Mindfulness Northwest Opens Registration for Spring Silent Weekend Retreat

Mindfulness Northwest's Spring Weekend Mindfulness Retreat concluded Sunday at Samish Island Campground and Retreat Center in Bow, Washington, closing out a mostly-silent residential program led by teachers Tim Burnett and Sonia Sahay.

The retreat ran from 4:00 PM Friday, March 27, through noon on Sunday, March 29, at the campground at 11633 Scott Rd. Over those 44 hours, Burnett and Sahay guided participants through sitting meditation, walking meditation in nature, the body scan, and gentle yoga. Instructive talks on stress reactivity and the experience of being on retreat were woven through the program, and small and large group discussions bookended the weekend, organized around the shared experience of walking, sitting, and breathing in the quiet of the retreat site.

Mindfulness Northwest designed the program for practitioners with an established home practice or a completed introductory course, though the retreat description notes the environment is supportive across a range of experience levels. Rustic cabin lodging was included in base tuition, with an optional upgrade to an E-cabin available at registration.

Tuition ran on a sliding scale from $355 to $635. A four-month, no-interest payment plan brought that to $89 to $159 per month. Limited scholarships required no separate application: participants simply selected a scholarship tuition level at registration, a feature Mindfulness Northwest built in as part of its approach to lowering the economic threshold for residential practice. The Pacific Northwest nonprofit describes its mission as accessible, evidence-informed mindfulness training.

For practitioners who have spent months tending a home sitting practice, the weekend retreat format offers something a daily alarm cannot: a time-structured container for longer sits and sustained silence, repeated across days, away from the friction of ordinary life.