eamba Retreats offer a unique opportunity to practice with the community of mindfulness teachers from different countries in and near Europe. The 2024 eamba Retreat will be the 11th annual retreat and it has grown to be a place that many teachers return to every year, as they find it supportive to sit with other colleagues and deepen and refresh their practice.

Mindfulness practice is an invitation to slow down and shift from doing-mode to being-mode. Allowing yourself to be in a place without pressure supported by the guidance of a teacher and the presence of the group. Together we will explore how to rest in the very nature of our being, in what is sometimes called the natural state, original mind, pure awareness, no mind, or simply emptiness. Our assumption is that fulfilment and mental peace is available to us in every moment and that meditation is a way to discover this essential nature of our mind and heart.

We suffer because we resist our experience, we want our experience different than it is. It might happen that even our meditation practice becomes an expression of our basic instinct to avoid pain. That is called spiritual bypassing. How can we learn to genuinely let go of grasping and just rest in our experience with an open heart? Grasping arises from the basic dualistic distortion of reality, a real me here and a real other out there. We experience.

Freedom and genuine love through insight into how we and everything exists, free from projections and reactivity. This is sometimes called nonduality. In the retreat we will invite nondual experiences through time-tested methods from the Tibetan tradition and other mystical paths.

“Dwelling deep within our heart, and within the hearts of all beings without exception, is an inexhaustible source of love and wisdom. And the ultimate purpose of all spiritual practices, whether they are called Buddhist or not, is to uncover and make contact with this essentially pure nature” – Lama Yeshe

Stephan Pende Wormland, Clinical Psychologist, born in Germany, has studied and practiced meditation in multiple traditions for over 40 years. He has a master’s degree in clinical psychology, trained in Gestalt therapy and worked for 6 years in a psychiatric hospital.

He lived as an ordained monk in the Tibetan tradition for 11 years and, during that time, served as the director of Nalanda Monastery in the south of France and spent a total of 5 years in group and solitary retreats. The main teacher of Stephan is Lama Zopa Rinpoche, the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT).

He has received teachings and guidance from great Tibetan Masters of the four schools like His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Sakya Trizin Rinpoche, Sogyal Rinpoche, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, Kirti Thenshap Rinpoche, Chogye Trichen Rinpoche, and Choden Rinpoche. He has practiced and studied with foremost Western teachers like Peter Fenner, Alan Wallace, Rob Preece, Alex Berzin, Pema Chodron, Robert Thurman, and Ken McLeod.

He has been the resident teacher of the Center for Visdom og Medfølelse in Copenhagen for many years and currently teaches meditation in Buddhist Centers around Europe. Read more about Stephan.

EAMBA Retreat 2023