Date and Time Details: Registration opens at 3:00 on the first day of the retreat. The retreat will close shortly after breakfast on the last day.

Price: We offer a sliding scale structure. Prices for this retreat range from $855-$1,237.50. (Learn more)

Dana: This is a dana based retreat. (Learn more)

Shuttle: Shuttle service is available for this retreat. (Learn more)

Prices
  • Casita Supporting Rate – $1,237.50
  • Casita Actual Rate – $1,089.00
  • Casita Base Rate – $990.00
  • Yurt Supporting Rate – $1,237.50
  • Yurt Actual Rate – $1,089.00
  • Yurt Base Rate – $990.00
  • Tent Cabin Supporting Rate – $1,068.75
  • Tent Cabin Actual Rate – $940.50
  • Tent Cabin Base Rate – $855.00

Please note that outstanding balances will be automatically charged 30 days prior to your retreat. Please see our Registration Information to learn more.

Program is fully booked

Affectionate Awareness as a Path to Liberation Retreat

With Michelle McDonald and Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey

July 26 - August 4, 2017

Program is fully booked

Develop your heart’s capacity for liberatory clarity and kindness with this unique integration of Metta (lovingkindness) and Vipassana (insight) practices. Experience the richness of quietude in the beautiful Vallecitos wilderness while cultivating the wisdom of Vipassana and the tenderness of the 4 Brahma Viharas: Unconditional Love, Compassion, Appreciative Joy, and Equanimity. Michele and Jesse are enthusiastic about supporting yogis with both technical rigor and spacious ease.

Michele has been teaching vipassana since 1982. She emphasizes a 6-sense door awareness steeped in reverence for our bodies and helps students find their natural entry points into stillness. She encourages a gentle strengthening of mindfulness and concentration so that people can access the peaceful depths of their experience in every moment with clarity, ease, and authenticity.

Jesse is the resident teacher for Vipassana Hawai’i and when off-island teaches across the US and Canada. His teaching aims to inspire the skills, determination, and faith necessary to realize the deepest human freedom and is especially moved to help deepen our relationship to sila, ethical conduct, as an unending exploration of moral integrity.

About the Teachers

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Michelle McDonald

Michele co-founded Vipassana Hawai’i in 1984 with Steven Smith. She has taught Insight meditation for over twenty-five years, teaches extensively throughout the United States, in Canada, Burma, and various locations around the world. Michele has been a quiet pioneer having being the first woman to teach a formal retreat in Burma, side-by-side with a senior […]

Learn more about Michelle McDonald
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Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey

Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey moved to the Island of Hawai‘i in 2011 to serve as key support for the Hawai‘i Island and O‘ahu sanghas. As a teacher of Vipassana (insight) meditation and other meditation practices from the Theravadan Buddhist tradition, he aims to inspire the skills, determination, and faith necessary to realize the deepest human freedom. Jesse is […]

Learn more about Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey