Insight Meditation seven-day retreat Coromandel - October 2025

Cultivating balance, finding freedom

This seven-day retreat focuses on developing the protective qualities of equanimity and non-reactive awareness in our hearts and minds. By resting the mind so that it doesn’t fall into extremes, we experience the strength of inner balance and clarity. This supports us to maintain continuity of awareness through all activities, calming and steadying the heart-mind, thereby gaining compassion and insight into how we can live our lives with more ease, peace, and freedom.

Senior insight meditation teacher Kamala Masters will be joining us online from Maui, supported by local teacher Jill Shepherd onsite at Te Moata.

Over the course of the retreat, we will explore a variety of meditation practices, including the Four Establishments of Mindfulness that orient us to deep freedom, and the four Brahmavihāra practices of kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity that open the heart and mind.

Each day will include a mix of guided and silent sitting meditation, walking meditation, optional mindful movement, individual meetings with the teachers and occasional small group discussion.

Experience level: This retreat is best suited to people who have done at least one previous residential insight meditation retreat of two days or longer. Please contact the organisers if you have any questions about this.

Teachers: Kamala Masters (online) and Jill Shepherd (onsite)

Kamala Masters is one of the founders and teachers of the Vipassana Metta Foundation on Maui. She teaches retreats in the Theravada tradition at venues worldwide, including being a Guiding Teacher at the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts. Practicing since 1975, her teachers have been the late Anagarika Munindra of India and the late Sayadaw U Pandita of Burma, and Sayadaw U Tejaniya of Burma with whom she continues to practice. 
She lives on Maui where she raised four children, and is now blessed with seven grandchildren. Kamala practiced both insight and loving kindness meditations intensively under the guidance and preceptorship of Sayadaw U Pandita, in the USA, Australia and in Burma as a nun and a lay woman.

Jill Shepherd is the guiding teacher for Auckland Insight and is a graduate of the IMS / Spirit Rock teacher training program in the US, under the guidance of Joseph Goldstein and Gil Fronsdal. She lives in Aotearoa / New Zealand and teaches internationally, offering insight / vipassanā and brahmavihāra retreats as well as ongoing study and practice groups focused on bringing the dharma into daily life. She also leads courses and non-residential workshops exploring the relational practice of Insight Dialogue, as developed by Gregory Kramer and colleagues.

Accommodation: 

Rooms are mainly curtained cubicles with shared bathrooms. A limited number of single rooms/cabins/cottages are available at a surcharge. Please see Te Moata's FAQ page for details about accommodation options. 

NOTE: couples and/or friends are housed separately, to protect their solitude during the retreat.

Retreatants are requested to bring their own bedding. For those flying in, bedding can be hired for $25.00, payable in advance.

Food: 

The centre will provide simple vegetarian meals for the retreat. Please indicate on the registration form if you have any food allergies or medical dietary needs. If your needs are complex please contact Te Moata.

There is a surcharge of $10/day for special diets. Please see Te Moata's FAQ page for details

Work meditation: 

To help integrate mindfulness into daily life activities, there will be a period of work meditation each day of approximately 45 minutes.

Getting to the retreat centre:

Te Moata is located near Tairua on the Coromandel peninsula, approximately 2.5 hours drive from Auckland. 

NOTE: Please arrive from 4:00 pm onwards on the opening day for a 6:00 pm start, and plan to stay until the retreat ends at noon on the closing day. It is not possible to arrive late or leave early because this causes disruption to the smooth running of the retreat, as well as your own meditation practice.

If coming from overseas and flying into Auckland airport, please book flights that allow you enough time to get to the centre for the start of the retreat, and to get back to Auckland after the retreat ends in plenty of time for your flight departure.

Volunteers from Auckland Insight may be able to arrange ride shares between Auckland and Te Moata, but we can't guarantee it.

There is a daily shuttle from Auckland Airport to Tairua leaving Auckland Airport at 2:00 pm, arriving in Tairua at 4:25 pm.
Tairua Bus Company also runs a shuttle service. See here for more info. The retreat managers can pick you up from Tairua.

Retreat fees: 

Sliding scale $990-$790 + dāna*

Supporter rate $990 - Slightly more than actual-cost ticket: covers cost of food and accommodation and a contribution to scholarships for low-income attendees

Actual cost $890 - Actual-cost ticket covers cost of food and accommodation

Scholarship rate $790 - Below cost ticket: covers a contribution towards cost of food and accommodation only

To reserve your place on the retreat, you will need to pay a $100 deposit via this site, then the balance is payable directly to Auckland Insight. Their account details will be emailed to you when you register.

Your place is not confirmed until you have paid the balance in full.

Cancellation policy: 

The payment is refundable up to thirty days before the retreat begins (minus a $50 admin fee). If you cancel after this time, the retreat payment will be forfeited and used to help provide scholarship places and/or support Auckland Insight's running costs.

*Dāna: In most Buddhist traditions the teachers are not paid to teach. Instead, the teachings are given on a ‘dāna’ basis – dāna being the Pali word for generosity or giving freely - so there will be an opportunity to offer a donation for the teaching at the end of the event