When Love Liberates: Buddhist Meditations for Hearts Broken/Open

The liberated heart knows how to expand and contract, allowing love to flow in and out like the tides. Like roots that deepen through coastal storms, through practice we discover that opening and softening our hearts in challenging times, with wisdom and discernment, is itself an exercise in freedom.

In this retreat, we’ll work with the Buddha’s teachings on the four Brahmaviharas—the divine abodes of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity— as pathways to embody deep freedom and true humanity, even in unfree places and times.

Through meditation, contemplation, and authentic dialogue in nature, we will explore how to live and practice with presence, honesty, and courage, learning to love more expansively and more wisely as we navigate our current realities, and shape the world to come.

The invitation is direct: come with your actual heart—broken, open, guarded, tender, messy, wise. Come ready to remember that freedom isn’t found by defending the heart, but by trusting its natural capacity to hold it all, the way ancient forests hold both shadow and light. Come to remember what you value—in yourself, in this world, in all its beings—and to restore your energy for protecting what matters, with love as your guide.

What You’ll Gain

• Cultivate heart resilience – Develop the capacity to keep your heart open and responsive in difficult times, learning to expand and contract with wisdom rather than shutting down or becoming overwhelmed.
• Embody the four Brahmaviharas – Practice and integrate loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity as lived qualities that guide your responses to personal and collective challenges.
• Transform your relationship to freedom – Discover freedom as an inner capacity that exists even in constrained circumstances, shifting from seeking external liberation to embodying present-moment freedom.
• Develop discerning engagement – Learn to act from love with wisdom and courage, distinguishing between reactive protection and skillful response when facing what you value being threatened.
• Integrate contemplative practice with social engagement – Build sustainable ways to maintain your spiritual practice while remaining actively engaged with the world’s needs, preventing burnout and spiritual bypassing.

Who This Program is For

• Helpers and healers — including therapists, teachers, community organizers, parents, caregivers, healthcare workers — or anyone who is are facing compassion fatigue or burnout, and who wants to rest, heal, and recover their joy
• In transition — facing endings, navigating change — who want to ground in what the love and care about most as they orient toward their next steps
• Living with heartbreak — whether from personal loss, grief for our Earth and its people, or both — who want to find balance and resilience centered in love and presence

What You’ll Experience

Guided meditations, discussions, listening to talks, contemplation

Daily Schedule

A detailed schedule will be emailed to you about 30 days prior to your program. Click here to view a sample program schedule.