Weekend Retreat

Weekend Community Retreat

Jean Esther and Devin Berry

Friday evening - Sunday, January 29-31;

times - download the schedule from the registration page

Suggested donation: $60-110 registration + teacher donation

Come join the Insight PV Community in our annual non-residential retreat together. In this time of continued stress and isolation of the pandemic, we will consciously connect with the beauty and stillness of winter individually and in virtual community. In this retreat, we will dedicate ourselves to an immersion of mindfulness, wisdom, and lovingkindness practices.

While we can’t be cozied up next to the comfort of the wood stove at Amherst Co-Housing, we can be ‘warmed up’ and infused by the loving container of  the sangha that we create together. Jean and Devin are committed to making this 'user-friendly' as we engage in sitting and walking meditation, listening  to the Dharma and sharing reflections together within the whole group as well as in small group gatherings with the teachers.

We very much look forward to spending this precious time  with you on this winter retreat.  Please know that are welcome regardless of whether or not you have previously attended IPV programs  or are new to meditation.

We ask that you pre-register by 1/27 so that we can prepare accordingly.

Download the schedule from the registration page.

Jean Esther, MSW began formal meditation training in 1975. She has been training in the Theravadan Buddhist tradition since 1982 with senior Western teachers as well as Burmese and Western Monastics. Since 2008, she has undertaken extensive teacher training in both Vipassana practice and non-dual awareness. Jean's dharma teaching is informed by over 36 years of practice as a psychotherapist integrating spiritual inquiry and somatic awareness with psychological understanding. For over 20 years, she trained with renowned Jungian analyst Marion Woodman, exploring the awakening of consciousness through the body, psyche and the arts. The wellspring and root of her work are the Buddha's teachings on love and wisdom. Jean is a Guiding Teacher of True North Insight in Ontario, Canada. A senior teacher at InsightPV, she also teaches at Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, with IBME (Inward Bound Mindfulness Education) and across the US and Canada. In addition, she has a private psychotherapy practice in Northampton, MA.

Devin Berry has been meditating for over 20 years. His practice is primarily informed by the classical teachings of early Buddhism and the Insight Meditation tradition. He has undertaken many periods of silent long-term retreat practice. Devin completed the Dedicated Practitioners Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, where he is a visiting teacher. He is currently in the 2017-2021 Insight Meditation Society Teacher Training Program. He served as a core leader with San Francisco POC Insight Sangha. Devin is a community teacher at East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, CA where he co-founded the teen sangha and the Men of Color sangha. He has recently relocated to Western Massachusetts and teaches nationally. Devin is passionate about the power of witnessing and storytelling as a liberation tool. He is deeply committed to the personal and collective liberation of marginalized communities knowing that through the integration of reflection and insight, clarity and wisdom give rise to wise action.