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Ecodharma Retreat for Resilience and Disaster Planners – Loving Each Other and the Earth by Building Beloved Community
Dates & Location
Monday, September 29 – Monday, October 6, 2025 At Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center In Ward, Colorado On treaty-recognized homelands of the Hinono’eiteen (Arapaho), the Tsitsistas (Cheyenne) and the Nuu-ci (Ute) nations
Retreat Description
We must prepare for a “polycrisis,” that goes beyond the climate crisis and encompasses multiple interdependent global risks that significantly degrade humanity’s prospects. Increasing frequency and severity of climate disasters are an integral part of the deepening polycrisis and they reveal both our fragility and interdependence. This retreat is the first in a series of three designed by Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center (RMERC) to support the cultivation of community resiliency and responsiveness in states around Colorado as disasters and chaos will unfold in our communities in the decades to come. We need to be prepared for fires, floods, catastrophic winds, droughts and other more slowly unfolding stressful events not just in 2025-2030 but in 2040-2050 and beyond.
Finding deep refuge in the beauty and wisdom of the land and the dharma teachings, we will rest and replenish, tend our nervous systems, introduce spiritual and emotional resilience practices, and cultivate the capacity of the heart to hold space for grief and rage and end with community building work. After accessing groundedness and restorative nourishing connection and trust with each other and the more-than-human world, we can identify, release or accept our grief and rage. Our programming will include a day of “Solo: Nature kinship day” where we will spend a contemplative day “alone” in the natural world, allowing ourselves to come into a deep sense of visceral connection, belonging and communion with rocks, trees, waters and all other beings on RMERC land as our relatives or kins. The retreat will allow Eco-Chaplains, therapists and other spiritual support professionals exposure to the experiences of front line climate resilience advocates, K-12 educators, mutual-aid and disaster planners. Additionally, it will offer disaster responders resources, skills and practices for spiritual and emotional healing. By the end of this retreat, we hope to weave a web of relationships among key local/regional stakeholders who are involved in community-level climate resilience efforts that will allow for mutual aid/community care and trauma informed resilience in the face of future climate related disasters in Colorado and surrounding states.
Those who attend will be invited to participate in ongoing virtual events to support the continued cultivation of ecodharma-sangha (community) to care for each other and the Earth in the face of the polycrisis.
Who is this retreat for?
We will invite participants from Colorado and surrounding states who want to cultivate regional resilience and warm connections between
- K12 educators,
- grassroots activists,
- trauma informed therapists and eco-chaplains,
- climate resilience experts from regional climate/justice organizations,
- emergency response personnel (e.g., Fire department, FEMA, City/County Staff), and
- mutual aid groups who cater to vulnerable populations during and after disasters.
The overall cohort will consist of people who have an understanding of the physical, psychological and spiritual resiliency needs in the wake of climate and other disasters. To remain aligned with RMERC’s vision, we will also have at least 50% BIPOC participants. Participants with European backgrounds will be selected on the basis of their prior training in the areas of anti-racism, allyship and solidarity across race, gender, sexuality, and class. We will set up clear multicultural and multi-racial space agreements and will have conflict resolution frameworks in place. We will have online events for potential and finalized list of participants, both before and after the retreat so that people stay in a web of relationships for deeper service to our community for decades to come. (Participants may potentially participate in one or more retreats across the three years if they qualify for the future retreats that are part of this initiative.)
Cost/Finances
- The food and rent for this retreat is fully funded by the BESS Family Foundation.
- There will be small registration fee for admin costs which can be reimbursed post-attendance for student-activists, BIPOC or other participants from other under-represented groups.
- We will invite voluntary donations (dana) at the end of this retreat to support leading teachers.
- There are travel support scholarships especially for indigenous participants who are original stewards of Colorado, if needed.
Application Deadline:
We will review the applications as soon as they come in because we will be offering online community building events even before the retreat. We are unlikely to accept new people after May 31st application deadline.
Click Here to Apply
Lead Teachers/Coordinators/Facilitators

Kritee (dharma name Kanko) (she/her) is a Climate Scientist, Buddhist Zen priest, Educator & Founding Spiritual teacher of Boundless in Motion. She is an ordained dharma teacher in the Rinzai Zen lineage of Cold Mountain and a co-founder of Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center (RMERC). She left the mainstream non-profit climate movement recently after working as a leading scientist in the Climate Smart Agriculture program at Environmental Defense Fund for 12 years. Kritee has been leading silent Zen retreats at RMERC since 2017 and interactive people of color retreats at RMERC for identifying and releasing our personal and ecological grief in the presence of a loving community since 2021. She has served as faculty for courses or retreats at the intersection of climate crisis, racial justice, trauma healing and spirituality for many organizations including One Earth Sangha, Al Gore’s Climate Reality, Stanford University, World Council of Churches, San Francisco Zen Center, Mind & Life Institute and Lama Foundation. Her articles and interviews have appeared in the New York Times, BBC, Washington Post, Harvard Health, Yale Climate Connections, California Public Radio. Please see her personal website here.

Jean Leonard, Ph.D. (she/her) is a licensed psychologist, dharma teacher and mentor, with clinical specialties in trauma and grief and loss. A meditator since 2003, her practice has been nourished by the core teachings of the Theravada and Chan Buddhist lineages, particularly the brahma viharas and Kuan Yin dharmas. She is a board member of the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center (RMERC) and a trained Buddhist Eco-Chaplain, supporting individuals and communities impacted by the ecological crises of our times. She delights in pottery, poetry and soaking in the wisdom of elder trees, and has a passion for nature practice, women’s sangha building, and practice related to aging, illness and dying.

Bianca Acosta is a trained teacher of somatic Qigong, traditional ecological design and farming practices (best known as permaculture), and Ecodharma teacher at the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center. She is originally from Zacatecas, Mexico and has been living in Colorado for over 18 years. She is proud of her indigenous roots and her life’s prayer is to be an active co-creator of a more beautiful world by sharing her gifts, being in synergetic relationships with Mother Earth, the diverse communities she is part of and embracing the multi-dimensionality of their being. She is currently in her last year of Capulli, a four year immersive program in curanderismo and ancestral/traditional healing. She envisions and leads healing retreats and ceremonies for Boundless in Motion as well as for RMERC including Pachamama Medicina: a retreat for Spanish speaking womxn of Indigenous descent.

Leilani Bush (she/her) is an evidential medium, Reiki practitioner, spiritual teacher, and wellness coach. Her life’s mission is to help herself and others heal, grow, and spiritually evolve to live their truth. Her practice (which she calls medicine) helps others identify and remove obstacles to their healing. She accomplishes this by channeling messages from spirit guides and ancestors to understand the story of one’s past, give clarity and insight into the present, and illuminate a path to their future. She studied mediumship in Stansted, England at Arthur Findlay College. Hailing from Washington, DC, Leilani has over 25 years corporate experience in a myriad of industries including finance, healthcare, technology, and the energy sector. As a Change Manager and Project Manager, the bulk of her work focused on organizational change, process improvement, workforce planning & development as well as corporate communications. Previously, she served as the southeast regional board member for the Center for Energy Workforce Development.
Advisors/Collaborators

Thanissara (she/her) started Buddhist practice in the Burmese school in 1975. She was inspired to ordain after meeting Ajahn Chah and spent 12 years as a Buddhist nun, where she was a founding member of Chithurst Monastery and Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in the UK. She has facilitated meditation retreats internationally for the last 30 years and has an MA in Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy Practice from Middlesex University & the Karuna Institute in the UK. She co-founded Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat in South Africa and Sacred Mountain Sangha in the U.S. She has written several books, including two poetry books. Her latest book is Time To Stand Up, An Engaged Buddhist Manifesto for Our Earth.

Emerson James (they/them) has spent a decade practicing homemaking in Cache Valley, Utah, and the surrounding Bear River Mountains. They are called to the particular role of spiritual practice and action to facilitate the transformation of cultures and systems of oppression. A person who has had a diversity of jobs – field ecologist, artisan cheese maker, project manager – Emerson tends to focus not on the what, but the how. For them, bringing great care and beauty to the small details, with an eye towards the whole, builds the foundations and containers for individuals, organizations, and communities to reimagine and give form to alternative systems of being. A dedicated meditator, they continue to be humbled by the journey to see themselves and the world clearly. They have a BS in Environmental Stewardship from McPherson College and an MS in English with an emphasis in Creative Nonfiction from Utah State University. Their queer, ecological, dharma, and writing interests are currently being expressed in an ongoing project exploring the liberation possible when an eco-queer lens is applied to the Jataka Tales.