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With Leslie Booker, Ian Challis and Calvin Burnap (Assistant)
For nine years, queer practitioners have gathered in the California desert in October for silent meditation, community, and refuge. In this, our 10th year, we carry that spirit and history to a new home in the mountains.
“Rooted, Not Planted” is a silent Buddhist insight meditation retreat for the queer community, which includes all who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and agender. Led by Leslie Booker and Ian Challis, with Calvin Burnap assisting, this retreat will offer Vipassana and metta practice, dharma talks, and the rest of shared space and community with people who don’t have to explain themselves to be fully present.
This retreat was born at Dhamma Dena, shaped by Ruth Denison’s lineage and Arinna Weisman’s teaching, and held by a community that has shown up year after year to practice together and welcome new family. We bring our history, our love, and our commitment with us. The container has moved, the practice continues.
All queer-identifying practitioners are welcome, new and experienced alike. You don’t need a history with us to belong here.
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With Leslie Booker, Howard Cohn, Erin Treat, and Teresa Todoroff (Movement Teacher)
The Buddha’s teachings and meditation practices remind us of the ever-present possibility of waking up to a sense of well-being, presence, and true nature that does not depend on circumstances. This silent Insight Meditation (vipassanā) retreat is designed for both new and experienced meditators, and will include systematic instructions in vipassanā meditation following the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. The retreat will also include lovingkindness meditation, meetings with teachers, and evening talks highlighting the central teachings of the Buddha and their practical application to our lives.
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With Anne Cushman, Booker, Djuna Devereaux, and Rolf Gates
How do we stay rooted like a mighty oak, even when winds howl through our branches? How can our hearts hold our ever-changing lives like the sky holds the weather? In this retreat, we’ll offer teachings and practices from the Dharma and Yoga traditions for settling your nervous system, grounding your energy, and cultivating a felt sense of both stability and fluidity. Meditation in movement and stillness unfolds with ample time to rest, be in nature, and honor the natural rhythms of your own practice.
A full week of retreat offers time and space for deep places of gripping and bracing to release at their own pace, while nourishing the capacity to meet personal and collective challenges with wisdom and compassion. Each day includes gentle guided Yoga and somatic movement meditation; seated, walking, standing, and lying down meditation; Dharma reflections; and small group meetings with a teacher.
This retreat is silent except for teacher-led Q&A, small groups, or other practice meetings.
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Curious about meditation, the Dharma, or what it might look like to be part of a Sangha? Come explore NYIMC at a Young Adult Open House and Brunch — a relaxed, come-as-you-are afternoon designed for young adults (and no prior experience needed).
This gathering will introduce you to our community and what we offer, and informally explore with you what you’re looking for in a center like ours. There will be a chance to practice together, meet other young adults who share an interest in meditation and the Dharma, and connect with our Young Adult teachers, Community Steward and volunteer team. We’ll also share how to access Free Under 30, our program that makes NYIMC programming free for anyone under 30.
A light brunch will be served throughout, so feel free to arrive and leave whenever works for you there’s no set agenda to follow start to finish.
Registration is requested (not required to attend) so we can plan brunch and seating accordingly.
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Although Buddhism is often seen as a solitary path, sangha, or community, is an essential part of meditation practice. However, cultivating this sense of community has been a difficult challenge in this day and age of social isolation and Zoom fatigue.
This series of in-person New York Insight community gatherings consists of guided meditation, a talk by one of our teachers, followed by group discussion, and opportunities to socialize and connect with like-minded practitioners.
Whether you are brand new to meditation practice, new to New York Insight, or are a longtime, experienced meditator, all are welcome to join us for this series of in-person community meditation gatherings.
We hope to see you there!
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New York Insight’s Midlife Sangha is a warm and vibrant community for individuals who wish to explore meditation and apply Buddhist teachings to the gifts and challenges of midlife. Our goal is to cultivate a supportive space that fosters connection, encouragement, and authenticity, allowing members to reflect on shared experiences and personal growth.
In these monthly sits, we will meditate together and explore questions that arise at this stage of life. Whether you’re contemplating a career or relationship change, navigating elder care or an empty nest, finding joy or seeking deeper meaning in the second half of life, you’ll find a community that walks alongside you, offering mutual support and shared wisdom.
Please note new time: Starting January 2026, the Midlife Sangha meets on the second Monday of each month from 6:30–8:30 PM. Led by NYI Teachers or Peer Leaders, each session includes meditation, a dharma discussion, and an opportunity to explore midlife topics in a supportive community. Open to practitioners of all experience levels.
New York Insight’s Midlife Sangha is a warm and vibrant community for individuals who wish to explore meditation and apply Buddhist teachings to the gifts and challenges of midlife. Our goal is to cultivate a supportive space that fosters connection, encouragement, and authenticity, allowing members to reflect on shared experiences and personal growth.
In these monthly sits, we will meditate together and explore questions that arise at this stage of life. Whether you’re contemplating a career or relationship change, navigating elder care or an empty nest, finding joy or seeking deeper meaning in the second half of life, you’ll find a community that walks alongside you, offering mutual support and shared wisdom.
Please note new time: Starting January 2026, the Midlife Sangha meets on the second Monday of each month from 6:30–8:30 PM. Led by NYI Teachers or Peer Leaders, each session includes meditation, a dharma discussion, and an opportunity to explore midlife topics in a supportive community. Open to practitioners of all experience levels.
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The goal of meditation is not about how quiet and still our mind (and body) can get, but how we respond to a mind that is overwhelmed, creative, anxious, dreamy, neurodiverse, and even a little sleepy. This daylong is about debunking the myth that if our mind is not completely quiet and empty of all thoughts, that we’re doing it wrong.
This day is not meant to exclude, pathologize, or diagnose anyone, but to normalize that there is a lot happening in our hearts and mind, and explore how mindfulness of the body can support us in untangling and regulating the nervous system.
It’s said that there are 84,000 dharma doors; ways for anyone to be able to find an entry point into understanding the Buddhist teachings. This is illustrated in the story of Cuda-Pantaka, The Temple Sweeper. He was a disciple of the Buddha who struggled with a mind that was probably a bit neurospicy! This story is a beautiful reminder about what it’s like to find your own practice—instead of trying to fit into a prescribed one-size-fits-all box that is supposed to work for everyone.
Through this story and our own shared experience, we’ll explore what it means to have a practice rather than simply meditate—and how, with steady body and steady awareness, whether standing, sitting, or lying down, a mind of any kind can awaken.
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With Djuna Devereaux, Booker, Anne Cushman, and Rolf Gates
The body has its own wisdom, and its own pace. Over four Friday mornings, this series brings together mindful Yoga and embodied Dharma teachings to explore what it means to slow down enough to actually arrive: in the breath, in the posture, in the present moment. No prior Yoga or meditation experience is required, just a willingness to come home to the body.
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I'm so glad to be teaching alongside Tessa Hicks Peterson for the opening session of Practicing Liberation: Leadership & Facilitation Training, hosted by Hala Khouri.
This first session is where we lay the ground. Skillful facilitation doesn't start with technique — it starts with self-awareness. Before we're ever holding space for others, we're the instrument. Our nervous systems, our histories, our blind spots — all of it shapes the room whether we intend it to or not. So we begin here, with ourselves, not as experts, but as the people through whom culture gets shaped.
In this session, we'll get clear on our deeper why — the purpose underneath the work. We'll look at how our identity, our history, our positionality move through the room even when we're not naming them. We'll practice sharing our humanity without making ourselves the center. We'll learn what it takes to build a strong container — through context, through intention — and how to set agreements that actually hold trust, safety, and resilience. And we'll ground all of it in the foundational principles of embodied facilitation.
Come ready to look inward. That's how we learn to hold space for everyone else.
Grounded and Spacious: Mindful Yoga and Embodied Meditation
Booker brings her heart and wisdom to the intersection of Dharma, embodied practice, and activism. She began working with system-involved populations in 2005 and was a senior teacher and Director of Trainings with Lineage Project for 10 years, and facilitated an intervention on Riker’s Island from 2009-2011 through NYU.
Finding True Refuge: A Retreat for LGBTQIA+ and GNC Communities
with John Martin + JD Doyle