Each year the Midwest Alliance for Mindfulness (MAM) offers a secular mindfulness retreat to the general public that also meets requirements for teachers of mindfulness based programs.

Most of us have become quite practiced at doing – setting goals and striving to accomplish them. Simply being is less familiar territory. Yet, learning how to compassionately be with whatever is arising is an empowering skill to cultivate. With mindfulness and compassion, we can develop a relationship with experience that is emergent, non-judging and fully present to this one precious life of ours. Retreat practice provides a protected space to explore the territory of the present moment where many important insights can be found.

We invite you to join our guiding teacher and MAM supporting teachers for five days of being with companionate silence, inner exploration, and nature connection. In addition to the core teachings, participants will be guided in a variety of optional practices such as meditation, mindful movement, yoga nidra, sense and savor trail hiking, mindful eating, labyrinth walking, forest bathing, a drumming circle, and mindful engagement with horses.

Though this five-day, silent teacher-led retreat is designed for the general public, it also meets requirements for teachers of mindfulness based programs and up to 10 hours of continuing education credit are available for KS & MO licensed mental health professionals. There are three ways to attend: stay with us in our private, hotel style accommodations, commute to the retreat center each morning and return home at night, or participate online via Zoom.

Our annual retreat receives praise from those who are newer to longer retreats as well as those with significant retreat experience, because we make it customizable to meet a variety of needs. Though this five-day, silent teacher-led retreat is designed for the general public, it also meets requirements for teachers of mindfulness based programs and continuing education credits are available for KS & MO licensed mental health professionals.

Venue

Join us at Heartland Retreat Center in Parkville, Missouri enjoying hotel style single room accommodations and 300 acres of fall foliage, wildlife, and forested trails. Visit the horses, walk the stone labyrinth or mindfully explore the abandoned cemetery.

While breakfast and lunch will be provided by HRC, vegan dinners will be catered by Mattie’s Foods. Our past participants still rave about their vegan meatloaf with mashed potatoes, chili with cornbread, the “chicken” pasta and the vegan strawberry shortcake and sweet potato pie. One participant wrote, “I think that might have been some of the best catered/delivered food I have ever had. Incredible.”

Guiding Teacher

Dr. Sydney Spears

Sydney Spears, PhD, LCSW, LSCSW, TCTSY-F is cofounder of the Midwest Alliance for Mindfulness, a certified Mindful Self-Compassion teacher, Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging for the Center of Mindful Self-Compassion, a licensed clinical social worker, and a Trauma-Sensitive Yoga facilitator and certification supervisor for the Center for Trauma and Embodiment. Dr. Spears has offered the practices and attitudes of mindfulness and self-compassion across a wide spectrum of contexts and diverse settings. She is an adjunct instructor at the University of Kansas incorporating these skills and concepts into her coursework in diversity, anti-oppression, social justice, and trauma-sensitive practice. Dr. Spears also teaches adaptive yoga at the Kansas City, Missouri VA for veterans who have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and for community survivors of complex trauma through private sessions. She co-designed and co-led a culturally sensitive mindfulness-based training for incarcerated males through the Missouri Department of Corrections to support their re-entry into the community. Through her counseling practice, MidLife at Ease Counseling, Dr. Spears specializes in mindfully supporting people with chronic stress, grief/loss, trauma, anxiety, depression, and relationship challenges. Dr. Spears has taught academic courses in cultural diversity, social justice, and clinical social work practice for 15 years and is passionately committed to advancing social justice efforts through providing and maintaining a non-oppressive, trauma-sensitive, and culturally responsive practice.

• Exploring Mindful Ways of Being – Our mainstream culture emphasizes doing, but we can also practice simply being. With mindfulness and compassion, we can learn to come into direct and intimate contact with the present moment, whether in stillness or in movement, alone or in relationship, or even while we’re engaged in the daily tasks of everyday living. Learning to be helps us more fully inhabit this one precious life.
• Cultivating Loving Awareness of Self, Others and Our Planet Home – Befriending ourselves and establishing inner resources helps us more courageously and sustainably meet whatever life brings us, while considering the needs of others and cultivating concern and appreciation for the planet home on which we all depend. We are empowered to include ourselves, all beings, and the natural world in a more expansive circle of care.
• Establishing an Embodied Presence – We interface the world as embodied beings, but in the rush and bustle of daily life we tend to live in our heads. Reintegrating our bodies into the fullness of our experience affirms and reinforces our contact with opportunities for joy and pleasure and attunes us to early warning signals of suffering and pain so that we might respond kindly and skillfully rather than reactively.

Learning Objectives

• Define the constructs of mindfulness, compassion, and self-compassion, and identify common misconceptions
• Engage in practices designed to cultivate mindfulness, compassion (for self and others), lovingkindness, joy, equanimity, embodiment, savoring, and gratitude 
• Explore interconnection with one another and the environment
• Identify common obstacles and practice strategies for mitigating them
• Recognize resources within ourselves, in community, and the natural world to support resilience
• Deepen capacity to relate kindly to oneself while remaining present with experience