header17.jpg

Detailed List of Retreats

Start Your Meditation Journey With Awareness Practices And Qigong

Teacher: Alex Welte and Di Franklin
Cost: 2 days accommodation + R350 surcharge
Dates: Friday 15 November 2024 - Sunday 17 November 2024

alex weltedi franklin2023Our minds are like the sky: ever shifting from glorious blue to threatening grey; from offering gentle breezes to lashing us with storms. But whatever the conditions that we see, the sky itself is always the same. The sky has all the capacity to accommodate the changing weather – even the changing climate. Just so, our minds have all the capacity to experience, to do, and to be, all that is happening inside and around us. Meditation works with the fundamental aspect of our minds – that we are aware. We know things. We are not automatons, clever gadgets, or algorithms. Using various supports - like sensations in our bodies, our breath, what we hear and see - we can get to know and nurture the awareness that holds everything we experience. Our basic condition - despite all the distractions of overwhelm, pursuing this, avoiding that - is openness, kindness, and Wisdom.

View teacher details
Alex Welte is a physicist by training, and by trade an applied mathematician/statistician/data-scientist jack of all trades. He is a firm believer that our individual and collective mental and physical health, indeed our survival, depend not so much on cleverness and technological innovation as on our views and values, where we place our attention, and our conduct in daily life. For most of his adult life he has practised meditation according to teachings from various Buddhist traditions; notably, for the last 15 years, the teachings of well-known Tibetan Meditation Master Mingyur Rinpoche. Alex’s journey with meditation is mainly driven by the twin motivations of coping with anxiety and doubt, and pursuing a childlike curiosity around what life, the universe, and everything, is all about.

Dianne Franklin is an Advocate in private practice. She has been studying Buddhism and qigong for more than twenty years. She is a student of Max Weier, the Qigong Master from Switzerland. Her teachers include Rob Nairn, Geshe Pende and Ken Holmes.