Overview & Site Info

Knowing Our True Nature: An earth-based meditation yoga retreat is a silent, nature-based Buddhist Insight meditation and Hatha yoga retreat led by Kirsten Rudestam & Mary Paffard. This retreat offers practitioners the opportunity to deepen their connection with the body, community and the natural world through meditation instruction, yoga sessions, and deep listening to the earth body internally and externally.

We will be glamping and camping at Pomo Tierra, an 80-acre apple farm and collective with access to hiking trails, an oak grove, and natural waters. Meditation and yoga practitioners of all levels of experience are welcome. Practice periods include silent and guided sitting, walking meditation, yoga sessions, and Dharma talks. Sitting, walking meditation and yoga will be led outdoors, weather permitting.

Pomo Tierra was founded in 1971, nestled in the Northern California hills of Mendocino County. Community members live onsite and share a central meeting area, which has evolved over the years to accommodate friends of the farm coming to help harvest, fertilize and celebrate at different times of the year.

The site includes an oak grove, a pond and shady places to gather. There are bathrooms near the main house along with cold water and regular showers. There are a variety of places to walk, from shorter ambles in flat terrain around part of the orchard (5 - 20 mins), to a medium terrain meadow loop walk (30 mins), to a steep hike up to the Spring (1 hour). Each retreat ticket / lodging option includes locally sourced and mostly organic vegetarian meals (with simple substitutes for participants with dietary allergies).

There are a variety of glamping and camping options that are priced on a sliding scale. Please see the images at the bottom for more detailed descriptions.

We ask participants to bring their own yoga equipment that will be used outdoors (mat, pillow and blanket). If you’re able to bring a meditation cushion or equivalent that would be nice too. Please note that you will also sign up for a work meditation AKA yogi job upon checking in on the first day of retreat. These vary from food prep, to table clean up and so forth. This is our opportunity to both integrate our practice and to serve the community – our Sangha.

Dana & Pricing

This retreat is offered on the basis of dana, the Pali word for generosity. This tradition of ‘Dana,’ or mutual giving, has supported Buddhist cultures for 2500 years. In Asia, the monks and nuns offer the teaching and the lay people support the monastery and fill the monks’ begging bowls each morning as they walk through the village on alms rounds. It is a beautiful exchange in which the hearts of both giver and receiver are opened in joy and gratitude.

In this spirit, our retreat tickets just cover the basic costs of putting on the retreat: food, cook, site fee, administration costs, and other incidental expenses. We offer our retreat tickets on a sliding scale (based on the lodging you choose) to allow each participant to pay for what is most appropriate for themselves. We also offer a scholarship ticket for those to pay what they can to attend.

Please note that these tickets do NOT include compensation for Kirsten or Mary for teaching and managing the retreat or for Off-Grid Retreats for organizing it. On the final retreat day, you will be invited to share dana (your donations) to support the Retreat Teachers and to Off-Grid Retreats.

For any questions, comments or concerns, please contact our Program Manager Asha (asha@offgridretreats.org).

Cancellation Policy: If you cancel your reservation more than 1 week before the retreat start date, you must cover the processing fee of ~5%. Then, the remaining amount paid will be refunded to you. If you cancel less than 1 week before the retreat start date or leave the retreat early no refund will be provided.

Retreat Teachers

Kirsten Rudestam -
Meditation Teacher

Kirsten, PhD, works as an environmental educator, wilderness guide, and meditation teacher. She has been practicing Buddhist meditation since 2001 and teaching contemplative practices since 2006. She led Off-Grid Retreats’ first multi-day nature retreat in 2022 and another in 2023. Also,
she is trained as a vision fast guide through the School of Lost Borders and a facilitator in Joanna Macy’s “Work that Reconnects.”

Kirsten has a PhD in Environmental Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz where she studied water policy and management, feminist political ecology and environmental justice. Strongly committed to experiential practice as a mode of radical environmental pedagogy, she has fifteen years of experience teaching courses in Environmental Sociology and Environmental Justice at colleges and universities. She offers individual mentoring and programs in meditation, deep nature connection, ceremony, and radical resilience.

Mary Paffard -
Yoga Teacher

Mary has been teaching yoga and training teachers worldwide since 1985. She co-founded Yoga Mendocino, a non profit yoga center and was Director of Teacher Training 2000-2010. Mary completed the Dedicated Practitioners Program at Spirit Rock in 2007. She is currently part of a Buddhist Ecology Chaplaincy program at the Sati Center.

Mary has also taught gentle movement at many meditation retreats over the decades for teachers such as Ajahn Amaro, Christina Feldman and Narayan Liebenson, and delights in weaving the teachings into a cellular experience. For the last 24 years, Mary has been part of a cross-cultural exchange with Cuban yogis and meditators. Finally, Mary lives at Pomo Tierra Ranch with her partner and family, blending outdoor life, caring for grandkids, and continuing this meandering, humbling and inspiring path in the yoga, eco and meditation worlds.