Practicing Hope in Hard Times
A Four-Day In-person Embodied & Heart-Based Retreat
The Watershed Center - Millerton, NY
July 11-14, 2025
8am-8pm each day (times will vary on the opening and closing day)
Join long-time friends and collaborators Leslie Booker and Dara Silverman in July in Upstate New York for a four-day retreat. They will guide participants through somatic practices and the Buddha’s profound teachings on the Brahmaviharas—expressions of loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. In this four-day retreat, we’ll explore hope as an embodied practice in a tumultuous world.
Together, we’ll cultivate these capacities and deepen our understanding of how to embody hope, love, and presence. We'll explore meditation and body-based somatic practices.
As a group, we'll sit in the questions:
How can we hold hope without bypassing the realities of injustice and hardship?
How do we stay rooted in joy and well-being while staying fully present to the world around us?
How can meditation practice, and somatic practice, support our engagement with the world (rather than provide an escape?)
Is this for me? If you are interested in learning more about your body, responses under pressure and capacity to work with other people towards justice and through practice- this is for you. If you are an organizer, consultant, trainer, coach or activist, this is a place for you to be deepening and building your commitment to racial justice. This retreat is a place to deepen in your somatic awareness, embodied practice and learnings.
Everyone is welcome to participate, regardless of experience with meditation or body-based practices.
Dates & Location:
* The four-day course begins on Friday, July 11th at 10am and runs though Monday, July 14th at noon.
* Check-in will be available on the evening of Thursday, July 10.
* Sessions will be held throughout the day from 8am to 8pm.
* The course will be held in a scenic setting in the Hudson Valley, at the Watershed Center in Millerton NY.
* It is a 20 minute drive from the Wassaic Metronorth train station.
Structure of the Program:
* Four-days of in-person meditation and somatic practice
* Pre-work and curated practice list
* Embodied daily and weekly practices to take home
* A community of practice to support your learning
This in-person, interactive course will build your capacity, embodiment and understanding of yourself inside of liberation movements in the US at this time.
No prior somatics or meditation experience is needed, but is always helpful. Participants should expect to be ready to deepen their connection to their body and the collective body, into their feeling selves and to move toward their longings and visions for the future. The typical course size is 20-30 people.
Cost:
* The cost for this course is $500-4,000 siding scale. 20% of funds will be sent to support Black organizing.
* This infographic includes more about the sliding scale tiers for consideration * All of this only works if everyone pays at the level they are able - not at a level lower than what they can pay. Together we can create financial balance when we each pay in alignment with our abilities.
Your registration fee pays a team of facilitators a living wage, includes shared double-occupancy housing Thursday night - Monday am (check out on Monday), allows us to redistribute a minimum of 20% of funds to local Black and Indigenous groups as well as Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, and includes paying our Practice Manager for organizing and administrative fees associated with the course. The cost covers all of that and will include healthy home-cooked meals throughout the course. Snacks, coffee and tea are included. There may be an option to pay for a single room for an additional fee, but a single is not guaranteed.
Donations and sponsorships to offset the course cost for other registrants are always welcome.
Community Health: You can read our COVID protocols here.
Deadlines:
* Please submit this application by Friday, June 6th.
* We will follow up shortly after we receive your registration. Registration closes on Friday, June 13th.
* For any questions email: embodyingracialjustice@gmail.com
About the Facilitators:
Leslie Booker is a heart–centered, spirit–driven activist and meditation teacher committed to creating a culture of belonging through her teaching and writing. She completed Spirit Rock’s 4 year Retreat Teacher Training in 2020, and shared the practices of yoga and mindfulness with New York City’s most vulnerable populations for over a decade. Booker has co-authored and contributed to several publications including the trauma-informed anthology Practicing Liberation and its accompanying workbook, for folks working towards social justice. She is a co-founder of the Yoga Service Council at Omega Institute and the Meditation Working Group of Occupy Wall Street. In 2020 she was invited to be a Sojourner Truth Leadership Fellow through Auburn Seminary and was voted by her peers as one of the 12 Powerful Women in the Mindfulness Movement.
Booker moved to Philadelphia in August of 2020 to vote in a swing state, and currently serves as the Guiding Teacher of New York Insight.
Dara Silverman is an embodiment teacher and social change consultant whose work is based on their 25-plus years of community experience in environmental, social, and racial justice movements, 35 years of facilitation practice, and embodiment training at the Strozzi Institute and generative somatics.