Let us pamper you with organic vegan meals while you upgrade your mindfulness and self-care practices at our upcoming retreat! Chefs Hiromi Bower Ui and Kiyoko Usugi will lovingly prepare all vegan, organic, and homemade meals. We’ll show you healthy ways to dissolve anxiety, manage stress, and build personal resilience to prevent burnout and strengthen your efforts to help animals.

Register now!

In addition to delicious vegan meals, we will practice mindfulness, meditation, restorative yoga, self-care, fusion fitness, and join in a healing ritual. The Mindful Vegan author Lani Muelrath, self-care coach Allison Rivers Samson, and our own Lisa Levinson will guide our weekend together.

What: Mindfulness & Self-Care Retreat: Help Animals Without Depleting Yourself

When: Saturday, June 9, 10am-4pm and Sunday, June 10, 8am-3pm

Where: Banyan Grove, 60 Arroyo Road, Forest Knolls, California 

Cost: Offered by donation to honor the Buddhist practice of "dana" or generosity.

Venue: Banyan Grove can accommodate 40 guests for the retreat, with 20 of those guests staying overnight. ServiceSpace operates the venue.

Overnight Accommodations: Overnight lodging is currently full. You're welcome to join us for the retreat during the day. You can find local lodging here. 

Registration: Required by June 5 at www.idausa.org/retreats

Arrange carpools and local lodging on the Facebook event page.

Contact event organizer Lisa Levinson with questions at lisa@idausa.org or (215) 620-2130.

Retreat Menu

Snacks: ume plum sprouted raw walnuts, flaxseed crackers, raw vegetable stick with dip sauce, pecan snowball cookies, ume plum chia leather

Beverages: hand crafted herbal teas, coffee

Lunch: pita bread sandwich, falafel, fresh raw vegetables, tahini sauce, pesto, pickles, kale salad, buckwheat chocolate mouse

Dinner: quiche, quinoa salad, seasonal vegetable cream soup, seasonal fruit parfait 

Breakfast: pancakes, fresh fruit, fruit jam, chia pudding, superfood green smoothie

Lunch: variety of seasonal vegetable sushi balls, miso soup, strawberry mochi

Our Vegan Chefs

Kiyoko Usugi: vegan chef, forager, artist, owner of ume plum orchard Mume Farm, Kiyoko’s cooking is inspired by her childhood in Northeast Japan, her extensive international travel, living on American Indian reservations and time walking for peace across the US with a Buddhist nun. 

Hiromi Bower Ui: gift ecology researcher, organic farm to table vegan chef, fermenter, farmer, heirloom seed saver, mother, Hiromi was born and raised in a small farming town outside of Tokyo. Her cooking reflects her upbringing surrounded by older relatives preparing food for the community, plus permaculture activism and time spent on farms in Australia, South Korea, and Taiwan and with low income communities in East Oakland.

Our Sustainable Activism Campaign provides emotional resources and self-care tools for animal activists via retreats, webinars, support groups, and a support line.