Retreats and Workshops at Manzanita Village 2010

Pre-registration is required for all Retreats and Workshops

Warrior Heart Path March 12-14

Circles – beyond gender binaries. March 19-21

Creative Writing Workshop March 26-28

Eleven Day NLP Certification April 7-17

Art and Soul Creativity Workshop April 23-25

Silent Meditation Retreat May 28-31

INTER-dependence Day Retreat July 2-4

Wild Mind Retreat September 3-6

Autumn Circle TBA

Other Autumn Workshops and Retreats TBA

Winter Retreat December 26-January 3

I am grateful beyond words for the remarkable work of Caitríona and Michele. No spiritual teachers I know bring a broader, more relevant range of knowledge, experience, and well-honed skills for awakening us to fullness of being. While thoroughly schooled in ancient traditions, their work is fresh and bold, igniting both courage and joy for meeting the challenges of today’s world. For over a decade my own life and teaching has been enriched by their adventurous creativity and passionate respect for life. Joanna Macy. Activist, Teacher, and Author of “World as Lover, World as Self” and “Coming Back to Life”, and Co-founder of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship

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Spring Warrior Heart Path

The Heart of Non-violence and the path of Aiki Toho Iaido sword

March 12-14

Michele Benzamin-Miki Sensei

The Japanese sword has been used for war for too many centuries. The time has come to find ways to use it to make peace, to transform it; and by transforming its violent legacy, to transform ourselves. Nishio Sensei

Please join us for Warreot Hert Path!

This is a great way to try out a martial art path and to set a warrior heart intention for the springtime. You will be training at your level and capacity, so all levels are welcome. Learn physical and mental skills that empower you, in a supportive and fun way.

Vegetarian food & lodging for two nights included

$225 (Saturday only $125) (You are welcome to come Friday night)

Beginners welcomed – training for all levels

Register Here
Check price with Michele Sensei 310-339-3531

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To register by mail send a check to
Ordinary Dharma PO Box 67, Warner Springs, CA 92086

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Spring Circles Retreat-Conference

March 19-21

Safe Space for trans women and men and allies Print or download flier
for all transgendered people, friends, family, and allies

Elise Turen PhD, Michele Benzamin-Miki, Caitriona Reed

The ease and the freedom I feel at Manzanita lets me let go and feel free…. free of all fears and the sense of abandonment I sometimes feel in my everyday life. What is more beautiful than a human being who has just realized that she is actually alive? –Sara Carmichael, participant at Circles

Partial scholarships available. . . for all women, men, g/q ,and others questioning gender binaries and stereotypical identity/ies

Conference highlights include:

• Workshops and discussion groups co-created by participants
• Accommodation and fine vegetarian, mostly organic meals
• An atmosphere of safety, confidentiality, and ease
• Time for relaxation, sauna, naps, walks in the surrounding hills

Exploration of issues such as:

• Internalized oppression, internalized transphobia
• Identity beyond binary paradigms (female/male straight/gay etc etc)
• The Wisdom of Insecurity, trusting our Power
• Class, Race, and Gender
• Strategies for facilitating change: personal, communal, and societal
• Trans issues and the law
• Coming Out to Our Family and Children
• The place for genderqueer, trans, and ‘two-spirit’ people in traditional societies
• Buddhism, Christianity, Spiritual Practice and Trans Issues
• Transition issues
• Relationships
• Transgender Liberation Movement ‘
• Descansos’ reflections on and the landmarks of our life’s journey
• Dance and body-image

Please note: this is not just for trans people ‘in transition.‘ We are all always, all of us, in transition of one sort or another – whether you are gay, straight, trans or otherwise. And if you think you have got your life together, please come anyway to give your support those who do not! We look forward to sharing some time with you.

Print or download flier Registration: $250 includes food and accommodation

Register Here
$250

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To register by mail send a check to
Ordinary Dharma PO Box 67, Warner Springs, CA 92086

Can you help support our scholarship fund? + optional donations

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The Eye, the Word, and the Heart

Creative Writing Weekend March 26-28, 2010

with Susan Moon

“I had no idea I had it in me!
I have never thought of myself as a writer.
But Sue brings out something that’s more than
just writing, that let’s me see the world
(and my own life) in an entirely different light.
Not only that, I can’t remember the last time
I had so much FUN!”

The act of dreaming, imagining, and representing the world in uniquely new ways is a part of your nature, your natural way to meet and respond to the world. The fact that you may have temporarily forgotten to do so only means that your deep hunger to return– to dance the world, to sing it, paint it, write it, play it – however buried it may have been, is ripe for a return to expression and discovery …

How many ways are there to respond to the miracle of living, seeing, hearing, touching, interacting with others, growing up, learning, forgetting, remembering … If we can speak we already play with words. We all already have the gift. Come and discover the silence words are born from, and walk the hills by the light of the full moon.

When you look at what’s in front, as well as what’s inside, each mirroring the other, you come alive in new ways. Open to writers of all levels. A supportive, collaborative immersion in which we’ll do lots of writing exercises together, we’ll read to each other, we’ll get the creative juices flowing, and we’ll laugh – it’s a promise; and we’ll each take home a notebook full of things we didn’t know before.

Susan Moon

Register Here
$250 + $100 for accommodation

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To register by mail send a check to
Ordinary Dharma PO Box 67, Warner Springs, CA 92086

NLP Coaching and Hypnosis~Hypnotherapy
Certification Training

Do you sometimes forget your passion for learning, for developing new skills, for deepening your essential understanding of the world, and for the creative adventure of life itself?

How about upgrading your skills, your understanding, the way you communicate with others, and then being a catalyst to help others do the same in positive beneficial ways?

How about creating a career for yourself, (or complementing your current career) by facilitating rapid, permanent positive change as a Hypnotherapist and Neurolinguistic (NLP) practitioner?

Eleven Day Training April 7-17, 2010

with Michele Benzamin-Miki and Caitriona Reed

Click here for more details

Click here to register (at $2000 off regular price)

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Art and Soul – Creativity and Healing

April 23-25, 2010
(Friday evening – Sunday afternoon)

with Michele Benzamin-Miki and Tabitha Fronk
Other Art and Soul Workshops and Events

Heal, unlock, and deepen your creative ‘intelligence. With creativity you move from fear to freedom, from restriction to expression. Everyone is welcome, artists and non-artists, teachers, therapists, healing arts professionals – anyone wanting to reconnect to new purpose and passion.




• Using the visual arts, drawing and other media, with some journaling and writing, to unlock the creative potential
• Using guided imagery and process work to removing obstacles, fear and self-doubt, to generate confidence, clarity, motivation and purpose
• Using elements of Mindfulness practice to enhance and deepen and engage in ongoing creative activities for further healing and self-discovery.
  


Spiritual traditions of all kinds have embodied and often been the bearers of artistic and creative expression throughout time. Personal transformation is, by nature, a creative process.

Register Here
$250 + $100 for accommodation

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To register by mail send a check to
Ordinary Dharma PO Box 67, Warner Springs, CA 92086

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Meditation Retreat

May 28-31, 2010
(Friday afternoon – Monday afternoon)

with Michele Benzamin-Miki and Caitriona Reed

The word praxis means putting understanding into action.

This retreat will also provide you with precise tools for expanded awareness that you can use on an ongoing basis in any situation.

Vipassna is both the means towards that sort of action, as well as the end result.It means ‘looking deeply’. It also means ‘seeing clearly’. It is both active and passive. Open your eyes and heart and see! . . . . AND, investigate, explore, hold steady . . . to discover what lies just beneath the surface. . . .

The essence of Vipassana belongs to no specific tradition, although the word is a Buddhist term. The essence of Vipassana as a praxis does not depend on your holding to any particular world view. Instead it encourages you to take an integrated approach to your experience, and to your life.

There are six qualities that illuminate and deepen any sacred transformational practice – generosity, integrity, patience, energy, focus and clarity. The training offered on this retreat will draw from this themes, known in Buddhist teaching as The Six Perfections. The Manzanita Village approach is a unique approach to meditation practice – incorporating traditional understanding of meditation practice with neurolinguistics, the perspectives of engaged Buddhism, non-violence training, and humor.

This is a meditation intensive open to beginners and suitable for all levels of meditation experience.

$250 includes food and accommodation + Teacher Dana

Register Here
$250 + $100 for accommodation

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To register by mail send a check to
Ordinary Dharma PO Box 67, Warner Springs, CA 92086

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INTER-dependence Weekend Retreat

with Caitriona Reed and Michele Benzamin-Miki

July 2-4, 2010
(Friday evening – Sunday evening

Everything is interconnected. Everything matters. Everything has meaning, and the meanings you give to things is largely conditioned by, and filtered through, your own individual, familial, and cultural predilections, the habits and circumstances of your life.

Meanings can be changed, relationships can be changed, illumintaed, transformed – if you want to, if you choose to, as you choose to … for the benefit of all beings.

This retreat/workshop will use tools from multiple disciplines, including traditional Buddhist mind-skill, and Neurolinguistics, to give you a brief introduction to skills that can bring astonishing freedom, greater choice, and ever-greater flexibility and clarity in how you live your life.

$250 includes food and accommodation + Teacher Dana

Register Here
$250 + $100 for accommodation

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To register by mail send a check to
Ordinary Dharma PO Box 67, Warner Springs, CA 92086

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Meditation Retreat

Wild Mind~Living Freedom

September 3-6
(Friday afternoon – Monday afternoon)

Michele Benzamin-Miki and Caitriona Reed

“Outstanding … rich and deep.What you’ve got going here is brilliant.
I think what you are doing is dazzling!” Val Kilner Marina del Rey

“It must be obvious… that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure
in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.” Alan Watts

Beginners welcome. A three-day retreat is the perfect length for an introduction/immersion into skills that will help you develop and deepen your focus, clarity, insight, and compassion.

Years ago Alan Watts wrote a book called The Wisdom of Insecurity. It’s one of those books whose titles tell all! How liberating it is when instead of seeking guarantees and assurances, you learn to trust and use your own resourcefulness and the creativity you already have, and to use your innate abilities to live the life you were born for.

… moving from fear to curiosity, from resentment to patience, from procrastination to energy, from anxiety to calm, from isolation to connection …

We are talking about the sorts of skills that meditation practice helps you to access and develop – the power of becoming aware of both what is happening around you as well as to how you respond – so that you choose how you respond, and move from fear to curiosity, from resentment to patience, from procrastination to energy, from anxiety to calm, from isolation to connection. You were created a uniquely configured human being with unimaginable potential, and with a unique set of views, values, and a mind that can work fully to your advantage when you let it. Meditation practice is not about you adopting someone else’s values and views, but it is about you finding ways to eliminate internal conflicts you may be carrying, through the use of awareness, clarity, energy, and by learning to be kinder to yourself.

When you choose to believe that there really are no insurmountable problems, all you see are the opportunities you have been given to find new solutions

We choose to believe that there are no problems, only opportunities to discover new solutions. That may be just a belief, but it’s one we invite you to adopt if you wish.

So, in the spirit of the Wisdom of Insecurity, join us for this solution-based meditation retreat.

Manzanita Village is surrounded by mountains, forests and meadows. To unaccustomed eyes the forest is a tangle, like the mind itself! After becoming familiar with it, you will see it as a world rich with patterns, potential, and implicit order; rich with life – adaptable and interwoven.Please join us for a weekend immersion training where you may even learn to take on some of the best characteristics of the tough and resilient forest. This is a silent retreat with instruction and talks. Bring a friend for our special 50% reduced rate. Open to beginners.

$250 includes food and accommodation + Teacher Dana

Register Here
$250 + $150 for accommodation

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Select options (e.g. if you require a private room)
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To register by mail send a check to
Ordinary Dharma PO Box 67, Warner Springs, CA 92086

MORE FALL DATES TO BE ANNOUNCED

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MID-WINTER RETREAT