Practising Intimacy – Awakening through letting go: 14-Day Silent Retreat with Patrick Kearney & Robyn Gibson

Location: Kallara Conference Centre, 332 Boundary Hill Rd, Boho South VIC

Dates: Friday 18th July – Friday 1st August 2025

The practice of intimacy allows us to deeply explore our experience of life as it unfolds each moment through body, feeling and mind. One way to open to intimacy is through the Buddha’s practice of ānāpānasati, mindfulness with breathing. Through this practice, body relaxes, and mind quietens. Serenity and insight arise, letting go deepens, and the way to awakening opens.

In this retreat your practice will be fine-tuned through regular one-on-one meetings with the teachers, providing you with an objective, third-person view of your practice. The retreat will include: practice in the four postures of moving, standing, sitting and lying down; practical meditation workshops; dharma talks; and gentle exercise to loosen and open the body.

The retreat includes:
*Stillness and movement meditation
*Meditation instruction
*Gentle stretching
*Dharma talks
*Periods of mindfulness work and rest
*Regular private meetings with Patrick & Robyn

The teachers:

Patrick Kearney has practised mindfulness meditation (satipatthana vipassana) since 1977. Most
of his training has been in the insight meditation lineage of Mahāsi Sayadaw of Burma, including
several years as a Buddhist monk. His main teachers were Sayadaw U Pandita and John Hale. He has
also trained in the Diamond Sangha lineage of Zen with Robert Altken RoshI and Paul Maloney Roshi.
Patrick, a full-time teacher of mindfulness meditation for over 20 years, has studied early Buddhism
at postgraduate levels and has a particular interest in the original teachings of the Buddha. This
allows him to bring the radical insights of the Buddha to our contemporary situation. He sees
meditation as a physical practice that reconnects us with the felt world of our senses, allowing us
to live our lives directly rather than through the cling-wrap of our habitual thinking.

Robyn Gibson has been practising and studying meditation for 30 years, predominantly in the Mahāsi
lineage of Theravāda Buddhism. Her principal teachers have been Patrick Kearney and Carol Perry.
Teaching since 2016, Robyn’s approach brings together the radical teachings of freedom through
embodied presence that the Buddha taught, deep ecology and other nature-based practices, and
creative expression, allowing for enquiry into what it means to live a wise and ethical human life on
this earth, and how to face the challenges of our current times with courage and integrity.

Cost

*Twin-share room: $1490 + dana for the teachers – waiting list only 

*Single room with shared bathroom: $1990 + dana for the teachers – 1 room available 

*Single room with ensuite: $2370 + dana for the teachers – waiting list only 

Bookings – Click here to book the last single room 

To go on the waiting list click here

Enquiries: retreats@melbourneinsightmeditation.org