What is the Open Centre?
The Open Centre will inspire and support inner growth within a space of human and ecological diversity.
We welcome people from any religion or no religion to learn to live with inner and outer harmony through contact with nature, through interaction, and through silence. Along with meditation from diverse spiritual traditions, the Open Centre will also offer nontraditional ways to awaken the full potential of human life—to be relaxed and alert, centered and open.

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In Spain, we have found spacious, green land with a restored farmhouse, orchards, and two meditation halls where the Open Centre can take root.

How will the Open Centre work?
The Open Centre will not be just a centre for meditation. We have heard a call for a place where spiritual and family life enhance each other, where work and creative life are not separated, where solitude and gathering in friendship can coexist. We especially hear a need for a place where human life and all of life mutually enrich each other.
Eight years of offering meditation retreats around the world have taught us that certain elements of our unique retreats consistently “work.”

People from varied backgrounds on our meditation programs report that their lives have been transformed by nature, interaction, and silence:

Intimacy with nature, both cultivated and wild

Interaction:

* Human connection
* Personalized guidance
* Art and music
* Work and service
* Discussion of texts from diverse spiritual traditions
* Yoga and Chi gong
* Study of alternative health modalities

Silence:

* Self-motivated exploration and practice
* Solitude and individual retreat
* Deep rest and silence

These factors complement formal meditation practice, and some can even be considered forms of meditation in their own right. The Open Centre programs will offer these transformative elements in different combinations.

In addition, our meditation instructions will continue to inspire participants to discover inner wisdom rather than to adopt an outside technique, tradition, or authority.

During the summer season, one or more of the guiding teachers will lead programs as short as an hour or as long as three months. Most programs will be residential. At times some programs may overlap.

The winter season will provide time for individuals and smaller groups of more experienced participants to integrate the teachings and practices more fully.

Creating the Open Centre in Spain will bring these rich teachings to the lap of Europe, and one leap closer to North and South America.