Drala Mountain Center

03/31/2026

As Women’s History & Gender Equality Month comes to a close, we’re celebrating the incredible women in our community who help shape . We’re so grateful for their wisdom, courage, and compassionate leadership, today and always. 💛🌿

🌲 Robbie Rettmer, Executive Director ☀
With 25+ years in leadership, Robbie has designed award-winning programs for organizations like McKinsey and Ford. A longtime meditation practitioner, her path is rooted in Kagyu, Shambhala, Mahamudra, and Nyingma traditions. She revitalizes DMC by stewarding the land, rebuilding systems, and ensuring programs offer wisdom, compassion, and connection. Fun fact: she helped create tsatsas (sacred votive offerings, some containing relics of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche) placed within the Great Stupa.

🌲 Joanne Martin Braun, Ph.D., Governing Council Member ☀
Practicing with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and other masters for 40+ years, Joanne is a meditation teacher and nonprofit consultant who brings mindfulness and compassion to all she does. A grateful DMC attendee since 1982, she has served as staff and on advisory boards, now continuing her commitment as a Governing Council member.

🌲 Melissa Hoskins, Governing Council Member ☀
With 20 years in communications, program management, and organizational coaching, Melissa helps organizations thrive at the intersection of people, process, and technology. A lifelong practitioner, she began meditating at 11 and has served as DMC staff. Melissa works to nurture DMC so generations can continue connecting with their hearts and wisdom.

🌲 Karen Wilding, DMC Governing Council Member ☀
A licensed Clinical Social Worker and longtime meditation instructor, Karen has served Boulder for decades, including 17 years as Director of Counseling at September School. A student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, she’s been part of DMC since 1976 and continues to share her warmth and deep care for this “magical, open-hearted and spacious place.”

03/29/2026

Let art be the doorway to connection, presence, and graitude🎨🌿

These temporary land-based artworks and gestural drawings offer a glimpse into the kinds of creative explorations you'll get hands on experience with in our upcoming retreat Regenerations: Cultivating Connections to Earth, Art & Activism.

📅 When: April 28th - May 3rd, 2026
📍 Drala Mountain Center
🔗 Register here: https://www.dralamountain.org/program/rc426-regenerations-cultivating-connections-to-earth-art-activism/?form=1

Join author, Molly Murfee, and artist, Ivy Kim, to recconet with the natural world through visual and written practices. Explore how your creativity can become a form of meaningful response.

This oppurtunity is both an inward journey into our creative love for the Earth and an exploration of how to share that care outward; in community, on the land, and back in our home environments.🌎✨

03/28/2026

At , staff life is more than a job, it’s an opportunity to live in community, deepen your practice, and support meaningful retreat experiences in a beautiful mountain valley. Surrounded by forests, meadows, and wide-open skies, staff members help create a supportive container for personal transformation, mindfulness, and contemplative living.✨🌄

If you're drawn to intentional community, meaningful service, and life on retreat land — we’d love to hear from you.

📍 Live on the land
🌄 Work in community
🧘 Deepen your practice
🌎 Support transformative retreats

🔗 Learn more & apply: https://www.dralamountain.org/dmc_stafflife/

03/27/2026

For too long, these stories have been overlooked.📖

Buddhism’s Foremothers: Stories of Courage, Compassion, and Leadership hosted on land at explores the lives of the first Buddhist women, both lay and monastic, whose courage challenged the norms of their time and helped shape the Buddhadharma as we know it today. Through storytelling, reflection, and shared insight, we invite you to reconnect with a lineage that is powerful, human, and deeply relevant to the world we’re living in now. 🗣️💬

Register today! 🧘‍♀️ https://www.dralamountain.org/program/bf1026-buddhisms-foremothers-stories-of-courage-compassion-and-leadership/?form=1

Join writer, independent scholar, and authorized dharma teacher Wendy Garling in honoring the women who walked before us and continue to guide the path.🛤️

03/26/2026

Silence settled across the land as practitioners gathered with for a weekend of deep meditation at Drala Mountain Center. Participants moved through sitting meditation, walking meditation, and mindful meals, creating space to befriend themselves and uncover their natural basic goodness. This kind of silent container offers the opportunity to “settle” and practice welcoming experience just as it is. This is what we call the heart the cradle of loving-kindness.

If you missed this one, Gelong Loden Nyima returns May 1–3, 2026 for another weekend immersion at in silence designed for meditators ready to deepen their practice through sustained sitting, walking meditation, and mindful awareness.

👉 Learn more & register: https://www.dralamountain.org/program/smi326-silent-meditation-intensive-the-cradle-of-loving-kindness-2/

03/23/2026

As Women's History and Gender Equality month continues to unfold, we are honored to keep highlighting the women who have helped shape Buddhism into what it is today and who continue to uplift and advocate for women’s voices within our community. 🪷💫 While we cannot recognize every woman who has led, taught, and inspired, we hope that by sharing a few of their stories, their impact continues to ripple outward through all of us.

🌷 Tsultrim Allione
One of the first American women ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun, she has dedicated her life to uplifting the feminine in Buddhist practice. Recognized as an emanation of Machig Labdrön, she integrates ancient teachings into modern life through her work at Tara Mandala, helping students transform inner obstacles into wisdom.🕯️

🌷 Mindrolling Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche
A highly respected teacher in both the Nyingma and Kagyu lineages, she was recognized at the age of two as the reincarnation of the Great Dakini of Tsurphu Monastery, Urgyen Tsomo, one of the most renowned female masters of her time. Teaching internationally, she represents women holding positions of deep authority and leadership within Tibetan Buddhism. 🌏

🌷 Judith Simmer-Brown
As an acharya, a senior teacher in the Shambhala tradition, and longtime professor at Naropa University, her work explores the sacred feminine in Buddhism. Through teaching and writing, she has helped bring the wisdom of dakinis and women practitioners into contemporary understanding. 📖

🌷 Holly Gayley
A scholar and translator of Tibetan Buddhism, her work focuses on gender, ethics, and contemporary Buddhist communities. Through her research and translations, she amplifies the voices and stories of women practitioners, both past and present, helping reshape how Buddhism is understood today. 🌿

✨How do women leaders like these inspire you?✨

03/21/2026

Join meditation teacher and New York Times best-selling author Susan Piver for a free live webinar.

What’s your enneagram type and why does it matter?

Enter the Buddhist enneagram — a unique integration of Buddhist teachings and the nine personality types that can help you build a bridge between perspectives and deepen compassion and love for one another. 🌉💛

During this free webinar, you’ll gain clarity on key concepts:
✨Passion
✨Virtue
✨Idealization
✨Avoidance
✨Talking Style
✨Point of Integration
✨Point of Disintegration

For anyone interested in personality typing and Buddhist wisdom who wants to take that knowledge deeper. 🧘‍♀️Sign up: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/qmmcr8vy7d6042n07pvi6/ABJ8YgnqRwAajD3iowXki4o?rlkey=gnmj76n274cqjnst9xl7seawl&st=ewtvednh&dl=0

03/19/2026

Join Susan Piver for a free live session exploring the Enneagram through a Buddhist lens and discover how understanding your type can become a path of deeper self-awareness and compassion.

Whether you’re brand new to the Enneagram or have studied it before, this session offers a fresh and thoughtful way to look at who you are and how you relate to others. 🌱

✨ Free. No pressure. Just insight you can take with you.

🔗 Sign up here: https://www.shambhala.com/whats-my-type-sign-up/ =smcaffil&a_cid=43b6c764

03/16/2026

We’re taking a moment to remember and honor the life of Venerable Pannavati Bhikkhuni, who recently passed on February 26. A trailblazer, teacher, and deeply compassionate human, her impact continues to ripple outward. 💜

A devoted practitioner and teacher of the Dharma, she didn’t just teach it, she lived it. Her work reached far beyond the meditation cushion, showing up in real, tangible ways for those often pushed to the margins, with courage, care, and unwavering compassion.

She was a fierce advocate for women in Buddhism who challenged long-standing barriers to full ordination. She supported and organized the ordination of dozens of bhikkhunis in Thailand and Cambodia, places where women had long been excluded from full monastic recognition. That kind of work didn’t go unnoticed, but when she received the Outstanding Women in Buddhism Award, she dedicated it not to herself, but to “all the women everywhere struggling under patriarchal oppression.”

Beyond that, she co-founded an international sisterhood for Buddhist women, mentored countless students, and led humanitarian efforts from supporting Dalit communities in India to creating housing and job training programs for unhoused youth.

It’s impossible to fully capture a life like hers in a single post, but we hope this can serve as a small reminder of what it looks like to truly embody compassion, courage, and service. Her life shows us that the path of awakening isn’t separate from justice or community, it lives right there within it.

As we celebrate Women’s History & Gender Equality Month, may we continue to honor her legacy by supporting equity in spiritual spaces and living these values in our own ways. 🙏✨

03/13/2026

❄️Winter is showing off at ! ❄️

Fresh snowfall makes us want to lace up our boots, explore the land, and stop for an important snowman-building break. 🥾☃️

Shoutout to and the many DMC staff members who braved the cold to capture these beautiful moments on the land so we could share them with you! 📸🙌

03/12/2026

Insight Meditation Teacher Dave Smith is coming to Drala Mountain Center in April for an incredibly exciting Mindfulness in Recovery meditation retreat.

Not in recovery? You're still very welcome as long as you have some interest in learning about and supporting recovery, are a care provider working with those in recovery, or want to support a loved one on a recovery journey.

Interested? Dave is a podcaster and content creator as well as an Insight meditation teacher. Here's a link to his recent video discussing the meaning crisis in the world today.

https://youtu.be/SCYnqF1hwJc?si=_9xVXFMWDDI2Z9MS

Register Here: https://www.dralamountain.org/program/mr426-mindfulness-and-recovery-weekend-retreat/

https://linktr.ee/davesmithdharma