Welcome

Someone asked the teacher Zhaozhou, “What is meditation?”
Zhaozhou replied, “Well, it's not meditation.”
The student was puzzled. “Why is it not meditation?”
“It’s alive! It’s alive!”

About Nic

Nicola Redfern is an Insight Dialogue Retreat Teacher with an extensive background in both Zen and Vipassana meditation. With a strong belief that awakening is not a solo endeavor, Nic is particularly interested in getting meditation off the cushion and fully integrated into life, work, social justice and relationships.

She has taught multiple courses on the climate emergency, unlearning racism, and Nonviolent Communication, as well as programs for LGBTQIA+. Nicola is originally from the UK and now lives near Santa Fe, NM.

About Insight Dialogue

Insight Dialogue (ID) is a meditation practice designed to help us be awake in our engaged lives, and to integrate Dharma teachings in a direct and immediate way. In ID, we bring together meditative awareness, the wisdom teachings of the Buddha, and the brightening power of human connection to deepen our cultivation of mindfulness, compassion and insight.

Supported by the six Insight Dialogue guidelines, we bring wakeful awareness right into the heart of speaking and listening, often in pairs. These guidelines help establish and sustain the meditative qualities while contemplating the Dharma together, supporting deep inquiry and experiential insight into the Buddha's teachings. It creates the potential for a powerful braiding together of the three jewels of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.

Upcoming Offerings

March 1 - 6, 2024

In-person Retreat, Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, co-teaching with Bart Van Melik

The insight that can arise from exploring the three characteristics of impermanence, suffering (dukkha), and not-self is a powerful way to free the heart-mind from clinging. With Insight Dialogue, we have an opportunity to experience and give voice to these characteristics in meditation with a partner.

Ease and Freedom: Exploring the Three Characteristics

Together and Alone: Finding Freedom Individually and Collectively

April 12 - 24, 2024

In-person Retreat, New Zealand, co-teaching with Auckland Insight guiding teacher Jill Shepherd

This retreat offers a rare opportunity to explore a range of different approaches to finding freedom, taken from both the insight and Zen traditions.

We will use a variety of practice modes to explore one of the key obstacles to finding freedom: clinging to views. These different approaches can help to illuminate how views form and inform every aspect of our lives, including our understanding of ourselves and the world. We will look at some of the different views of views within Buddhism, including Right View as the foundation of the Noble Eightfold Path; the “fetter” of sakkāya-diṭṭhi or self-view; and Nibbāna as the transcending of all views.

Refuge in the Fire - 12th Annual Cascadia ID Retreat

May 7 - 15, 2024

In-person Retreat, Samish Island WA, co-teaching with Mary Burns and Nobantu Mpotulo

How do we find refuge in the Dhamma while remaining fully in relationship with the world and its pain? What are our sources of joy, inspiration, and resilience?

Cultivating the Parami Together - In person weekend retreat

August 24 - 25, 2024

In-person, non-residential, weekend retreat, Albuquerque Insight Meditation Center

We will explore how some of the the Parami qualities - Generosity, Ethical integrity, Renunciation, Wisdom, Energy, Patience, Truthfulness, Resolve, Kindness and Equanimity - can be cultivated in daily life, and how the challenges of everyday life are actually required for their development.

Voices of Awakening

December 29, 2024 - January 2, 2025

Online New Year’s retreat

Ayya Anopama and I are offering our yearly retreat on the poems of the early Buddhist nuns through the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. In this program, we will explore the path to freedom and the obstacles that hinder us by contemplating the Verses of the Elder Nuns (Therīgāthā), a collection of poems from the very first Buddhist nuns.

One-on-One Sessions

I love to support practitioners in deepening their practice (both on and off the cushion) with one-on-one guidance. If you would like individual practice support, or meditation instruction, please use the contact form below.

  • “I am astonished by Nic's depth of presence when conveying the Dharma. It consistently beckons me to land and linger with her in the present moment. In her offerings, I experience the teachings being held in a container of a depth and integrity that never fails to move my heart.”

    Anonymous, participant in multiple courses

  • ”Nic and Rosie's online climate course was deeply engaging. There was never a moment when I was bored or tempted to multitask. It was a good mix of spacious time for deep contemplation and connection, excellent audio and video resources, and fun community building. I learned a huge amount and was surprised to find it uplifting and empowering rather than depressing or heavy as I had feared.”

    Wren Willow, Doctor of Oriental Medicine

  • “The sequence of contemplations and structure of the retreat had a beautiful simplicity and harmony that were perfectly conducive to remembering what matters. I was frankly astonished by Nic’s skill in creating a virtual dharma hall. It was amazing to me that Insight Dialogue could be so effectively conveyed in online interaction. Additionally, I tend not to like guided meditation very much, but the instructions were so impeccably attuned that they brought my mind to stillness.”

    Marjorie Schuman, Ph.D. Mindfulness-Informed Psychotherapist

  • “The two Insight Dialogue courses I took with Nic were incredibly beneficial for my own personal growth and wakefulness. I love her energy—so warm, real, and inviting. Instead of facilitating or lecturing, she holds sacred space for collective wisdom to arise. I find her to be authentic, present, vulnerable, joyful, with the refreshing quality of inquisitiveness and ‘don’t know mind’. I would take any course or workshop with her skillful holding.”

    Christine King, Certified Trainer, Nonviolent Communication

  • “The online retreat didn't feel like ‘just zoom.’ It was alive with our hearts, practice, and spiritual energy. The weaving together of the four foundations [of mindfulness] so skillfully offered deepened my practice to see all the connections between body sensations, feeling tone, and mind states so clearly. So clearly that it stays with me strongly. I’m so grateful!”

    Ozum Ucok, participant in the annual Cascadia Retreat

Recordings

  • Guided meditation: Pause

    Nic’s introduction to the Insight Dialogue Guideline, “Pause,” from the Voices of Awakening Retreat, December 29, 2021.

    Listen now

  • Listen Deeply and Speak the Truth

    Nic offering Insight Dialogue Guidelines, “Listen Deeply” and “Speak the Truth,” from the Voices of Awakening Retreat, January 2, 2022.

    Listen now

Donate

For thousands of years, Buddhist teachings have been made freely available and have moved through the world as a direct result of people giving freely. This ensures that the teachings are available to all of us, no matter what our financial situation might be. It’s a beautifully inclusive system, known as “dana”, where we are each invited to give as we can, according to our means.

Since teachers are not paid for their time and work, they rely on voluntary donations in order to be able to continue sharing the teachings. Their livelihood rests on the generosity of others.

In offering dana, we not only support the basic needs and livelihoods of our teachers, we also ensure the continuity of these teachings for the next generation, and the next and the next. It all hinges on generosity to keep the ball rolling.

Contact Nic

Questions about a retreat? Inquiries about a 1:1 session? Send Nic a message.