In-Person Retreat on the Sublime Mother Gaia

with Cynthia Jurs, Rasul Luisa Bravo & Rick Jansen

Tuscany, Italy

October 10-15, 2023

Register Now!

Send in your deposit before June 26th to secure your spot! 
Space is limited.

Please join us for the in-person retreat on the Sublime Mother Gaia in the heart of the Chianti region of Tuscany. Cynthia received this practice (formerly known as Tara Gaia), inspired by Tara with a visualization and mantra of Gaia, during intensive practice in retreat and worked with it privately for many years. This will be the first time since Cynthia first began to teach this practice that we will have the opportunity to come together to practice in-person!

It will be very special and joyful to sit and practice alongside each other, to share wonderful meals overlooking the vineyards and olive groves, to deepen our relations with each other and to explore the Arya Gaia practice and our relation to Mother Earth more deeply. What better place to do this but in Italy, immersed in the natural beauty and ancient culture of this well-known region?

This Retreat Includes:

  • a transmission ceremony
  • teachings from Cynthia Jurs
  • supportive engagement practices with Rick & Rasul
  • group practice and reflection sessions
  • outside walking meditations in the rose garden and olive groves
  • reflective and experiential suggestions to engage with in-between sessions
  • Q&A
  • opportunities to deeply rest
  • leisure time to connect with oneself, each other and Mother Earth

Both new practitioners and those who already received the transmission are welcome to register!

 

Our Atmospheric Farm-Stay
at La Chiara di Prumiano

We will be staying at La Chiara di Prumiano, a 17th century villa surrounded by woods, vineyards and olive groves. They are among the first in Tuscany to begin practicing organic farming in 1983. This family-owned villa is also committed to sustainable practices such as abolishing use of plastic bottles and disposable plateware.

We will be in the heart of the Chianti region of Tuscany, near Barberino Val d’Elsa and Florence, yet easily reachable via the Florence-Siena motorway, despite being immersed in the Tuscan countryside. ( From Florence: 30 minutes by car; 45 minutes by bus)

MEALS:

We will be offered 3 meals per day of fresh, local, vegetarian cuisine. Many of the ingredients are grown organically on their farm, including their own organic extra virgin olive oil.

LODGING:

We are reserving the entire Villa for our Arya Gaia Retreat. Participants can choose between double and single room stay. There are limited single rooms available for an additional supplement. The double rooms have two separate beds and a private bathroom.

COST:

Double Room:  €840 or $920
Single supplement €75 or $85

COST INCLUDES:

  • All overnight accommodations for 5 nights from October 10-15.
  • All meals for 5 days.
  • All facilitated retreat activities, transmissions, and meditations with Cynthia, Rick, and Rasul 

The cost does not include airfare and transportation to-from airport.

Space is limited. Reserve now!

DEPOSIT & PAYMENT SCHEDULE:

To secure your spot a non-refundable deposit of €230 or $250 is required.

The balance can be paid in full, or in installments:

  • Second Payment: 345 EU or $375 USD due June 17
  • Third Payment: 345 EU or $375 USD due August 5
    (*Single supplement add €75 or $85)

PAYMENT METHODS:

Payments can be made online at www.GaiaMandala.net/donate via credit card or PayPal.

Checks can be made out to:

Alliance for the Earth and sent to PO Box 8031, Santa Fe, NM 87504
Contact us if you wish to send payment by Bank Transfer.

CANCELLATION POLICY

€230 / $250 of your deposit is non-refundable.

If you have to cancel before July 15th, 2023, any amount paid beyond €230 / $250 will be refunded. After July 31st there will be no refunds.

Travel Insurance is highly recommended.

For more info about the farm-stay retreat center: www.prumiano.it/en

For questions about registration and accommodations, contact Nikole Rosaria Manieri: nikole@earthtreasurevase.org

For questions about the Arya Gaia Transmission and Teachings and scholarships, contact Rick Jansen: rick@earthtreasurevase.org

Partial Scholarships

If you are called to these teachings, but cost is prohibitive, please send an e-mail to rick@earthtreasurevase.org, explaining your situation and what percentage of scholarship you request. We will look into it and do what we can. We have only 2 partial scholarships available.

Donate to Arya Gaia Scholarship Fund

If you would like to support others in accessing the Teachings and Transmission of Arya Gaia Sadhana, please donate here and specify in the notes: “For Italy Arya Gaia Scholarship Fund “

Register Here

Introduction to Arya Gaia

This video, “Cultivating a Sacred Relationship with the Earth” is an interview between Cynthia Jurs and Vanessa Fourcaudot, the founder of a 5 day summit held in January 2022, The Call of Gaia ~ Heart-led Female Entrepreneurship in Service to Life.  

In this beautiful conversation, conducted in English, Cynthia Jurs shares her story of bringing healing and protection to the Earth through the Earth Treasure Vases and how she formed a relationship to Gaia and is now teaching this new meditation on Arya Gaia to help us form our own connection to the Earth as sacred activists dedicated to restoring balance and harmony in our world. The recording includes an introduction to the visualization of Arya Gaia and a short meditation-recitation of her mantra.

The Dharma has always evolved in response to the times and cultures through which it moves. I believe the practice of Tara Gaia is an example of the evolution of the Dharma in response to these extraordinary times. Cynthia Jurs is a wise, eloquent and compassionate teacher who has dedicated her life to sacred activism. For those who love this world, the practice of Tara Gaia offers a doorway to be in direct connection with the living Earth and to listen to what she is asking of us.

— Carl Rabke, LMT, GCFP, Embodiment Matters Podcast

This is such a beautiful practice from such a heartful and authentic teacher integrating the profundity of dharma and Tara practice with Gaia and the needed healing of the web of life. Highly recommended! Thank you for this practice and for your vast heart, dear Cynthia Jurs.

— Erin Geesaman Rabke, Somatic Naturalist & Embodiment Mentor, www.embodimentmatters.com

Receiving this new practice of Tara Gaia has been profound blessing and an amazing form through which to deepen my connection with the living Earth, in the company of an emerging global sangha of transparent, caring humans.

—Sonja Myllymaki, Alberta, Canada

Cynthia is deeply wise and profoundly knowledgable. I am immensely grateful to have participated in her Tara Gaia teaching-transmission and subsequently to be a part of the ongoing monthly community gatherings. Whether you have an already established practice or are starting anew, the Tara Gaia Practice shared by Cynthia is a true gift of love and compassion for Gaia.

— Katherine Patton, California

The Tara Gaia mantra has seeped into my dreams and soaked into my bones. Now I find myself spontaneously singing the mantra to rivers, trees, mountains and the sea. I sense the mantra being received by wild nature and somehow magnifying the blessings and showering them back down everywhere including on me. Cynthia so effectively conveys these profound and timeless, and now so timely, teachings. I highly recommend this retreat.

— Ellen Davidson, in the California Redwoods

If there was ever a time in our lives to pray for healing and protection of the Earth and her children, it is now.  The Tara Gaia practice taught by Cynthia Jurs is that prayer.  It is one of the most significant and beautiful practices of dedication and love to our precious planet and all life. The practice continues to reveal itself and its power each time it is recited.

— Jenny Allen, in Ontario, Canada

The practice of Tara Gaia gave me such a bodily sense of ‘this is what I have been looking for.’ It is just the total package: the Dharma, Mother Earth, indigenous wisdom and respect for the web of life all in one in a true and effortless fit. This practice unites them all so perfectly, in such a seamless way.

— Emma Swann, in Victoria, Australia

Cynthia Jurs’ Tara-Gaia Sadhana and the Earth Treasure Vases hold the powerful intention of bringing healing and protection to the Earth. This practice has touched my life deeply as I have made this my daily offering to Mother Earth. I come to serve and receive so much more…

— Liza Jane Alexander, Tennessee

The Tara Gaia practice of Cynthia Jurs and the unfolding Earth Treasure Vase Global Mandala she has been working on for decades are inspired teachings for our times — appearing like a Terma of Tibetan Buddhism when they are critically needed.

— Vaughn Lovejoy

Our Guiding Teacher

Cynthia Jurs met her root teacher, Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh in the early 1980s, and in 1994 received his transmission of Dharmacharya, becoming a teacher in his tradition, the Order of Interbeing. In 1990 she traveled to a remote cave in Nepal to meet the 106-year-old Lama Kushok Mangden Rinpoche, from whom she received the practice of the Earth Treasure Vases. In 2018 she was recognized as Lama Sherab Zangmo at Tolu Tharling Gompa in Nepal by Ngawang Tsultrim Zangpo Rinpoche. Today, Cynthia is forging a new path of dharma in service to Gaia, deeply rooted in the feminine, honoring indigenous traditions, and teaching an embodied, engaged, sacred activism dedicated to global healing and collective awakening. Cynthia teaches meditations and leads pilgrimages and through her nonprofit, Alliance for the Earth, works with former combatants in Liberia to build peace through mindfulness. Cynthia lives at the base of the Sangre de Christo mountains in northern New Mexico where she is often found walking in the wilderness with her dog or gardening with husband.  You can find her offerings and join the global healing community she founded at www.GaiaMandala.net

Guest Teachers

Rick Jansen is passionate about the transformation and healing needed to wake up to the deeper interconnected reality of our lives and to find one’s true and authentic purpose in service to the ‘’Great Turning’’. His spiritual path started in 2013 trekking in Nepal where he met Tibetan Buddhism and his first spiritual teacher, Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche. Currently Rick practices mainly within the Plum Village Tradition of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. Since spring 2022, Rick works closely with Cynthia and the core-team at the heart of the Gaia Mandala. He leads one of the monthly online Arya Gaia Practice Groups, facilitates one of the Earth Treasure Vase Stewardship Support Groups and is co-creating a program specifically for Young Adults. Rick also works as a nature and soul-oriented Purpose Guide™ in his private practice and as a mentor with Purpose Guides Institute. For the future, Rick holds a strong intention to work with young men, out-in-nature on pilgrimage, helping them to discover their own innate gifts and unique calling. Born in the Netherlands, at the moment, Rick lives as a long-term resident in the Mindfulness Practice Center of Plum Village in France. You can find his offerings at www.naturesoulpurpose.com

Rasul Luisa Bravo’s life is rooted in the tender yet wild remembrance of our oneness with creation. In the journey backwards and forwards to this recognition, she has been shaped by studying intuitive plant medicine, regenerative agriculture, non-violent communication, and rituals for communal grief tending. She is dedicated to cultivating the power of communication through writing and narration, song, ritual, prayer and through creative collaboration. Weaving all these threads, Rasul serves as host at the virtual home for the Earth Treasure Vase Global Healing Community on The Mandala. She also co-facilitates practices offered within the Gaia Mandala Sangha including the Monday Mindfulness Meditation and the Arya Gaia Sadhana to which she has developed a deep connection. Inspired to learn more about the Vajrayana Buddhist Tradition, Rasul is also participating in the Ösel Nyingtig program offered through Tara Mandala. Rasul is dedicated to stewarding an Earth Treasure Vase for the restoration of the waters of the world which has led her back to live in her native land of Colombia, where the “paramos”, ecosystems that offer a vital source of water, reside.