The 3 Doors Academy

The first group retreat introduces the abiding practice of the inner refuge. Through focusing and resting your attention on the stillness of the body, silence of inner speech, and spaciousness of mind, you discover the unbounded spaciousness of your nature, the light of awareness, and spontaneous, genuine warmth. The inner refuge is the foundation of the Academy training and your capacity to abide within it is deepened and strengthened in all subsequent retreats.

You will explore the practices of the Nine Breathings of Purification and the Tsa Lung (exercises of breath and movement). These practices enable you to increase your awareness of the subtle energy channels and centers in the body in order to clear limiting patterns of reactivity, discover fresh and open awareness, and express yourself in a more authentic way. These practices are presented in Awakening the Sacred Body by Tenzin Wangyal.

The focus of the second group retreat is to rest more deeply in the inner refuge and experience the gifts of spaciousness, awareness, and warmth. In addition to continuing with the previous practices of the body, you will learn the practice of the Five Warrior Syllables, a practice which explores the power of sound and silence to release subtle obscurations and support the emergence of authentic presence and creative expression. This practice is presented in Tibetan Sound Healing by Tenzin Wangyal.

You will be introduced to the Fivefold Practice, a contemplative practice using five lines of pith meditation instruction through which no experience is rejected, and instead becomes the doorway to truly seeing, self-liberating, and discovering the generative power of awareness. The book used to clarify these teachings and practices is Tenzin Wangyal’s Awakening the Luminous Mind.

The theme of the fourth group retreat is deepening the recognition and experience of the collective healing power of the inner refuge. You will look at how familial, ancestral, cultural, and world pain lives within you and engage your practice within the support of the group to become aware of this collective pain, to host and embrace it, and to explore what becomes available in so doing. As communal pain releases, you are inspired to act from a greater sense of kindness and compassion for the welfare of others.

The theme of the fifth group retreat is discovering the spontaneous positive qualities that arise from open awareness. Meditation is not a passive process. As you abide in inner refuge, limiting patterns of ego release, enabling you to experience the emergence of inspiration and creativity. In this retreat you will practice allowing fresh insights and expressions to manifest from the clear and open space of your practice.

The focus of the sixth group retreat is to deepen the recognition and experience of the spontaneously arising fruit of one’s practice, to celebrate the benefits of your practice, and to dedicate the merit of your practice to the welfare of others. We examine what blocks and what supports the spontaneous expression of compassion in our lives. This retreat includes the formal graduation ceremony in which Senior Teachers confer the transmission of the inner refuge and welcome the graduates into the worldwide community of 3 Doors practitioners.