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Jean Leonard

Jean Leonard, Ph.D. (she/her) is a licensed psychologist, dharma teacher, certified Mindful Self-Compassion teacher, and Buddhist Ecochaplain in private practice in Louisville, Colorado. Jean teaches mindfulness classes and mentors mindfulness teachers in training through Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach’s Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program. She has practiced yoga for over 30 years and vipassana meditation (primarily in the Theravada tradition) since 2003, and holds the Dharma as a sacred compass that guides her personal and professional life. Some of her primary teachers have included James Baraz, Gil Fronsdal, Dana DePalma, Thanissara and Kittisaro. She is currently participating in the two-year Dharmapala Training through Sacred Mountain Sangha which synthesizes essential practices and teachings from the Theravada and Mahayana traditions including the Bodhisattva ideal, non-dual dharma (Chan/Zen) and the use of devotional practice.

In her teaching and mindfulness-informed therapeutic work, she supports individuals through sacred accompaniment in meeting the circumstances of their lives and themselves with more gentleness, grace and good humor. She believes that with more access to clarity and compassion, we can remain in connection – with ourselves, our communities, and the Earth – finding ways of coming back into right relationship with the natural and social world to be a steward of transformation for the well-being of all. She has a particular interest in offering emotional and spiritual support to individuals and communities impacted by the environmental and ecological crises of our times, and practice related to aging, illness and dying.

Jean has a lifelong connection to the earth through gardening, farming, backpacking and cloud gazing. She feels a deep calling to support efforts in the service of engaged Buddhism and Joanna Macy’s Great Turning. She is honored to have joined the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center board in 2020 and to support ongoing community building and diversity, equity and inclusion at RMERC and in the Ecodharma community.

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Upcoming Programs by Jean Leonard

Cultivating the Courageous Heart

Also With Sarah Heffron

September 17 - 22, 2024
Daily we are faced with our growing vulnerability and the challenges of being alive in this complex world, as well as possibilities for transformation, personally and collectively.  More than ever, we are seeing our common humanity and how interdependent we are with each other and the more than human world. This is an opportunity to meet the moment, ourselves, and one another with care, clarity and compassion. Courage is described as “the ability to do something that frightens one” and “strength in the face of pain or grief.”   Cultivating the Brahma Viharas – the heart qualities of kindness, compassion, appreciative joy and equanimity – develops the inner resources and resilience needed to consciously engage with suffering. Finding deep refuge in the beauty and wisdom of the land and the teachings, we will rest and replenish, tend our nervous systems, and cultivate the courageous heart through silent meditation, nature-based practices, sharing and ritual.  We welcome all who self-identify as women and both seasoned practitioners and those relatively new to practice. Additional information about the retreat can be found here.

Deepening Kinship: Exploring the Intersections of Queerness, Ecology & Dharma

Also With Kirsten Rudestam and Emerson James

October 15 - 20, 2024
As practices, kinship and queer ecology can help us get in closer touch with the truth of who we truly are, as well as strengthen our inherent connection with the more-than-human world. In queer ecology, at the scale of the individual, to be queer is to be mutable; queerness signifies that which is unfixed and in a constant process of becoming. At the scale of the collective, queerness is relational, symbiotic and supportive.* In this retreat we apply these lenses of kinship and queer ecology to explore the paramitas, a set of 10 qualities or perfections of character, that, once honed, lead to liberation of the heart and mind. Drawing on the wisdom of the land, this retreat weaves together three strands of practice: silent meditation periods, experiential nature-based practices, and small group discussions. These three strands will support us in opening to the questions: How might we deepen into a greater sense of interbeing through the flexible spaces of queer ecology? How does recognizing conditionality and relationality transform and inform our connections with and compassion for ourselves, others, and our more-than-human kin?