Love Is the Most Powerful Force in the Universe: A Virtual Retreat

This daylong virtual mindfulness and meditation retreat explores love as a practice and a strength rather than a softness. Led over Zoom by Sharon Salzberg, one of the best-known lovingkindness teachers in the West, together with Atman Smith, Ali Smith, and Andres Gonzalez of the Holistic Life Foundation, it is open to anyone who wants to love themselves, the people in their lives, and the wider world with more skill and steadier boundaries. It is listed in Vancouver, British Columbia, and can be joined from anywhere online.

What to Expect

The retreat runs from 12:30 PM to 6:00 PM Eastern Time on a Saturday, a long afternoon of guided practice from home. The program combines meditation, yoga, breathwork, and other contemplative practices, and it is built around questions many people carry. Can love be understood as a powerful force rather than as giving in? How do we love without being taken advantage of? When is compassion called for, and when is tough love? How do we love ourselves unconditionally and keep balance across all our relationships?

The teachers offer practical tools for working with those questions, including:

- Connecting with the reservoir of love within you
- Building self-love and self-acceptance
- Learning to love with appropriate boundaries
- Cultivating love for others through loving kindness meditation
- Yoga and breathwork to ground yourself and reduce stress, so that it becomes easier to receive love from others

About Sharon Salzberg

Sharon Salzberg is a meditation pioneer and New York Times bestselling author who helped bring mindfulness and lovingkindness meditation into mainstream American culture more than 45 years ago. She co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, in 1975. She has written twelve books, among them Lovingkindness and the bestseller Real Happiness, and her latest is the children's book Kind Karl. Her podcast, The Metta Hour, has passed seven million downloads. She first encountered meditation in India as a young woman, and it shaped her life's work.

About Ali Smith

Ali Smith was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. He began contemplative practice as a small child, learning meditation from his father and attending the Divine Life Church of Absolute Oneness under Swami Shankarananda. As a young adult he studied yoga, meditation, mindfulness, and breathwork with his teacher and godfather Will Joyner. He has taught for almost 20 years, internationally, and is known as a pioneer of yoga and mindfulness in education and of trauma informed yoga and mindfulness. He co-founded the Holistic Life Foundation in 2001 and The Involution Group in 2019, and co-hosts the Look Again Podcast.

About Atman Smith

Atman Smith is a co-founder of the Holistic Life Foundation and now serves as its Director of Development, having earlier been Director of Youth Programming and Director of Fundraising. Since 2001 he has taught yoga and mindfulness to a wide range of people, including underserved and high-risk youth in Baltimore City Public Schools, as well as people in drug treatment centers, wellness centers, and colleges. A Baltimore native, he played men's basketball at the University of Maryland, College Park, and holds a degree in Criminology and Criminal Justice.

About Andres Gonzalez

Andres Gonzalez is also a co-founder of the Holistic Life Foundation. For eighteen years he has taught yoga to varied communities in schools, drug treatment centers, mental crisis facilities, homeless shelters, wellness centers, and colleges, in the United States and abroad. He has partnered with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Penn State's Prevention Research Center on a stress and relaxation study, and has published in the Journal of Children's Services. He is a certified Health Coach through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and holds a B.S. in Marketing and an MBA.

Before You Go

No prior meditation experience is necessary. The retreat takes place on Zoom, and the link is emailed to participants within twenty-four hours of registering, so you will want a quiet space, a device with a stable connection, and room to move for the yoga and breathwork.