Rest as the Foundation for Wise & Skilful Action

When our bodies, hearts and minds are rested, we are better able to access the most beautiful capacities of the heart-mind and to act from a place of mindfulness, compassion and wisdom.

However, giving ourselves permission to rest can be challenging in our contemporary cultures where the values of productivity and achievement are conditioned into us from childhood onwards. This culturally-conditioned discomfort with rest can cause personal and collective harm in the form of exhaustion, overwhelm and stress. And insufficient rest compromises our ability to see clearly and act skillfully.

This day-long online retreat is designed to support practitioners in reclaiming rest and understanding its foundational role as the ground for wise and skillful action. By participating in this retreat, participants will:

• discover (or rediscover) through direct experience how rest serves as a powerful foundation for mindfulness, compassion and wisdom;
• identify and address the causes and conditions that hinder their ability to rest; 
• recognize and appreciate how rest, renewal and nourishment are necessary elements for both personal and collective liberation; and
• explore how making a positive change in the world is more inspiring and sustainable when it’s done with a rested rather than an exhausted body and a nourished rather than a depleted heart.   

The day-long will include guided meditations, contemplative reflections, dharma talks, and both small and large group discussions.

Date and Time of Retreat (Full and Half-Day Options): 

• In Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST): Sunday 8th June 2025, 10:00 am to 1:00 and 2:00 to 4.30 pm 
• In Pacific Time (PT): Saturday 7th June 2025, 5:00 to 8:00 pm and 9:00 to 11.30 pm 

Participants may register for the first half only or for the whole day. 

Registration Fee: This amount covers basic administrative costs and does not pay the teachers for their time. Your support for the teachers will be requested in the form of dana (donation) after the event, as per the Buddhist tradition of generosity.  

Your Teachers:

Suzie Brown is an Insight Dharma teacher and Mindfulness trainer. She completed Dharma Teacher Training in Australia with her teachers Subhana Barzaghi and Carol Perry and has also completed teacher training with American Insight teacher, James Baraz (co-founder of Spirit Rock).   

Suzie founded Melbourne Insight Meditation (MIM) in 2009 where she led sitting groups for over a decade. She now also teaches with Sydney Insight Meditators and offers retreats around Australia and online. Suzie has been a mentor in Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach's Mindfulness Mentor Teacher Training Program (MMTCP) for 4 years and also teaches weekly in their online meditation platform, Banyan.

Suzie is also trained as a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher and has taught MBSR courses and workshops for 15 years. Apart from general community courses, she has specialised in teaching mindful parenting (as a parent herself), mindfulness for anxiety and emotional resilience in the face of the climate crisis, all themes that interest her and relate to her personal experience. A long-time environmentalist, Suzie also founded the national group, Parents for Climate.

Eileen Fulache Tupaz, PhD is a clinical psychologist, mindfulness meditation teacher, retreat facilitator, yoga teacher trainer and well-being consultant. Eileen has been supporting people in the life-long labor of growing lotuses from mud, transforming poisons into antidotes and turning arrows into flowers since 2011—and she loves providing this support in the form of teaching, mentoring, counseling and coaching. She’s passionate about helping people feel safe (enough) with themselves and in the world so that they can embody and express their highest intentions even in the face of the inevitable challenges of life. 

Eileen leans on mindfulness-based, compassion-focused, body-centered and psychotherapy-inspired approaches in doing her work—and she’ll rhapsodize unabashedly about the dharma when she’s given the chance. Outside of the Triple Gem, she takes refuge in music (which she plays badly), poetry (which she reads avidly) and writing (which she indulges regularly). Most of Eileen's public teaching these days is accessible on the global mindfulness meditation platform, Banyan.