This is the first talk of a weeklong retreat in 2026.

Lynn Teo starts by exploring various ways to resource the nervous system to support the capacity to be present to the moment's direct experience.

Then, we investigate what mindfulness is and how mindfulness of the body supports present moment awareness.

Lynn Teo has been teaching embodied movement and meditation for over 25 years. Deeply grateful to her teachers, she now teaches in the Insight (Vipassana) Tradition and is a Dharma teacher with Open Door Meditation Community in Portland, Maine. A deep believer in Sangha and belonging, she helps to empower community members (in particular helpers, healers, artists, activists, and people of color) with embodied practices of radical rest, resilience, and trauma/burnout recovery.

As a clinician, Lynn combines acupuncture, shiatsu, and Somatic Experiencing ® and specializes in helping patients suffering anxiety, stress, overwhelm, burnout and trauma as well as chronic pain and chronic conditions.

Learn more at www.lynnteoacupuncture.com. Dana: Venmo @Lynn-Teo.

This talk explores Right Effort as one of the most misunderstood elements of the Eightfold Path—revealing how much of our suffering comes not from a lack of effort, but from pushing, striving, and forcing ourselves in ways that create inner violence. Drawing on classical Buddhist teachings and everyday experience, the talk reframes effort as a form of care rather than willpower, inviting a wiser relationship to energy, discipline, and motivation in meditation and daily life.

You'll learn how to recognize when effort has tipped into strain, how to stop feeding unhelpful mental patterns, and how to cultivate wholesome qualities without burnout or self-judgment. The talk offers practical guidance for sustaining practice with steadiness and ease, helping you apply energy in ways that support clarity, compassion, and long-term resilience—on and off the cushion.

This talk explores the power of self-observation and what lies beyond the sense of self.

You'll learn how the witness can free you from the tyranny of the mind and your reactivity as well as what can happen when you explore being aware of the witness and what lies beyond.