7 Night Vallecitos Retreat 2024

Cultivating Focused Attention: An Intensive Retreat for Mental Health Professionals with Bill Morgan PsyD, Susan Morgan, MSN, RN, CS, and Ron Siegel, Psy.D.

July 2 - 9, 2024

Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center

Durango, CO 

During this retreat we will explore creative methods of practicing and deepening concentration. We will identify approaches that are not helpful, leading to frustration and discouragement, as well as methods that are most effective and accessible for individuals of different personality types and cultural backgrounds.

Our teaching will be experience-near, focusing on the development of tailored mindfulness and compassion practices and their application in our clinical and human service work with others—including particularly those practices that support accurate empathy and therapeutic presence.

There will be daily mindfulness meditation instruction and three to four hours of structured practice each day, plus clinical study modules most afternoons in combination with dyadic or small group discussion, as well as ample opportunities to explore clinical and personal practice questions.

The rest of the time we will observe silence, including during meals, to facilitate the development of concentration and a deeper contemplative experience.

Throughout the course, we’ll explore how to use meditative practices ourselves to be more present and responsive in our clinical work, as well as how to share them with our clients to help them work creatively with distress while living richer, more joyous lives, even under challenging conditions.

20 CEs will be offered for psychologists, social workers and mental health counselors.

Please join us!

COST & REGISTRATION opening through Vallecitos website on Feb 1

The Tradition of Dana: Mindfulness and related teachings have traditionally been sustained by the 2,600 year-old tradition of dana, which literally means “generosity.” We follow this tradition by inviting participants to offer donations to the retreat leaders, who receive only reimbursement for travel expenses.

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CONTINUING EDUCATION:

Target Audience: Psychologists, Psychiatrists, Social Workers, Nurses, Licensed Mental Health Counselors, and other mental health professionals

Psychologists: The Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The Institute of Meditation and Psychotherapy maintains responsibility for the program and its content. This course offers 20 hours of credit.

Social Workers: This program is pending approval by the ASWB ACE for 20.0 continuing education contact hours.

Nurses:  This program carries 20 Contact Hours and meets the specifications of the Massachusetts Board of Registration Of Nursing (244 CMR).

Licensed Mental Health Counselors: The Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy is recognized by the National Board for Certified Counselors to sponsor continuing education for National Certified Counselors. We adhere to NBCC Continuing Education Guidelines. This course is approved for 20 contact hours, Provider #6048 and is applicable for Commonwealth of Massachusetts Counseling/Allied Mental Health and PDP accreditation.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

Upon completion of the program, participants will be able to:

1. Describe the three core components of mindfulness practice.
2. Identify the evolutionary roots and mechanisms of compassion toward self and others.
3. Specify how focused attention can be cultivated.
4. Describe the use of concentration as a resource to work with painful emotions.
5. Demonstrate an experiential understanding of mindfulness and compassion interventions through personal practice.
6. Specify how a therapist can best choose which mindfulness exercises are most appropriate for different arousal states.
7. Describe how to use mindful movement to release anxiety-related tension and cultivate focused attention through the body.
8. Identify how mindfulness and compassion practices can enhance emotional regulation.
9. Discuss ways to assist clients to integrate mindfulness and compassion practices in their lives.
10. Describe the use of mindfulness and compassion practices to support parasympathetic activation and calm sympathetic activation.
11. Specify contraindications for various mindfulness and compassion practices.

Course Completion Requirements: To receive CE credits, it is necessary to attend all CE sessions and indicate attendance on sign-in sheets provided.

CE Certificates: will be provided in person at the completion of the course requirements on the last day of the program.

ABOUT THE TEACHERS:

The teachers are board members of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, a non-profit organization in Boston, which offers seminars, courses, retreats and a certificate program for mental health professionals. They are contributing authors to Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, a best selling text in its second edition.

Bill Morgan, PsyD is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Cambridge and Quincy MA. He is a founding board member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, and has participated in eight years of intensive retreats in the Theravada, Zen, and Tibetan schools of Buddhism during his forty years of meditation practice. He has led mindfulness retreats for mental health professionals for the past 20 years. Bill is both a personal and group meditation mentor for mental health professionals. His book, The Meditator’s Dilemma: An Innovative Approach to Overcoming Obstacles and Revitalizing Your Practice, was published by Shambhala in 2016.

Susan Morgan, CNS is a psychotherapist in Cambridge, MA. A long time Vipassana student, Susan recently completed a 4-year silent mindfulness meditation retreat along with her partner, Bill. She has co-led retreats for psychotherapists with Bill for the past 16 years. She is a meditation teacher for the IMP Certificate Program, teaches monthly intimate online meditation practice groups for psychotherapists, and consults to therapists interested in the interface of psychotherapy and meditation. Her teaching style is grounded in the practical. Lovingkindness (metta) and mindfulness of the body are integral to her teaching.

Ronald D. Siegel, PsyD is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School, where he has taught for over 30 years. He is a long time student of mindfulness meditation who teaches internationally about mindfulness and psychotherapy and mind/body treatment while maintaining a private clinical practice in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Dr. Siegel is author of The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems; coauthor of Back Sense: A Revolutionary Approach to Halting the Cycle of Chronic Back Pain, coeditor of Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy: Deepening Mindfulness in Clinical Practice, and coauthor of a new guide for clinicians, Sitting Together: Essential Skills for Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy.