Retreats
No upcoming retreats are planned.
Prior Retreats
Guest instructors provide teaching and concentrated practice to registrants. Review the following listing of past Lotus Center retreats:
Winter 2022 (Interfaith Week)
Keeping Balance in a World of Constant Change, led by Bridget Rolens.
Fall 2019
Releasing the Heart through Letting Go of Views, led by Bridget Rolens.
Spring 2019
Four Steps to Freedom from Suffering, led by Bridget Rolens.
Fall 2018
The Body as Dharma Gate, led by Bridget Rolens.
Bridget Rolens teaches mindfulness meditation as a spiritual practice and as a tool
for stress reduction. She holds an MA in Theology and a BS in Occupational Therapy.
Bridget has certification as a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction teacher and is recognized
by the Spirit Rock Teachers Council as a Community Dharma Leader.
Forty-five years of experience in traditional healthcare and a variety of spiritual
practices rooted in the Christian, Buddhist and Twelve-Step Recovery traditions, have
given Bridget a strong understanding of the connection between body, mind and spirit
in promoting health and well-being. Her deep passion is to help people attain freedom
from the forces that bind the mind and heart in suffering.
Spring 2016
Generosity, Letting Go, and Simplicity: the Roots of Authentic Joy, led by Mark Nunberg.
Fall 2015
Happiness Beyond Conditions led by Joy Fox.
Joy Fox is the creator of Wattle Hollow Retreat Center, in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas. It is a woodland sanctuary for meditation, yoga, and creativity, which she has been developing for over thirty-five years. She was previously a fruit picker, homesteader, a world-wide hitch-hiker, baker, then became a grief therapist and bereavement coordinator for Hospice. Her root teachers, in the world of meditation, have been: S.M. Goenka, Jack Kornfield, Ruth Dennison, Soen Sa Nim, Mae chee Sansanee, and L.P. Pramote (the latter two are from Joy’s twelve winters in Thailand as a volunteer at a Buddhist retreat center). Joy just returned this spring from a small village in Tanzania, where she spent the winter in a sanctuary for (endangered) albino children and infants (Mary Mother of God Perpetual Help Center). Life continues to fascinate and mystify her.
Spring 2015
Our Practice in Relationship to Others, led By Debbie Stamp.
Debbie Stamp was introduced to Buddhism and meditation through a 10 day retreat in Thailand while traveling in 1987. On her return to California, she stopped over in England for a brief visit which then stretched into a year, staying at both Amaravati and Chithurst Buddhist Monasteries for most of that time. Shortly after her return to California, she was invited to join a group forming with the intention of establishing a monastery in California. A year and a half after the realization of this intention, with the opening of Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery in 1996, Debbie was drawn to live near the monastery where she has been a lay resident for the past 17 years, finding community life to be very beneficial and supportive for practice.
Fall 2014
Metta: the Art of Unconditional Kindness, led By Ajahn Jotipalo.
Ajahn Jotipalo, originally from Indiana, is a senior monk at the Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery in northern California. He became interested in Theravada Buddhism after sitting several Vipassana retreats in Massachusetts, both with S.N. Goenka and at the Insight Meditation Center. Jotipalo was introduced to Metta mediation at a retreat with Steve and Rosemary Wiseman in Thailand, back in 1995. Other influences have been the Burmese schools as taught at IMS and from various monks from Thailand. He has worked with Metta as one of several meditation objects for most of that time, and in the last two years has used it as his primary meditation object. Jotipalo has been a frequent guest speaker at Common Ground Meditation Center in Minneapolis, MN and has spent a significant amount of time at a small hermitage near Thunder Bay, Ontario called Arrow River Forest Hermitage.
Spring 2014
Cooling the Fires, led by Mark Nunberg.
Mark Nunberg began his practice in 1982 and has been teaching meditation since 1990. He co-founded Common Ground Meditation Center in Minneapolis in 1993 with Wynn Fricke and continues to serve as the center's Guiding Teacher. Mark has studied with both Asian and Western teachers and finds deep inspiration in the teachings of the Buddha. Mark practiced as a monk for five months in Burma and completed four three-month retreats at Insight Meditation Society Retreat Center, as well as many months of intensive retreat practice at The Forest Refuge. Mark continues to be a grateful student of Buddhist practice.
Fall 2013
Transforming the Judgmental Mind, Cultivating the Wise Heart, led by Donald Rothberg.
Spring 2013
Staying Grounded in an Open Heart, led by Susan Stone.
Fall 2012
The Eight Wordly Winds: Pleasure/Pain, Gain/Loss, Praise/Blame, Fame/Disrepute, led by Heather Sundberg.
Spring 2012
Cultivating Clear Seeing: Opening the Heart, led by Donald Rothberg.
Donald Rothberg, Ph.D, is a member of the Teachers Council at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Northern California and author of several books including The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World (Beacon Press, 2006). In this retreat he will emphasize how mindfulness, wisdom, and the awakened heart are interwoven, and how to bring clear seeing and the open heart more into our daily lives.
Fall 2011
Equanimity: Finding Balance of Heart Within Our Lives, led by Heather Sundberg.
Heather Sundberg began teaching meditation in 1999. She has completed the four-year
Spirit
Rock/Insight Meditation Society Teacher Training and continues to be mentored by Jack
Kornfield.
Beginning her own meditation practice in her late teens, for twenty years Heather
has studied with senior teachers in the Insight Meditation and Tibetan traditions,
and has sat 1-3 months of retreat a year for over a decade. She is a Teacher for Mountain
Stream Meditation Center in the CA Sierra Foothills, and also teaches classes, daylongs
and retreats nationally, especially at Spirit Rock Meditation Center.
Spring 2011
Falling in Love with the Present: the Mindful Way to Freedom, led by Lynn Rossy.
Fall 2010
Living with Love: Letting Go, led by Susan Stone.
Susan Stone, Ph.D., teaches Mindfulness Stress Reduction at the University of Virginia and co-leads the Insight Meditation Community of Charlottesville, and has led mindfulness groups at men's and women's maximum-security prisons. Susan has been engaged in Buddhist practices for almost 30 years in the Zen and Theravadan traditions and has lived in Zen and Theravadan monasteries. Ordained as a Zen lay priest, she is author of At the Eleventh Hour (Present Perfect Books, 2001), a memoir about mindfulness and caregiving, and The Kosambi Intrigue; A Tale in the Time of the Buddha.
Spring 2010
The Joy of Mindfulness, led by Lynn Rossy.
Lynn Rossy’s career and personal trajectory have been interwoven with spiritual practice, teaching, and researching since 1989. She is the founder of the Mindfulness Practice Center at the University of Missouri where she teaches mindfulness programs to faculty and staff. She has been teaching Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Programs since 2001 and has done extensive training at the Center for Mindfulness in Massachusetts. Having completed the Community Dharma Leader training through Spirit Rock Meditation Center, she teaches Vipassana meditation as part of the Teacher’s Collective at Show Me Dharma in Columbia, Missouri, where she serves as President of the Board of Directors. She completed a 200-hour National Yoga Alliance Yoga Teacher Certification Program at Kripalu Institute. A Course in Miracles greatly influences her teaching. Facilitating groups for 10 years in this tradition, she remains a student of the Course. Her spiritual perspective is influenced by Theravadan and Tibetan Buddhism, Yogic Principles, and Christian mystical traditions.
Fall 2009
Radical Intimacy, led by David Chernikoff.
David Chernikoff began the study and practice of meditation in 1971 and started teaching insight meditation in 1988. He trained as a yoga teacher at the Integral Yoga Institute and completed the Community Dharma Leader Program at Spirit Rock meditation Center. His teaching has been influenced by senior teachers from the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock, Tibetan teachers he studied with during a 3-year stay in Nepal, and spiritual guides from other contemplative traditions, most notably Ram Dass, Father Thomas Keating, and Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. David teaches meditation and psychology at Naropa University and has a private practice as a psychotherapist and spiritual counselor in Boulder. He is one of the guiding teachers of the Insight Meditation Community of Colorado.