Johann Robbins
Johann started backpacking and meditating as a teenager, and deepened his spiritual journey on frequent solo wilderness trips. His passion is facilitating spiritual practice in nature: he has guided and taught wilderness retreats and workshops in various traditions for over 25 years, including as a Vision Quest guide in the late 1990s. Johann founded Impermanent Sangha in 2002 and has led dozens of Ecodharma and nature meditation retreats, including backpacking, camping, canoeing and rafting. Johann founded Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center in 2016 and is its Executive Director.
Johann teaches Mindfulness Meditation, also known as Insight or Vipassana, with a modern secular approach. He has been meditating since 1974 and was asked to teach in 2008. He completed the two-year CDL teacher training program at Spirit Rock in 2012. His primary teachers include Shinzen Young and Eric Kolvig (who also helped found Impermanent Sangha and taught wilderness retreats for many years before his retirement).
Categories:
2021 Teachers, 2022 Teachers, 2023 Teachers, 2024 Lead, 2024 Teachers
Upcoming Programs by Johann Robbins
Also With David Loy, Rochelle Calvert and Cornelia Santschi
July 19 - 28, 2024
This ten day retreat is a deep dive into being, in nature, abiding silently, joining inner nature with outer nature, and dissolving separation. Each day includes plentiful time for sitting, hiking/walking meditation, as well as meditation instruction, dharma talks, and small group ecodharma exploration. There will be a two night solo opportunity during the retreat, which is an incredible highlight.
The overall intention is for deep silence, practice, and the joy and healing that comes with a profound connection with nature. This will be supported by instruction in a variety of nature meditation practices. There will be nightly campfire dharma talks, exploring how being-in-nature can be an important part of our spiritual path by helping to ground us in personal experience of non-separation from the natural world. The emphasis is not on meditative technique so much as developing direct awareness that can lead to a new integration of the internal (spiritual) and external (activity).
Supported by the connection and joy that comes from being in nature, we will also begin to work with the emotions, anxieties and traumas we are all experiencing around the ecological and climate crises. As these are immense, planet wide problems, created by and affecting everyone, dealing with emotions like fear, anger, sadness, grief and guilt on our own is impossible. Within a safe and supportive sangha, in small teacher led groups, we will be able to delve into Ecodharma together, with openness, sincerity, shared pain, and courage. This leads to deep healing, which makes possible more powerful and creative responses to our collective situation.
Also With Cornelia Santschi
July 30 - August 3, 2024
If you have been wanting to do a longer solo retreat in nature, but were daunted by the logistics, or uncertain about how to spend your time or what to bring, this retreat makes all of that simple.
Solo nature practice is an incredibly powerful way to realize who we truly are, to touch into being, and the reality of non-separation that brings. When we hang out in a beautiful spot for days, being aware, peaceful, and still, this calms and reassures the wildlife that usually try and avoid humans, and they come and visit, sometimes for hours. This opens our hearts to love and appreciation, to the beauty and power of nature, and we begin to feel completely and utterly at home; effortlessly peaceful, present, and awake. This is deeply healing and transformative, a missing piece in lives of doing and busyness in a hi-tech dehumanized society.
Also With Caverly Morgan
August 4 - 10, 2024
Our true being is awareness and love. This peace and happiness, which we all long for, underlies the ceaseless striving of the limited sense of self, or ego.
Being in nature allows us to easily relax, and come into presence with the beauty around us, and the appreciation, gratitude and love that arises in response. Being in the mountains in the soft gentle time of high summer, with green meadows, alive forests, abundant wildflowers, high peaks adorned with snowy caps, the running creek, and all the birds, moose, deer, elk, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, and others, is an ideal place and time to realize this.
As we sit and walk, a natural sense of ease and belonging starts to quiet the wanting and aversion of the mind, and without effort or struggle, we drop out of separation into love and connection. This is the Direct Path, not an effort, learning, or set of practices, but a natural and effortless connection to our true nature, which has and will always be there. Our innate appreciation, love and connection with being in nature allows this process to be more accessible and enjoyable.
This retreat will be informal and relaxed, with ample time for teaching, guiding, support and discussion, as well as free time to explore what is being offered in your own way. The schedule will at times be silent and at times be more open and relational, so that the love that naturally arises can flow between and among the participants in our human, social way.
