation retreat center, depening their connection with their own meditation practice. Meditating from books or online sources can be one-dimensional and limiting. The personal touch makes a huge difference. We teach with simple, clear instruction and give people the opportunity to ask questions based on their own experience. The simple program has periods of…
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How To Be Happy
With Advayasiddhi
June 12 - 21, 2026
Buddhism offers a radically different approach to happiness than most of the world around us. Rather than consume, polarize and fix samsara, it speaks of happiness as a different kind of freedom, openness and ease, arising out of love and insight. Yet, what does this actually mean in direct experience? This is what we will explore on this retreat. Using both traditional Dharma teachings and more modern understandings from neuroscience, psychology and myths, we invite you to join us in an intensive meditative exploration of how to be happy the Buddhist way. We will play with what happens when we…
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Wisdom Energy
With Padmadrishti and Tejananda
July 10 - 19, 2026
Our ‘precious human body’ is the first and most important foundation not just of mindfulness, but of meditation and Dharma practice as a whole. The teaching of the Buddha’s ‘Three Bodies’ (trikaya) suggests that there is far, far more to the body than meets the eye. These could be summarised as the bodies of truth (dharmakaya), of living energy (sambhogakaya) and of manifestation (nirmanakaya). While they are fully realised with awakening, we can attune and open to them right now through meditation and Dharma practice, especially body and heart-based practice. Tejananda and Padmadrishti will guide explorations into the extraordinary nature of…
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Emotional Intelligence in Practice: Working with the Kleshas
With Vijayamala
July 24 - August 2, 2026
+ Advayasiddhi The heart/mind of each one of us is essentially open, dynamic, and connected to all life. However, we easily lose track of that open-hearted fluidity and feel isolated and disconnected. This is due to our limiting habitual tendencies, which can be very tenacious. These tendencies are called 'kleshas’ – afflictions that both stir us up and narrow our view of ourselves and life. On this retreat we’ll explore how we tie up energy, and how it can be freed into something much more creative and unlimited. Through learning and practising the 5 meditative methods set out in a…
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Meditating on the Bahiya Sutta
With Padmasagara and Rijumitra
August 7 - 14, 2026
In the Bahiya Sutta of the Udana we not only find an inspiring story of one person’s spiritual quest and awakening, but also a simple yet profound guide to meditation. The Buddha instructs Bahiya: “…as regards things seen, heard, sensed or cognised, there will be in the seen only the seen, in the heard only the heard, in the sensed only the sensed, in the cognised only the cognised.” In other words, the Buddha invited Bahiya to remain present with what is, without overlaying, projecting or reading anything whatsoever into his experience. On this retreat we’ll cultivate clarity, metta and…
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Trikaya Embodied Awakening **Order Retreat**
With Viveka
August 15 - 29, 2026
**Please note that this retreat starts on a Saturday** Body like mountain… Breath Energy like the ocean’s waves… Heart Mind like the Sky. These 11 th century Vajrayana verses, sung by Dakini Niguma, are known as the “Three Naturals” They offer profound guidance for awakening to our essential nature, pointing to three simultaneous dimensions of being—the Trikaya. Nirmanakaya: coming home to presence and belonging within this body, this world Sambhogakaya: befriending the dynamic flow of feeling and energy and the relational dimension of being Dharmakaya: opening to boundless awakened heart and mind You are invited to directly experience the Three…
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Simply Being
With Tejananda
September 4 - 13, 2026
At any moment we can recognise, directly and viscerally, that we are alive and awake. With a settled and embodied awareness, this may open into an intuitive glimpse of what we truly are, beyond concepts. This might be evoked as a spacious yet embodied presence, a timeless awareness-emptiness, or unconditional love, compassion and pure energy. We’ll explore this by way of a somatic approach to just sitting meditation together with experiential inquiries – discovering aliveness, sensitivity, simplicity and clarity in our immediate experience. These subtle yet accessible qualities of our ordinary mind and being can act as gateways to the…
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Zen and Now
With Paramananda
September 18 - October 2, 2026
Often when we begin meditating, we have a good practice, but after a few years, we struggle not to be caught up in our habitual thinking and find that our meditation seems to become more superficial. In the Zen tradition, it is said that we should always keep a “beginner’s mind.” On this silent meditation retreat, we will be looking at ways to recapture our natural curiosity and openness, understanding that it is this state of beginner’s mind that is meditation—rather than simply a method of meditating. Through periods of stillness, simple teachings, and spacious practice, we will explore how…
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Embodying Love
With Rijumitra and Balajit
October 9 - 18, 2026
+ Kiranasri Metta is seen as a great potential source of happiness in the Buddhist tradition – an openness to and love of life in all its forms – which spontaneously manifests as compassion and joy. Yet the cultivation of metta can sometimes seem very ‘heady’, at times forced and dry. How can our practice of kindly awareness gain fresh inspiration? On this retreat, we will explore opening to metta as an innate quality of our body, heart and being – literally embodying love. Becoming and being truly embodied is not just a preliminary practice, but integral to the whole path. We will…
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Body, Heart, Mind Awake
With Tejananda
October 23 - 30, 2026
Body, heart and mind are essential facets of our being. Mind is usually taken to mean all kinds of mental activity, but what we’re interested in here is ‘mind itself’ – the awake, aware quality of mind. Awakeness is here even when we feel sleepy and dull. How do we know that we're sleepy and dull? We are awake to it. We’re even awake to our dreams, despite the body being asleep. This quality of wakefulness, knowingness or clarity is intrinsic to all of our experience and yet it is mysteriously ungraspable and unfindable. To know it, we need to…
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The Awakening Heart and the Divine Abodes
With Tejananda and Rijumitra
November 6 - 15, 2026
Bodhicitta – the awakening heart – is both the heart–response of wisdom to the suffering of living beings everywhere and the urge to realise full awakening for the benefit of all. This retreat will focus on love, compassion, joy and equanimity – the four ‘divine abodes’ or brahmaviharas – in the context of cultivating bodhicitta. To support this, we’ll also introduce tonglen, the ‘sending and receiving’ practice which opens the heart to universal compassion. The divine abodes are also known as the ‘boundless states’,¬ because they are inclusive of all living beings without exception. The practices that we’ll explore together…
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Vajrasattva Sadhana Retreat **Order Retreat**
With Prakasha
November 19 - 29, 2026
**Please be aware that this retreat starts on a Thursday** 'In this state which is without meditation and without any distraction, you observe everything with a naked awareness. Your own awareness is inherently knowing, inherently clear, and luminously brilliant... At this time you will actually behold Vajrasattva.' (Self-LIberation) The purpose of the Vajrasattva Sadhana is to purify the mind, and at the same time, to realize that mind is primordially pure - pure from the very beginning. Vajrasattva embodies the Dharmakaya, the 'nature of mind' as well as the essence of the Sambhogakaya, the radiant luminosity. This Sadhana is so…
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2026 Practice Retreat 1
With Vajraloka Team
December 21 - 28, 2026
**Please note that this retreat runs from Monday to Monday** The main feature of these popular retreats is that they allow retreatants to follow the themes and rhythms emerging in their own meditation practice. In some ways they can be compared to going on solitary retreat while offering the support and structure that practising in the company of others can bring. While the practice retreats have no formal teaching input, the daily programme can be tailored to meet the needs of the individual, with support from Vajraloka team members. The simple programme has periods of morning and afternoon meditation with…
More info ...
2026 Practice Retreat 2
With Vajraloka Team
December 28, 2026 - January 4, 2027
**Please note that this retreat runs from Monday to Monday** The main feature of these popular retreats is that they allow retreatants to follow the themes and rhythms emerging in their own meditation practice. In some ways they can be compared to going on solitary retreat while offering the support and structure that practising in the company of others can bring. While the practice retreats have no formal teaching input, the daily programme can be tailored to meet the needs of the individual, with support from Vajraloka team members. The simple programme has periods of morning and afternoon meditation with…
More info ...