Weekend Mindfulness Retreats for everyone!
Fun, friendly, life changing weekends
From only £279
Featured in The Guardian's Top 20 Retreats for 2018
Where:
Burwell House, Enter via, Silver St, Burwell, Cambridge CB25 0EF
When:
Oct 11 – 13 , 29th, Nov 3oth– 1st Dec , 24th - 26th January, March 27th - 29th,
June 5th - 7th, Aug 21st - 23rd
Costs:
£279 fully inclusive standard accommodation
£379 for a bed in private room for 2* (limited availability)
*Includes all food & refreshments
£100 deposit to secure place, balance 30 days before the retreat
(for more information see Venue & Accommodation info below)
Join us for a life-changing weekend
If you have any questions regarding our retreats please just get in touch today.
The Now Project Mindfulness weekends are for everyone aged 18 to 80 who want to explore the wonderful possibilities that Mindfulness and meditation have to offer.
Whether you are drawn to mindfulness to ease stress, relieve depression, tackle illness, improve your well-being or achieve spiritual enlightenment these retreats are for you. They are perfect for complete beginners and mindfulness masters alike.
If you are new to mindfulness, you’ll learn everything that you need to be mindful in a weekend. If you are already practising mindfulness then these weekends will take your practice to a new level. They are great fun, the food is fantastic, you’ll meet some wonderful people and you’ll learn something that could change your life.
"Join us for a weekend of love, laughter and learning and discover a profoundly better way of living"
What are our Mindfulness Retreat weekends about?
Love, laughter & learning…
It’s great to learn Mindfulness from books or lectures, but in truth, Mindfulness is an experience, and books and lectures can only point you in the right direction. Mindfulness can’t be grasped intellectually because mindfulness isn’t a theory, or a belief, or anything to do with mental gymnastics. Mindfulness is a state of being. It’s a heightened state of alert awareness that allows your mind to go quiet. Then you can rest from the constant mental chatter, your problems, worries and head dramas and get on with the really important issue of enjoying your life.
The basic principles of Mindfulness are really simple and there really isn’t much to understand. Mindfulness is all about practice and direct experience. And that is what The Now Project Mindfulness Weekends are about, we’ll teach you everything that you need to know to practice mindfulness, but more importantly, you’ll get to experience mindfulness for real and live it for an extended period.
From the outset we’ll help you to achieve a deep state of mindfulness and the retreat is designed to help you maintain your mindfulness for much of the weekend. And that will teach you more about mindfulness than any book, lecture or smartphone app ever can. We have a team of really experienced mindfulness practitioners who can hold a high degree of mindfulness and they will help to keep you mindful in between the classes, teaching you mindfulness and advancing your practice to a new level.
We won’t make you dress in robes or sit facing a wall for hours, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s just not our style. We prefer to teach mindfulness our own way, we have a modern, plain talking approach to mindfulness, the teaching is no less profound but we want to make it accessible relaxed and fun. It is a holiday after all.

The New Venue – Burwell House
We're really excited to bring you to our new venue. This new space gives us the opportunity to have more guests and the various spaces indoor and out will make for some great teaching developments.
Built in the late 1700’s and owned by Cambridgeshire County Council since 1965, Burwell House retains the atmosphere of a large family home. With three acres of landscaped gardens, an orchard, meadows, a wildlife pond and a wide array of sculptures, it gives us the perfect tranquil setting to hold us in a state of Mindfulness.
The house includes 2 lounges and a conservatory along with a variety of spaces we can utilise for teaching and relaxing. Accommodation is upstairs, with 11 comfortable bedrooms ranging from twin-bedded rooms to larger shared rooms (same sex). All bedrooms have access to toilets and showers and all bed linen is provided.
How to get there
By Car : Satnav postcode - CB25 0EF
Burwell House is located in the Fen edge village of Burwell, 13 miles northeast of Cambridge
10 minutes drive off the A11 and A14 – within an hours drive of most of East Anglia and the M25.
20 minutes drive from Ely and Newmarket railway stations
45 minutes drive from Stansted Airport
By Rail : Nearest stations: Newmarket
From London: London Kings Cross about 1hr 30 mins/then by taxi to Burwell House (5.5miles) if you want a lift from the station lets us know, we will do pickups & drop-offs at a specified time only (times TBA)
By Bus : On bus routes from Cambridge (1 hour 20 mins)

Wake up with Mindful Yoga
We'll start Saturday and Sunday mornings in a way that will help set you ready for the day.
Yoga is a fantastic way to start any day; getting in to your body and opening yourself up to how you are. We will start our mornings guided by our teacher, Jihan, to set us up for the day enabling to get the most out of the rest of the days teachings and activities. The sessions are optional and we will support anyone with mobility issues.
The Weekend Line Up
The retreat starts properly on Saturday morning but most of our guests prefer to arrive on Friday, it gives you a chance to settle in, relax and start to slip into a mindful state of awareness. Arrive any time after 5.30pm, don't worry about arriving late, there's no fixed time and we know some of you will be coming after work, we’ll have a warm welcome and a hot drink ready for you. Get yourself settled into your accommodation, meet the others, chill out at the retreat or you can go for a mindful walk through the three acres of beautiful gardens. You’ll get the chance to meet the team and explore what it is to live mindfully and you’ll get a taste of what we’ve lined up for the weekend. 7.30pm: Dinner (a hot vegetarian meal) 9.00pm: Welcome/Introductions & Meditation If the weather permits we’ll get the camp-fire going.
8.00am: Wake Up With Jihan - Mindful Yoga - Jihan is a wonderful insightful teacher and will show you how, through yoga, you can find space in your mind and connect to the body
9.00 am Breakfast – Coffee, Tea, Herbal Tea, Paulette's very special porridge, fruit juice, cereal, toast, fresh fruit
10.30am Mindfulness the Basics with Adrian We’ll start with introductions and a short welcome talk. Adrian will give a talk exploring the key principles of Mindfulness. We will explore what Mindfulness really is, but most importantly we’ll do some mindfulness exercises to help give you a direct experience of thoughtless awareness for yourself. Together we’ll explore the main portals into mindful awareness and the possibilities they offer.
12.00 Break
1.00 pm: The Way of the Body with Adrian Mindfulness is the art of aligning mind and body. Adrian will introduce you to the mindful practice called The Way of the Body and he’ll explore how body awareness is the perfect way to bring mindful attention into your everyday life.Adrian will introduce you to some simple but powerful mindfulness practices from the Great Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.
2 pm: Mindful Eating Meditation and Lunch
3.30pm: Walking The Mindful Path and Ch Kung In small groups you'll get to walk the mindful path. You'll learn how to use the simple action of walking to bring you into mindfulness. At special points on the walk, you'll meet a teacher who will slow you down, get you to look mindfully, hear mindfully smell mindful, sit mindfully and how to suck every juicy drop from the experience of being alive Now. You'll learn how through body awareness you can bring mindful attention to your balance posture and movement. This is the best way to bring mindfulness into everyday activities and to help you discover a richer more profound experience of your day to day life and is the perfect antidote to a busy analytical mind.
5.00pm break
6 pm: School of Meditation with Jihan - If you really want to understand mindfulness, We would encourage you to do ten times more meditation than you do reading. If you already have a meditation practice then mindfulness will compliment it beautifully. In fact, meditation, if it has a purpose, is to bring you to a place of mindfulness. If you don't have meditation practice we would encourage you to get one. Jihan will teach you some simple and more advanced meditation exercises from mindful and yogic traditions and if you were to incorporate some of these into your regular practice it will take your mindfulness to a new depth and understanding
7.30 pm: Dinner
9.00pm: Dynamic Meditation . Finishing with some fun dynamic meditation or Campfire, weather permitting
8.00am: Wake up with Jihan - mindful yoga
Breakfast 9.00am:
10.00am: Mindfulness and Emotions Adrian will explore the link between thinking and feeling and how with mindfulness it becomes possible to manage painful emotions within your body. He’ll show you how by being mindful of our emotions you can process them effectively and move from “unconscious reaction” driven by your emotions, towards “right action”, which comes from a place of calm mindful clarity.
Adrian will show you how to sit mindfully with your emotions, and explore how when you are mindful of your emotions this results in more conscious interactions with the world. You’ll discover how mindfulness allows you to create a better world within yourself and how that can be reflected in the world at large.
We’ll explore why feeling is a good thing, how it connects you to your humanity and leads to the cultivation of compassion. You’ll discover how emotions are nothing to be afraid of and how they are the vehicle to a rich fulfilled life and to realising your humanity. You’ll explore how mindfulness of emotion is ultimately the key to your higher states of awareness, your higher intelligence.
When you run from your feelings you are running from yourself, if we can help you to stop running, be still, and mindfully face yourself, then you are in for a rather pleasant surprise!
11.30Break
12.15pm: Einstein and the Buddha with Adrian Many traditional schools of mindfulness express the importance of energy and mindful intention. Buddhist mindfulness, for example, will include practices such as “Loving Kindness Meditation” and encourage us to be mindful of our communications and to be compassionate and gentle in our interaction with others. The wisdom is simple, if you put out an energy of loving kindness and you tread gently in the world and act with true compassion, then you put different energy onto the world and the world starts to reflect that back. If you are happy and nice to people, they tend to be pleased to see you and they are usually nice back, and so your experience of the world changes – you have changed the world with energy and intention.
Central to this wisdom is an understanding of energy and the nature of reality. Every culture and tradition in the world has an understanding of our life force, an inner energy field of the body. In China, they call it Chi energy, in Japan Ki, and in India, it’s called Prana. Scientists are telling us, what the ancient masters knew many thousands of years ago, that when you explore physical reality at its most fundamental level, the atomic level, then you discover that there is pretty much nothing there at all. The atom is tiny specks of matter, that are held together in a vibrating field of infinite nothingness. Physicists call it the “quantum field” Taoists call it “the Tao”, and in India, they might call it “The web of illusion” and Buddha simply called it “emptiness”.
Adrian will introduce you to the world within, the energetic universe. They will help you find your inner space and show you how through mindfulness you can develop an awareness of the energy field of your body. This can bring a profound experience of contentedness and a shift of understanding that opens up infinite possibilities for deepening awareness, self-healing and ultimately influencing and bringing about the change in the material world.
Break 13.15 pm:
13.45 -Emotional Clearing Meditation with Adrian and Jihan The Emotional Clearing session for many of our regular guests is the highlight of the weekend. Based upon the work of the American psychiatrist and Vedic master John Ruskan, the Emotional Clearing meditation is by far the most powerful meditation practice that we’ve found for freeing and releasing past emotional pain. In the east, they call this practice karma yoga. It can have a profound effect, resulting in cathartic releases of trapped emotion and leave you feeling deeply anchored in awareness.
2.30 pm Lunch
3.30pm: Thank you, goodbyes and where now? Adrian will explore how you can take your mindfulness home with you, how to make mindfulness part of your life and spread your new found awareness to others. He will introduce you to the wider work of The Now Project and the support we can provide and introduce you to our little community and the part we play in the international Mindfulness Movement towards a loving compassionate world.
Loving Kindness Meditation
4.15pm: Retreat End
The Venue
A few photos from Burwell House








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