Clarinbridge Retreats

10 Day Residential Insight Meditation Retreats

Next retreats: 

24th October - 2nd November 2025 Nick Scott with Brian Hickey 

3rd - 12th April 2026 To be arranged 

The retreats are to be held at Kilcuan Retreat Centre. Kilcuan is situated in quiet woodland near Clarinbridge, Co Galway. There are  30 places in double en suite rooms for participants. 

A ten day retreat is an opportunity to deepen one’s meditation practice and leads to an understanding of what meditation and the spiritual journey is really about. The period is long enough that we can leave behind the stress caused by our daily interactions while having no need to plan the future. It thus becomes possible to explore the present, and in the space and silence that opens up, to process our buried memories, traits and other conditioning so that we can learn how to be at peace and content, whatever is happening. This retreat is suitable for those new to meditation as well as experienced meditators. The instruction will be cumulative, starting with posture and how to establish mindfulness (sati) and a caring open attitude (metta) and through that find concentration (samadhi). With this we can then explore the Buddha’s teachings that are designed to lead to insight (vipassana) so to develop wisdom (panna). Throughout the retreat we will refer to his actual teachings in the Buddhist Pali suttas. The teaching will consist of instruction each morning and some afternoons, evening talks on the theory behind what we are doing and regular one-to-one guidance. The retreat will be held in silence. There will be optional taught yoga sessions each day to help free up the body for sitting comfortably.  

Start and End Times:

Registration for this retreat will be from 6pm on the first Friday, with soup served at 6.30pm. It will finish after lunch at 1pm on the Sunday. You have to attend the whole retreat. 

Coming on Retreat

The retreat will be held in Noble Silence and participants will be keeping the Eight Precepts. To find out more about coming on retreat please see here: http://www.sunyatacentre.org/coming-on-retreat-at-sunyata/.  To book a place, or to make enquiries, please write to teachnat@gmail.com. We will send you a link to the registration form and more information by return. 

Cost of Retreat

This retreat is offered on a donation (dana) basis. At the end of the retreat there will be an opportunity to give a donation towards the hiring the facilities and our other costs. Any excess will go to future retreats and Sunyata Retreat Centre to help with their running costs. The teachings are free. The donation can be made at the retreat, or on-line using this paypal link: DONATION.

For more information or to book a place please write to teachnat@gmail.com  

We now request a €50 non returnable deposit to reserve you a place on a ten day retreat (we will send you the paypal link). We have instigated this in the hope it will decrease the number of cancellations we have been having to process. Any unused deposits will go towards to cost of the retreat.