GARRISON WEEKEND RETREAT JUNE 26-28, 2026

Beyond Calm: The Intelligence of Presence

Awakening Body–Mind Wisdom through Buddhist Meditation and Somatic Awareness

This weekend retreat explores the intersection of Buddhist Insight Meditation practices and Somatic Experiencing. 

Drawing on both traditions, we’ll explore well-being not as a static state but an ongoing collaboration between the body and mind. Rather than striving to become calm or free from discomfort, we’ll learn to trust our nervous system’s ability to move, settle, mobilize, and restore in response to changing conditions.

Together we’ll look at how stress and our emotional histories shape perception, emotion, and thought, fueling rumination and vigilance, causing us to struggle or abandon practice. Through somatic practices, gentle awareness exercises, and periods of guided meditation, we’ll learn to:
• sense and track subtle shifts in the body,
• recognize patterns of activation and settling,
• and meet experience with greater steadiness and curiosity. 

Throughout the weekend, the emphasis is on direct experience: feeling the movement of our own system, discovering pathways into presence and cultivating ways to make meditation accessible and sustainable. We’ll challenge the habit of striving towards inner peace and instead explore a compassionate and liberating view: that freedom emerges through community, mindfulness and trusting the unfolding intelligence of body, heart, and mind.

Participants will leave the retreat with adeeper understanding of how meditation and nervous system wisdom support one another; practical tools for working skillfully with stress; an embodied sense of trust in the body–mind’s natural intelligence, supporting flexibility, presence, and sustainable practice in daily life.