Something New Coming This October to Serenity Ridge!

Combined Fall Retreat and Serenity Ridge Dialogues

Michael Sheehy, PhD, Lama Willa Blythe Baker, PhD, Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche and Ruth Q. Wolever, PhD, at the 2019 Serenity Ridge DialoguesSerenity Ridge is excited to announce a major change in our event schedule this fall! For the first time, from October 11-16, the Fall Retreat and Serenity Ridge Dialogues will merge. The mornings will focus on teachings and practice from the Bon Mother Tantra, this year the Five Elements and Tsa Lung (five energetic movements for clearing the channels and winds). During the afternoons the Serenity Ridge Dialogues will bring presenters together for discussion and practice.

The event will be held both in person and online on Zoom, but attendees are particularly encouraged to come to Serenity Ridge in Virginia if possible to benefit from the richness of in-person teachings and informal interactions.

As many people know, every October when he comes to Serenity Ridge, Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche teaches from the Ma Gyu. And for much of the past decade, Serenity Ridge also has offered a program known as the Serenity Ridge Dialogues. That two-day event has brought scientists, health care professionals, and practitioners and teachers from many different lineages (not just Bon or Buddhism) into conversation about aspects of practice and works to shed light on them from a contemporary perspective, in a way that can help inform our practice.

This fall, the morning will focus on the five elements and tsa lung. Tenzin Rinpoche will guide the sessions with support from Geshe YongDong Losar, who is joining us from Vancouver, Canada. The afternoons will bring presenters together with Rinpoche and Geshe YongDong around specific areas of scientific investigation. Menpa Phuntsog Wangmo, founder of the American Tibetan Medical Association and the international director of the Shang Shung School of Tibetan Medicine, will be one of three special guests. Dr. Sat Bir Singh Khasla, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard University and a specialist in body-mind medicine and yoga therapy, and Lonny Jarrett, an expert scholar, teacher and practitioner of East Asian medicine, also will join us.

The Dialogues has always proven to be a fascinating series of conversations, enjoyed as much by the presenters as by the attendees. This year, by merging it into the Fall Retreat, the goal is to deeply shift the conversation toward practice. Rather than just engaging in intellectual conversation about practice, we will follow Tenzin Rinpoche, Geshe YongDong and our presenters into an exploration of how practice works and how we can inform it through contemporary and traditional understandings of breath, movement and the five constituent elements.

This event will be both in person at Serenity Ridge and online. However, in the past years, much of the event takes place in conversations between sessions in the dining hall, on walks and sitting outdoors. We strongly encourage everyone who can to come in person for this special inaugural event!

Look for details soon on the Serenity Ridge website and the Ligmincha International website.