“COMING HOME” – An interspiritual retreat with Anne Overzee

This is a silent retreat with a daily contemplative structure which includes silent sitting and walking meditation, sharing and ritual.The retreat is held in a Christian monastery on Lake Garda. We are very fortunate to be practising in a place that has a long-standing spiritual community that is familiar with silence.

Most of us have times in our lives when we feel displaced, or lost. We have days when we feel very on our own. And our inner journeying can have that same flavour, especially if we are experiencing loss, uncertainty or fear.

Coming to know these ‘refugee’ places in ourselves can be an important part of our spiritual journey, since the experience portents an opening into a sense of possibility, of arriving ‘home’ to ourselves and connecting; letting fear and all that binds us melt away.

At death there is often, in Tibetan Buddhism, a reference to a point in the subtle dissolution process that is likened to a child re-uniting with its mother. The image refers to the way in which our awareness returns to its essential nature.

The beauty is that this ‘coming home’ is, like dying itself, an ongoing process that doesn’t just belong to the end of our lives: it is central to our embodied path of coming home to ourselves and awakening together…

Participants need to be at a time of enough balance in their lives to be comfortable with as well as accustomed to silent retreats and sharing in groups.

Each participant must commit to attending the whole retreat and to the Code of Conduct and Ethics for Retreat Participants.

Date and venue

The Retreat will be held from Thursday 12^th of September at 3 pm to 12:30 of Sunday 15^th of September 2024 in Northern Italy in the lovely surroundings of Maguzzano Abbey on Lake Garda in Via Maguzzano 4, Lonato (BS).

The Abbey is less than 15 minute drive from the train station of Desenzano, from which you can reach it with a local taxi (cost approx. 15 euros).

The closest international airport is Verona (about 35 minute drive) or Bergamo Orio al Sorio (1 hour drive). 

Cost

For the teachers and the translator Dana (donation) is to be left locally.

The fee for this Retreat is 120 € plus 25 € for the annual registration in the organization. Please understand that this fee covers only organizational expenses and it has to be paid at the moment of the enrollment.

The payment of 120 euros (or 145 including the annual registration for who still hasn’t done it this year) has to be done through bank transfer to:                       
Associazione Sati Mudita          
Iban IT83 E030 6909 6061 0000 0128 339     
Bic BCITITMM            
Causal: Surname and Name of the Participant – Coming home Retreat with Anne Overzee

Or through the following paypal account: segreteria@satimudita.com

The cost for room and board is 70 euros per night in single room with private bathroom or 60 euros per night in double room with private bathroom. It has to be paid locally. 

Anne Overzee

(M.A. (Cantab.), Ph.D.; E.A.P. reg. psychotherapist)

Anne’s work over the years has been on the interface between spiritual practice and psychotherapy. She has always been interested in how contemplative practice can help transform our experience of daily life, of being in relationship, and of deepening our capacity to live in the moment and with greater open heartedness. After years working in the field of psychotherapy (‘mindfulness in relationship’), her main focus now is in working with others keen to explore ways of living as a committed contemplative actively engaged in the world. Following her first degree at Cambridge University in Theology and Religious Studies, Anne’s subsequent research in eastern spiritual practices was in India where she lived between 1975-77. She subsequently studied for her doctorate in Religious Studies (The Body Divine: Cambridge University Press, 1986) while completing her training to become a Psychotherapist, and her work with clients, supervisees and training groups as a staff member of Karuna Institute, U.K. spanned the following 40 years. Her psychospiritual approach comes from Core Process Psychotherapy, which was then a completely innovative approach integrating Buddhist awareness practices and psychology with western psychotherapy.  She has been practising Buddhism since the 1970’s when she went to Dharmasala, the seat of H.H. Dalai Lama.

For further information and enrollments, please fill the form below or write to: segreteria@satimudita.com