Joan Tollifson

This retreat is fully booked. People wishing to attend may elect to be wait-listed or may apply to another retreat.

Joan Tollifson will be offering a 5-day residential retreat at Springwater from March 26 through March 31, 2016. This will be a silent retreat with daily talks and dialog along with opportunities for private meetings with Joan, in the same basic format as other Springwater retreats. Participants are asked to arrive by 4 p.m. on the opening day of retreat to settle into their rooms and be oriented to the retreat facility and schedule. Retreat begins with a (non-silent) dinner at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday the 26th and ends with a (non-silent) lunch on Thursday the 31st.

Joan lived and worked on staff at Springwater between 1989 and 1996, and she considers Toni Packer her main teacher. Joan’s first book, Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up from the Story of My Life, is largely about working with Toni and her years on staff. Joan is the author of 3 other books: Awake in the Heartland: The Ecstasy of What Is; Painting the Sidewalk with Water: Talks and Dialogs about Nonduality; and Nothing to Grasp. She is currently at work on a 5th book exploring growing old and dying. Joan has been holding events and working with people since 1996. She describes her work as waking up to the ever-changing, ever-present living reality Here / Now. Her bare-bones approach is open, direct, immediate and down-to-earth. Joan is interested in seeing through the imaginary problems that we think are binding us, the stories of lack and imperfection, and waking up to the aliveness of this moment, just as it is. In addition to her work with Toni Packer, Joan has also been with a number of other teachers, including Zen and Tibetan Buddhists, Advaita satsang teachers and radical nondualists, and all of these different threads are woven into how she works. Joan encourages people to look and listen for themselves and to question all beliefs. She has lived in California, New York and Chicago, and is currently living in southern Oregon. You can learn more at her website.