What this retreat is about

Ordinary life is full of distractions, parallel tasks, and habitual behavior. We rarely get to set aside real time to cultivate the positive qualities of body and mind — and that cultivation needs specific attentional skills, which are far easier to develop under the right conditions: day by day, in silence, with a full daily schedule of formal practice, clear meditation instructions, body-work sessions to help integrate the experience, and individual daily interviews to track and steer one's progress.

On retreat, participants learn to see clearly how they perceive and live through what happens to them — and to gently retrain that perception, and their relationship to themselves, for their own benefit and others'. This happens through careful, caring self-observation, in formal meditation and in every moment of the day.

People come to a retreat for various reasons: to rest, reset and recharge, to understand themselves better, to do spiritual work, to learn how to be with their thoughts and emotions, to find meaning, or to get to grips with the world.

Whatever your goal is, getting there tends to run through the same territory: stepping back, and using your attentional skills to return to yourself and look closely at how your own mind, perception, and reactions actually work. A retreat setting — quiet, structured, sustained — is good for that.

Individual interviews and daily body practice

Individual interviews, and body-based practice two times a day, are a critical part of this retreat — and of a trauma-informed approach to meditation more broadly.

Everyone's process is their own, and often not easy — understanding it, validating it, offering ways to work through it, and simply being present and available, is what makes a retreat actually work. If you're considering any retreat, it's worth checking whether it includes individual contact with an instructor, ideally daily.

The body also needs time and the right conditions — food, sleep, the presence of other people — to digest new information and integrate a new way of being. Deep body practice, beyond helping you sit with a straight spine without pain, exists for exactly this: we are bodily beings who experience ourselves and the world through the whole body, and every thought, insight, or realization is, at minimum, also a bodily process — so working with the body supports the rest of the work.

The body practice on this retreat will be led by Maria Shiryaeva, Victor's wife. She is a certified mindfulness instructor in Shinzen Young's approach, and has done vipassana retreats in Nepal (Goenka and Mahasi traditions), as well as most of the retreats led by Victor. On the movement side, she is a yoga teacher in the Ashtanga and vinyasa flow traditions, trained in Mysore and Rishikesh (India) and in Pokhara (Nepal), and is RYT-500 certified through Yoga Alliance.

The venue: Kamin Springs Forest Retreat

The retreat will be held at Kamin Springs Forest Retreat, near Chiang Dao in northern Thailand — a place found by Shinzen Young's students to serve as an Asian hub for facilitating trainings in his approach.

It's a large property built around a fruit orchard and rice fields, set in a gorge hidden away from neighbors, where mornings arrive wrapped in fog. There are several ponds and a stream to sit by or to dip into, gazebos, a tea house, and a beautiful modern practice hall.

Kamin Springs is located on tribal territory, and facilitates retreats with the blessing of the tribal chief. The staff comes from the neighboring villages. Retreat participants will be served excellent, fresh, and organic Northern Thai food, sourced locally and catered to Western tastes.