“Creating Joy In Community,” the first residential retreat for transgender people, welcomes members of the transgender, gender nonconforming, genderqueer, and non-binary community to join together and cultivate “trans joy.”InsightLA will hold the first residential Buddhist retreat for the transgender community in the Insight Meditation tradition at Big Bear Retreat Center in California from September 12-16, 2019.
The retreat, “Creating Joy in Community,” will welcome members of the transgender, gender nonconforming, genderqueer, and non-binary community to gather for silent meditation, mindful movement, and heart-centered practices alongside dharma talks, discussion, and community building.
“Creating Joy in Community” features four teachers: Fresh “Lev” White and René Rivera, who are both trans men; Riya Christie, a trans woman; and JD Doyle, who is genderqueer. InsightLA’s Director of Programming, Martin Vitorino, a trans man, will serve as the retreat’s manager.
Vitorino, a graduate of InsightLA’s Facilitator Training, leads guided meditations at InsightLA East Hollywood and facilitates a monthly event called “Mindful Transitions for the Transgender Community.” He recognized the need and longing for a residential retreat experience specifically for the trans* community (the event organizers use “trans*” to refer to transgender, gender nonconforming, genderqueer, and nonbinary people). White, Rivera, and Doyle have each previously offered daylong programs for trans* people at Spirit Rock and East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC), and other events for the trans* community in the Bay Area, but residential retreats have previously only been held for the larger LGBT community.
“I’ve felt comfortable enough in those LGBT spaces,” says Rivera, a community teacher at EBMC, “but at the same time I have almost always been the only gender nonconforming or trans-identified person on the residential retreat.”
“I just feel so strongly about giving people who don’t fit neatly into the binary gender identities a space where they can be in retreat and feel like they’re totally welcomed and able to come as their whole selves,” he says.
