Trustworthy Ground Together: A Meditation Daylong
March 28, 2026 from 10am-6pm // at Journey Space in Glen Echo, MD
Led by Mitra Peter Park, in collaboration with Dechen Ellen McSweeney and The Nectary
Registration fee $120 // Register here // Dana will be invited at the end of retreat
Meditation is so popular these days. It’s become a general health chore similar to physical fitness.
We should floss. We should exercise. And we should meditate.
But, for many of us, meditation, well, sucks. Many approaches can reinforce a sense of witnessing our life from afar and a dissociation from our body. We might count the minutes and feel the pain in our bodies and racing thoughts, wondering: when does this ever get good?
The instruction to “just follow our breath” can subtly turn into bracing, bypassing, or trying to transcend our humanity. It can feel like we’re spinning our wheels alone and someday it’s suppose to get better.
Wouldn’t it be nice to feel warmth and ease? To feel the promised peace, joy, and bliss? To feel connected and belonging? To feel our hyper vigilance, anxiety, and fears be met with love and understanding?
This daylong meditation retreat offers a different orientation.
Resting in a Trustworthy Ground Together is an invitation to slow down, settle deeply, and rediscover meditation as a practice of safety, warmth, and embodied presence and relationship with others.
The emphasis is not on achieving special states of concentration or willpower, but on learning how to relax into awareness that can genuinely hold the whole of our lived experience. And to do it with each other! Not just staring at the floor or in silence with our eyes closed.
Unlike some meditation formats that emphasize detached witnessing, this retreat centers on cultivating loving awareness. A loving awareness that is interested, kind, and responsive to the body, emotions, and mind as they are.
Throughout the day, participants will explore:
How to establish a felt sense of safety and steadiness in the body
How to work skillfully with restlessness, numbness, or self-criticism
How to relax habitual effort and allow attention to settle naturally
How to meet difficult or subtle experience without dissociation or overwhelm
This relational and embodied day will include:
Sitting practice emphasizing safety, belonging, and loving awareness
Movement expression practices for the body to be alive
Social meditations in small groups
Partner meditation practices
One-on-one practice coaching with skilled facilitators
Here you won’t be suffering in silent habitual patterns. We’ll have several skilled facilitators available to provide real-time support in unwinding patterns of striving, anxiety, or collapse that often go unnoticed or even reinforced in silent practice. This creates a learning environment where meditation becomes less about “doing it right” and more about returning to a reliable home.
No prior retreat or meditation experience is required. The day is held in silence for long stretches, with clear guidance, spacious pacing, and an emphasis on care.