Upcoming Events
open classes, workshops, and retreats
Sacred Evening Sangha- A Month of Practice for Liberating Your Heart While Working Towards Collective Liberation
Sacred Evening Sangha is a 4-week online Buddhist meditation immersion in restorative heart practices, with the intention of fortifying your care and resting in it at the end of each day.
I created this container for people working toward collective liberation: teachers, artists, organizers, activists, healers, caregivers, storytellers, responders – all of us who are encountering, interrupting and transforming suffering at whatever scale we find it.
Guided evening guided practice will be offered live 5x/week on Zoom, every weeknight (Sunday-Thursday) from 8:30-9:15pm EST. (Recordings are available by 9:30pm EST, in case you missed it or want to practice later that evening)
Feel free to keep your camera off. There will be no breakout rooms. Lying down is strongly encouraged…
Each session will include:
a few minutes of guided restorative/somatic movement
a light offering of Dharma teachings from Buddhism and other liberatory paths
a hearty 25-30 minutes of gently guided meditation practice
Optional Weekly Teacher-Led Discussion Circles will take place on Zoom every Friday morning at 10am and afternoon at 3pm EST.
“The revolution will be led by well-rested people.”
– Tricia Hersey, “On Rest As Resistance”
For More Information and To Register Click Here
Yoga, Meditation and Recovering Conference
This conference offers strength and hope on the journey from addiction to recovery through breathwork, the chakra system, innovations in holistic 12-Step recovery, and more. While addictive behaviors separate us from ourselves, each other, our environment, and the Divine, yoga invites us into union, balance, and connection with practices that directly address the range of issues caused by addiction. Connected to our wholeness, we more readily recognize our addictive behaviors and find the inner strength to move beyond them.
Each day includes universal 12-Step meetings, dharma talks, asana, pranayama, and meditation practices as well as workshops that provide participants with a chance to more fully explore the convergence of the path of yoga, meditation, and recovery.
Everyone is welcome—all stages of recovery, all addictions, family members, and those who work in the field. Come connect your inner and outer worlds and awaken joy and peace from within by learning how to bring recovery alive in your practice.
For more information and to register click here
The Greatest Love of All: Cultivating Self-Love for Personal & Collective Liberation
Many of us long for a world filled with more joy, love, and freedom. Yet most of us move through life with inner critics constantly mumbling words of misery, self-judgment, and limiting beliefs.
It can be hard to quiet these voices, let alone make them stop. If we can't prioritize love for ourselves, how can we manifest love for our family, friends, communities, nature, and the Earth itself? With practice, we can learn how to cultivate this love.
Join us for this weekend of centering and cultivating self-love through contemplation, meditation, time in nature, and joyful connection with others. Expert meditation teachers share teachings and practices that alleviate suffering, cultivate true happiness, and support the liberation of all beings. Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.
With Kate Johnson, Dawn Mauricio, La Sarmiento, and Sebene Selassie.
For more information and to register Click here
The Universe is My True Body: A Five Elements Retreat for BIPOC Practitioners
Mindfulness of the body is a core practice on the Buddha’s path to liberation. One of the ways we can work with this practice is through contemplations on the five elements – earth, water, fire, air, and space/ether. These elements exist both within and beyond our bodies, and they can be known directly through our loving awareness. Being with the elemental nature of our bodies and of the world around us is a way to connect deeply to our physical experience in the present moment, and can help us tap into a felt sense of interconnection with all things.
As practitioners who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (including Asian, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, and/or Latinx people of color), practicing with the elements can be deeply restorative and healing. It can feel like coming home. Colonization, enslavement, imperialism, and patriarchy have all used violence to try to separate us from the natural world, because our connection with nature makes us too powerful to dominate. Let us reconnect with the elements, in affinity space, and tap into the wisdom nature holds about how to liberate ourselves and live together in a beloved community.
For more information and to register Click here
A Women's Liberation Retreat
We live in times of increasing pressure—both individually and systemically—and this pressure can be experienced as intensity, stress, limitation, or dissatisfaction. The Four Noble Truths remind us that pressure is, and has always been, a part of life, and that freedom is possible within it. The teachings point to our relationship with pressure, and the ways we respond to it, as choice points where our freedom lies.
This retreat offers a sanctuary space in which practitioners can choose rest, renewal, and liberation. Together we will practice in noble silence, integrating movement and stillness meditation, outdoor practice, and Dharma talks that lift up women’s journeys of awakening from a diversity of lineages and traditions.
We welcome all who identify as women, as well as non-binary folks who feel nourished in spaces centering women, to join this journey of insight, ease, and individual and collective liberation.
For more information and to register Click here
Applications Open: April 17 – May 8, 2024.
Nourshing the Beautiful: A Retreat for the LGBTQIA+ Community
Awakening to the beauty that is within and around us all is an essential part of the Buddhist path, and it is of particular importance to those of us who have been taught to view ourselves and the world in a different light. In practicing together throughout this retreat, we will closely consider—and deeply nurture—what beauty means for us, both individually and collectively.
Grounded in kindness, this retreat will offer meditation, mindful movement, heart-centered practices, Dharma talks, practice discussions, and opportunities for inquiry. In creating this beautiful and supportive container, we find greater freedom for ourselves and our communities. This retreat supports all levels of practice and inclusivity for our LGBTQIA+, GNC, and non-binary communities and is open to all levels of meditation experience.
For more information and to register click here
Registration opens approximately 9:00 am Pacific Time on July 2, 2024.
Finding your ground: Mindful Yoga and Embodied Dharma
How do we stay grounded, centered, and rooted in compassion and wisdom, especially in times of personal and global challenges? In this silent retreat, we’ll offer teachings and tools from the Dharma and Yoga traditions for settling your nervous system, grounding your energy, and connecting in an embodied way with what matters most. You’ll replenish your body, heart, and mind with a seamless flow of meditation in movement and in stillness, within a spacious schedule that offers ample time to rest, be in nature, and honor the natural rhythms of your own practice.
Each day includes gentle guided Yoga; seated, walking, standing, and lying down meditation; Dharma reflections; and small group meetings with a teacher. You’ll go home with powerful, practical tools for staying centered in your daily life, and you’ll be better equipped to respond with wisdom and compassion to the urgent needs of our times.
For more information and to register click here
Registration opens approximately 9:00 am Pacific Time on July 9, 2024.
Brahmaviharas @ The Shala Yoga Brooklyn (HYBRID)
Workshops will consist of dharma share and guided practice sessions.
Based on Four Qualities of Love:
Sat, December 16: Friendship and Compassion 12:30 - 3:30 pm ET
Sun, December 17: Joy and Equanimity 2:00 - 5:00 pm ET
Offered in person and online
Insight Western Mass: The Dharma of War and Peace - Hybrid
In times of war, when it’s nearly impossible not to cause harm – how can we cause the least harm possible?
This conversation will explore the complexity of practicing the first precept of not harming – a core commitment on the Buddhist path of liberation – during times of violence and instability.
Our inquiry will weave in Buddhist teachings on wise view, wise speech, compassionate action, grief and forgiveness, as well as more contemporary spiritual and political perspectives on nonviolence, armed resistance, and transformative justice.
Attendees will be invited to contemplate what true peace means for them, and will move towards clarifying they might embody peace in their personal practice, in their intimate relationships, and in their interrelationship with all of life.
click here for more information and to register in person or zoom.
Wise Effort Together: A Virtual Gathering hosted by Dr. Diana Hill
The Wise Effort Together is a virtual gathering of top experts in the fields of compassion, mindfulness, and mental wellness. This summit is being offered to mental health professionals and the general public to address the burn out, stress, and anxiety that many are experiencing in our over-driven, hyper-achievement oriented world. Thought leaders will offer strategies to grow a more compassionate, collaborative, and purpose-driven life, sharing tools from cutting-edge approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Mindful Loving Awareness, Polyvagal Theory, and Buddhist Psychology.
Attendees will learn:
Three components of Wise Effort (Curiosity, Flexibility and Action)
Strategies from polyvagal theory to re-balance your nervous system
Actions you can take to live longer with greater purpose
Tools to deepen your relationships
Skills to build more compassionate, caring minds
How to strive flexibly toward your values with ACT
The Free Tier gives you open access to the pre-recorded expert video conversations during the 3-day online event on October 20-22, 2023.
The All-Access Pass gives you additional bonuses to help make your Wise Effort Together a more active and lasting learning experience. These bonuses will be available to All-Access Pass holders until January 22, 2024!
for more information and to register click here
Love is Freedom: Metta as a Path to Liberation
Metta (loving-kindness) isn’t just a nice practice – it’s a powerful practice.
It can purify, protect, and expand our hearts, and it can open us into a direct experience of interdependence, healing liberating us from the suffering of the separate self.
The formal practice of Metta can open into a direct experience of anatta (not-self, interdependence) and in this way, we can also think of it as a pathway to liberating insight
In this Day of Practice with insight meditation teacher Kate Johnson, we will approach Metta as a portal to the liberated heart. Metta purifies and cultivates the heart in a way that makes the poisons of greed, hatred and delusion less able to take root. With Kate as our guide, we’ll learn how to tap into the dimensions of freedom that are available through love – including freedom from anxiety and resentment, and freedom to give and receive all the love that we need.
click here for more information and to register
Buddhist Wisdom for Life Summit
If you’re ready to start healing as an individual and living more in tune with your true self… or you would like guidance and new perspectives on challenges in your life… I encourage you to join us for this important event.
Presented by Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and Wisdom for Life, this summit explores practical teachings to guide you through life's challenges, relationships, emotions, purpose and more. Learn from luminaries like Tara Brach, Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and many others.
Sept 26th-Oct 2nd - ONLINE
click here for more information and to register for free
Rest, Renewal and Joyful Rigor: a Women's Meditation Retreat
When you are as full as the full moon
Burst Open
Make the dark night shine.
— Matty Weingast, The First Free Women
An open secret of meditation is that prioritizing ease and well-being leads to a natural and joyful attention. This retreat will focus on deep rest for the first days, inviting the natural capacity of mindful attention to arise from within. We will focus on the Four Noble Truths through teachings and stories that lift up women from a diversity of lineages.
If you identify as a woman and have ever felt like your gender expression, age, ethnicity, body, or sexual orientation was unwelcome in Dharma spaces, please know that our true intention is to welcome all of you. You are especially invited to join us.
The retreat will be held in silence except for teacher-led Q&A, small groups, or other practice meetings.
click here to register
BIPOC Voices: Weekly Sunday Sangha
The Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) Sangha is a weekly gathering of self-identified BIPOC practitioners that provides a safe place to meditate and explore the Dharma. As a beloved community, this sangha supports exploration of the Dharma in light of our experiences. Together, we will cultivate an environment that welcomes diverse voices and builds community.
Online: We are offering this program online via Zoom for you to join us remotely.
Donation-Based (Dāna): Please support our Spirit Rock teachers, staff, and scholarships by giving as generously as you can.
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM Pacific Time
Click here for more info and to register
Mettā/Lovingkindness Retreat
Mettā is the quality of love that blossoms when we turn our attention toward what is inherently lovely, worthy and good – within us and all around us. In these times of anxiety, loneliness and heartbreak, metta can help fortify our hearts and minds with a love that is more powerful than fear. By centering what we care about, we find the energy to keep moving steadily toward individual and collective liberation.
In this Lovingkindness retreat, we will explore Metta practice as a way of cultivating a warm and courageous heart, as well as a practice of purifying everything that gets in the way of love. We will also work with Metta as a doorway to samadhi – the state of union, stillness and wholeness that leads to clear seeing, insight and the Jhanas.
This retreat will be held in Kio-o, Sainte-Lucie-des-Laurentides, QC
click here for more information and to register
Sunday Sangha - Finding Forgiveness: Processing the Past to Open the Present
The Buddhist path is one of liberation through letting go. But when there's been disappointment, betrayal, or harm, letting go can seem like a very tall order. Join us as we explore the spectrum of heart qualities on the way to forgiveness, and find a new relationship to the past that brings you more freedom in the present moment.
The class is 1.5 hours long and begins at 11am PT (L.A.) / 2pm ET (N.Y.)
This is session is freely-offered, but dana/donations are invited to help us meet our substantial running costs and to support our teachers.
click here for more information and to register
Groove Is in the Heart: Igniting Joy for Individual & Collective Liberation
Is it possible to experience deep joy, even in the midst of so much suffering in our world?
Joy is inherent within each and every one of us and is all around us. It is always right here; it's just a matter of accessing it. We witness the natural inclination towards joy in young children yet most of us come to inhibit, lose, and forget this foundational aspect of our true nature.
Through play, meditation, song, movement, reflection, and connection, this weekend workshop helps us reignite joy in our heart, body, and mind. Join us and get your joy on.
with Kate Johnson, Dawn Mauricio, La Sarmiento, and Sebene Selassie
Tuition:
Member: $315.00
Tiered Pricing: $350.00 or less (check website for tuition options and more information)
Month-Long Morning Meditation Intensive
Love Liberates
A Month-Long Morning Meditation Intensive
June 6th - June 30th, 2023
Love is the liberation of the heart.
Love is your true nature.
Love steadies.
Love liberates.
Love heals.
Love is a daily practice.
Join us for this month-long, online morning meditation intensive, where we’ll center the Buddha’s teachings on the four divine kinds of love – as preparation for the day ahead, and fortification for whatever that day might bring.
click here for more information and to register.
Let Your Practice Mother You: A Daylong for Mamas
As mothers, generosity is our practice. We pour our time, attention, and love into our children. We offer our physical, emotional, and spiritual labor to make a world we want to pass on to them. And we do it all in a society that doesn’t always support us, or our kids, the way that it should. From the Buddhist perspective, generosity is our capacity to receive care, as well as to give it. In truth, we never stop needing mothering—even after we become mothers ourselves.
In this daylong retreat, on the day before Mother’s Day, we’ll give ourselves time to nurture the inner mother. Through meditation, restorative movement, and journaling, we’ll make space for rest, creativity, healing, and humor in our practice. Most importantly, we’ll lift up mothering as its own spiritual path, and find ways to let our practice mother us, as we in turn mother future generations.
Online Only: We are offering this program online via Zoom for you to join us remotely.
Sliding Scale: Our sliding scale options for this program include financial support for our teachers. Please consider paying at the highest rate that you can afford: your generosity supports the teachers as well as Spirit Rock, staff, and your fellow practitioners.
Benefactor – $200
Sustainer – $120
BASE – $95
Scholarship Rate (BIPOC, M/K) – $45
For registering and more information click here
Monday Night Dharma Talk & Meditation with Jack Kornfield & Friends
For over 35 years now, the Monday Night sitting group at Spirit Rock has been a welcoming refuge to gather, hear the teachings of the Buddha, and practice insight meditation together as a community.
The program includes a 30-40 min guided meditation, a short break, and a dharma talk. Meets every Monday night from 7:15 – 9:15 p.m. On Monday night, May 1st, Kate will be a guest teacher.
The evening mixes periods of meditative sitting with dharma talks and is appropriate for beginners and experienced students alike and is a great way to find a little peace and quiet in which to sustain you into your week.
Sliding scale: $0–$108 ($15–$30 suggested)
To register and for information click here
Sacred Evening Sangha: A Month of Transformative Twilight Meditations (online)
Sacred Evening Sangha is a month-long, live online daily practice immersion for people working toward societal transformation.
It’s a practice in reclaiming the twilight hours as a time to gather our minds and hearts, to let go of the day behind us and rest in the in-between space.
From January 15th through Febraury 9th, we’ll be in a community container designed to support grounding, inner safety, rest and wellbeing.
This cohort will be limited to 25 people.
Evening practice will be offered live 5x/week on Zoom, every weeknight (Sunday-Thursday) from 8-8:45pm EST. (Recordings are available by 9pm EST)
Each session will include:
a few minutes of guided restorative movement
a light offering of Dharma teachings from Buddhism, feminism, Black, brown and Indigenous wisdom, and other liberatory paths
a hearty 20-30 minutes of gently guided and spacious meditation practice
Weekly Teacher-Led Practice Discussions will take place in small groups every Friday or Saturday. Together, we’ll reflect on how the week’s teachings ripple through life, work and relationships. It’s a space to share insights and challenges, clarify instructions, ask and answer questions with a small group.
All sessions will take place via Zoom and will be facilitated by Kate Johnson.
For more info and to register, Click here
True North BIPOC Meditation Group (online)
Meditation, dharma talk and discussion with the BIPOC Sangha at True North Insight, based in Montreal, CA. To receive the Zoom link fill out this form: https://bit.ly/TNIBIPOCSANGHA
The Dharma of Healthy Boundaries
Knowing your boundaries, and communicating them clearly, is an act of fierce compassion. But in a culture that normalizes appeasement, overwork, and non-consent, it can feel vulnerable, even scary, to articulate boundaries, even to ourselves.
Together we’ll explore how the Buddha’s teachings on spiritual friendship (kalyana mitta) and the heart qualities (brahmavihāra) can be your greatest allies in establishing healthy boundaries.
Our time together will include guided meditations, Dharma talks, journaling reflections, and time for questions and insights. The day is appropriate for beginners and experienced meditators.
If interested in this online retreat, click here for more information and to register.
Self, Not Self: How identity, intersectionality, and interdependence help reveal our true nature
Who are you, really? When your mind becomes still, when your heart opens in love -- who are you?
Are you the beautifully unique combination of identities, characteristics, and experiences you were born with and shaped by in this lifetime?
Are you something beyond, or in between, the seemingly separate conditions of the material world -- an expression of primordial oneness, emptiness and luminosity?
According to the Buddha, you are both. And you are so much more. But don't take his word for it.
Join me at the THE SHALA YOGA STUDIO for an experiential journey into the teachings of the Buddhadharma, and contemporary theories on identity and intersectionality, and walk away with your own understanding of who you really are, how we are all connected, and how Buddhist meditation can help us really know these things for ourselves.
December 3, 12:30-3:30pm, hybrid
December 4, 10:30am-12:30pm, online
December 18, 10:30am-12:30pm, online
$30 online, $50 hybrid, $95 for all 3
Online + in-studio
For more info and to register Click here
BIPOC Voices: Weekly Sunday Sangha
The Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) Sangha is a weekly gathering of self-identified BIPOC practitioners that provides a safe place to meditate and explore the dharma. As a beloved community, this sangha supports exploration of the dharma in light of our experiences. Together we will cultivate an environment that welcomes diverse voices and builds community.
All levels of experience are welcome.
Our sliding scale options for this drop-in program include financial support for our teachers; suggested donation $10–$25.
To learn more and register click here
Awake and At Home: Embodied Mindfulness Retreat for Women (Online - Buddhist Geeks)
As a virtual at home retreat, this is an opportunity to deepen into mindfulness practice and explore what it means to awaken in each embodied moment of our often challenging, chaotic and beautifully sacred lives as women. Join a diverse community of women from around the globe and experience meditation practice in a way that honors the intuitive and embodied aspects of the journey. Through mindful movement, stillness, silence and connection, our team of seasoned teachers, all trained in both mindfulness meditation and embodied awakening practices (such as yoga and qigong), will create a nourishing retreat container to slow down, reconnect with the wisdom of your body and return home to your heart. Collectively we will support and empower each other on this journey of becoming more fully grounded, spacious, and responsive in our day to day lives. All those who identify as women are welcome. Click here for more info and to register…
Messy, Awkward, Beautiful: Making and Sustaining Radical Friendships on the Spiritual Path
Tricycle’s weeklong virtual event series, Living Well in Difficult Times, features conversations with Buddhist teachers, psychologists, and writers exploring the building blocks of a life well lived, from emotional well-being to right livelihood to spiritual friendship.
Join me on my panel Messy, Awkward, Beautiful: Making and Sustaining Radical Friendships on the Spiritual Path, for an exploration of friendship, freedom, and how meditation and the practices of wise relationship can help us build the inner capacities that lead to a more liberated life.
This is a donation-based event. To sign in click here.
Sacred Evening Sangha: A Month of Transformative Twilight Meditations (online)
Sacred Evening Sangha is a month-long, live online daily practice immersion for people working toward societal transformation.
It’s a practice in reclaiming the twilight hours as a time to gather our minds and hearts, to let go of the day behind us and rest in the in-between space.
From October 1st through October 28th, we’ll be in a community container designed to support wholeness, realness and wellbeing.
Opening Session. Saturday October 1st, 2-4pm ET.
Sacred Evening Sessions. Weeknights, Sunday-Thursday from 8-9pm ET.
Small Group Conversations. Weekday lunchtime. Optional bi-monthly teacher-led practice discussion.
Closing Session. Friday October 28th, 6-8pm ET.
For more info and to register, click here
Become A Good Ancestor Project Book Club (online)
Join me for a book club conversation with author and host Reema Zaman — https://www.becomeagoodancestor.com/book-club/radical-friendship
No Part Left Out: A Meditation Retreat for Self-Identified Women
This silent meditation retreat will offer myths, stories, and archetypes of Buddhist womxn, past and present, as inspiration to illuminate and embrace all aspects of our wisdom, compassion, and desire for freedom. We will weave diverse expressions of feminine energies and the innate ways womxn know and understand into the fabric of the retreat, community, and practice.
Our time together will include silent sitting and walking, meditation instruction, daily embodied movement, Dharma talks, meetings with teachers, and creative expression.
*Last year this retreat was 5 full days, from 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.; we have not received a confirmation of timing for this year (2021). Sorry for the inconvenience.
All are welcome! No one will be turned away for lack of funds as space allows.
Buddhist Geeks Podcast Interview
Buddhist Geeks interviews Kate Johnson on her new book Radical Friendship. Episode airs Friday, September 24th, 2021.
Lions Roar Podcast Interview
Rod Meade-Sperry interviews Kate Johnson for The Lion’s Roar Podcast. Episode airs on Saturday, September 18th, 2021.
Radical Friendship Roundtable – Sangha in a Pandemic
New York Insight Meditation Center hosts an online discussion with meditation teachers Kate Johnson, Stacy McClendon, Dawn Mauricio, Jozen Tamori Gibson and JD Doyle, exploring how can we give and receive true spiritual friendship in a time of isolation and uprising. Join us as we celebrate the release of Kate Johnson’s first book, Radical Friendship: Seven Ways to Love Yourself and Find Your People in an Unjust World, with a round table discussion on what radical friendship means within Buddhist communities and beyond.
CTZN Well with Kerri Kelly Podcast Interview
Kerri Kelly sits down with Kate on the CTZN Well Podcast. The episode airs Friday, September 17th, 2021.
On Radical Friendship in an Unjust World: An Online Conversation with Kate Johnson and Elizabeth Markle
The California Institute of Integral Studies hosts an online discussion between Kate Johnson and Elizabeth Markle on Wednesday, September 15th, 2021 at 8:30pm ET / 5:30pm PT.
The divides we experience within us and between us are not only a threat to our physical and emotional health—they are also the weapons and the outcomes of structural oppression. Meditation teacher and author Kate Johnson believes that through wise relationships it is possible to transform the barriers created by societal injustice. Drawing on her experiences as a leading meditation teacher and personal stories of growing up multiracial in a racist world, Kate brings a fresh take on time-honored wisdom to help us connect more authentically with ourselves, with our friends and family, and within our communities.
In Kate’s latest book, Radical Friendship, she illuminates seven strategies to help us embody our deepest values in our relationships. Kate shares meditation and reflection practices to help everyone cultivate vibrant, harmonious, revolutionary friendships. Grounded in the Buddha’s teachings on spiritual friendship, Kate offers us a path of depth and hope and shows us the importance of working toward collective wellbeing, one relationship at a time.
Join licensed psychologist and CIIS faculty Elizabeth Markle for a conversation with Kate as they lead us on a journey to becoming better friends by offering ways to show up for each other’s liberation at every stage of a relationship.
Tara Brach Podcast Interview
Meditation teacher Tara Brach interviews Kate Johnson about her new book Radical Friendship. Episode airs Wednesday, September 15th, 2021.
African Ancestry Livestream Interview
Kate Johnson joins African Ancestry for a live online discussion on Wednesday, September 8th, 2021 at 7:00pm EST.
They will discuss Blackness, Buddhism and the Buddha's teachings on Spiritual Friendship.
Topics will include:
The emergence of Black Buddhism in the west as a path to liberation and wholeness.
Making friends with Ancestors and moving through the world with knowledge of our African ancestry as a source of resilience.
Relating with mixed ancestry as a black person -- reckoning with mixed heritage, and with ancestors who may have caused harm.
Watch the livestream conversation on YouTube or Facebook.