Shantigar Retreat, Theater Meditation Healing Workshops Jean Claude Van Itallie

     Peaceful hills, woods, good air, elegant simple meeting spaces, fresh organic meals, and comfortable accommodations, encourage concentration, relaxation, and alertness in groups who visit Shantigar to work on a project of their own.

    By hosting eminent visiting groups — educational seminars, master-teachers training their students, and special purpose groups funded by major foundations – who meet to increase communication and awareness – Shantigar earns income which allows it to also host groups who have little or no funding (such as a young theater or dance company creating and rehearsing a new piece).

     Shantigar can provide visiting groups with workshop teachers. The Ariel Group, specialists in teaching communication skills to corporate groups, has held three annual retreats at Shantigar, taking workshops with Shantigar teachers.

Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leaders Chogyam Trungpa and Tulku Thondup have held retreats at Shantigar. At Shantigar if a meditation teacher wishes, his/her students can enter into dialogue and collaboration with artist-teachers and their students.

    In 1973 Jean-Claude van Itallie arranged with Chogyam Trungpa a volatile and highly successful “theater artists meet Buddhist meditators” conference in Boulder, Colorado where director Robert Wilson and his Byrd Hoffman Theater Company created a piece that astonished the meditators.

    Citizens Awareness Network, a local not-for-profit grassroots educational anti-nuclear group, has held its regional meeting in Shantigar’s big tent. Shantigar’s executive director, Deb Katz, is also executive director of Citizens Awareness Network, and Shantigar’s near neighbor. A psychotherapist, a community organizer, and an artist – her sketchbook of grief, Shards, will be published in 2008.

Shantigar looks forward to hosting more visiting groups when its new Cloud Mountain Community building is built. Cloud Mountain will lodge groups comfortably and provide them with inspiring meeting spaces.