Weekend Mindfulness Retreat

In the MBSR Tradition:

~ A Residential Retreat Experience ~

for a Deep Dive into Authentic Mindfulness Practice

with First-Generation*, Master Mindfulness Teachers:

Steve Flowers, MS, MFT & Genevieve Tregor, MS

(click on each teacher name for details about background and experience)

Franciscan Renewal Center - Scottsdale, AZ

Dates/Fees TBD:

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Registration includes:

2 nights at the Franciscan Renewal Center

Six Catered Vegetarian meals

from local restaurants

Begins Friday 3pm and ends after lunch on Sunday

Early Rate

Full Registration

Cancellation Policy:

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24 Continuing Education (CE) hours will be available for Psychologists, Mental Health Providers and Nurses.

This program is sponsored by the Spiritual Competency Resource Center to offer Continuing Education. To learn more about professional education, please visit the

Continuing Education information page

TOUCH INTO THE POSSIBILITIES

& REAL BENEFITS OF MINDFULNESS

Why a Mindfulness Retreat -

What will you experience?

Immediate benefits:

Take a 'time-out' from daily life responsibilities, the relentlessness of our fast-paced world, news and information technology. Just this experience alone offers a rarefied opportunity to reconnect with ourselves.
Learn or Deepen your understanding of Mindfulness in a highly effective container for practice.
For Health Professionals or those in care-giving roles**: develop an understanding of how to work most effectively with the practice or introduce mindfulness to clients.

**(Please note: this retreat is NOT exclusively for health professionals, although it will provide content valuable to health care providers)

Long-Term benefits:

Cultivating Mindfulness in a strong, protected container for practice like that of a residential retreat provides an intensive, cumulative experience -

This is ideal for delving into the depths of our own psychological and emotional patterning to explore for yourself the meaning of 'responding vs reacting'
As well as intimately connecting with the felt-sense of the body to release tension on a deeper level than that accessible in the midst of our daily life hustle and bustle.
This cumulative experience additionally develops a deep balance and stability that integrates into daily life as an ability to hold difficult experiences and emotions; for more clarity, ease, resilience and connection to joy that persists even after you return to your daily life.

WHO SHOULD PARTICIPATE, IS THIS FOR ME?

This retreat is for those new-to-practice, offers a deepening into practice for experienced meditators & additonally can support Health Professionals seeking to integrate their practice into their work

WHY THIS MINDFULNESS RETREAT?

EXPERT-LEVEL INSTRUCTION & GUIDANCE:

Steve and Genevieve are 'First-Generation' Mindfulness Teachers (have MBSR training through direct contact with Jon Kabat-Zinn and his close colleagues;) and have long-time, in-depth practice experience personally and professionally. Both Steve and Genevieve have been recognized for their understanding and teaching skills by the leading experts in the field:

Steve's two books on Mindfulness have received praise from Jack Kornfield, Zindel Segal, Tara Brach, Sharon Salzberg, Daniel J. Siegal, Stephen Levine, and others leaders in the field of Mindfulness. Steve regularly teaches along-side Bob Stahl, one of Kabat-Zinn's earliest colleagues, and a senior teacher with the UMass Center for Mindfulness.

Genevieve was selected by Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach to serve as Faculty for their International Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program as a result of the depth of her practice and teaching experience.

A STRONG RETREAT 'CONTAINER':

Steve and Genevieve are dedicated to creating a strong 'container' for your retreat experience in order to create an ideal environment for cultivating and deepening mindfulness practice. This includes the container of an all-residential experience, and catered meals for retreat participants only (rather than a dining hall experience open to others) to maintain the protected 'field' for retreatants. Additionally, Steve and Genevieve are experienced at creating a feeling of safety for participants to relax into their practice.

WHAT TO EXPECT

The retreat will include guided and silent mindfulness meditation (body scan and sitting meditaton,) yoga, qi gong, walking meditation to deepen your own practice; as well as instruction and group discussions on topics including what the practice is; the why and how of it, benefits, formal and informal (daily-life) practices, therapeutic applications, working with trauma, and how to provide basic instruction to others.

You'll enjoy catered vegetarian meals from local restaurants to nourish you in your practice from Dinner on Friday evening through Lunch before departing on Sunday.

Two nights stay in a recently renovated single or double room on the beautiful, natural desert campus of the Franciscan Renewal Center, 'The Casa' - a center for spiritual growth, healing and transformation since 1951 - at the base of Camelback and Mummy Mountains.

Ample free time will be provided each day for 'just being' and for personal exploration.

Mindful Living Program’s Retreats are of benefit to people from all walks of life: those who simply wish to learn and/or deepen their mindfulness practice, those who are seeking a new way to relate to difficulty and pain, and for physicians, healthcare professionals, and those in care-taking roles who wish to bring the practice into their work.

For those entirely new to practice, we recommend reading Jon Kabat-Zinn’s best selling book, Full Catastrophe Living, or Wherever You Go, There You Are prior to coming to one of our retreats as an introduction to the work we will do together.

Anchor 1

Steve Flowers, MS, MFT

Steve is the founder and director of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Clinic at the Enloe Medical Center in Chico, California. Steve is a long time practitioner of meditation and has been teaching MBSR since 1997. He has provided training in mindfulness to thousands of people. He pioneered MBSR online programs that make full 8-week MBSR programs available to persons all over the world. As a licensed psychotherapist in private practice Steve specializes in the treatment of stress related conditions, anxiety and depressive disorders and couples therapy.

In addition to his work in medicine and psychotherapy he provides mindfulness workshops for Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin, CA, for Skycreek Dharma Center, for city and county government employees in Chico and Butte County, CA, and for federal agencies such as HUD and US Forest service. Steve has provided numerous mindfulness workshops for many public and private companies and organizations including: Butte College employees and students, Chico State University students and employees, Sierra Nevada Brewery managers, and employees of Blue Shield Health Insurance Corporation, city managers and the community of Chico, The American Academy of Pain Management, and the Investigating and Integrating Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society Annual Conference in Massachusetts.

Steve is sought out as a public speaker and has offered numerous workshops and presentations for nationally and internationally acclaimed organizations such as Center for Mindfulness' Annual International Scientific Conference on Mindfulness and the American Academy of Pain Management.

He invites you to explore the question: "What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver in The Summer Day

His articles on Mindfulness are featured in Mindful Magazine and he is contributing author to the book The Mindful Revolution; he is also the author of two books: Living with Your Heart Wide Open and The Mindful Path Through Shyness. You can find them on Amazon: Steve's Amazon page

To learn more about Steve, please visit his website: Mindful Living

Anchor 2

Genevieve Tregor, MS

Genevieve is the sole proprietor of Solution Mindfulness. She offers Mindfulness classes including the MBSR program, workshops and retreats locally in the Phoenix area, and leads the Insight Meditation Scottsdale group - the largest Insight Meditation community in the Phoenix area. Genevieve also serves on the faculty of Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach's international Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program.

She has extensive experience with the practice of mindfulness and is dedicated to supporting others in learning this transformational way of being in the world. She has a background in health education and public health care.

You can learn more about Genevieve HERE.

Anchor 3

* "First-Generation" Teachers are those teachers who learned to teach MBSR through direct contact with Jon Kabat-Zinn and his close colleagues. Most of the positive outcomes research has been linked to those programs taught by first-generation teachers, and those who have developed practice through a sustained engagement with the practice and not just through academic exposures. (Competence in Teaching Mindfulness-Based Courses: Concepts, Development and Assessment. Crane, et al. Mindfulness (2012) 3:76-84.)