Teachers: Charles Freligh and Saqib Rizvi
When: January 9-11, 2026
Where: The location of your choice
What: A guided at home-retreat to help you let go, reset, and begin the new year from presence, openness, and flow.
Group sessions led by Charles and Saqib
These will be held live via Zoom but will also available via recordings
Assistance in creating your own personal retreat schedule
See more on this below
Capacity: 50 participants
Cost: $300
First, an old story:
A university professor visited a Zen Master to learn about Zen.
The Zen Master silently prepared tea as the professor started to talk.
As the professor continued talking,
The Zen Master began pouring tea into the professor’s cup.
And she continued pouring
Until the tea spilled over onto the table
And onto the floor.
The professor said, “Stop pouring, it’s overflowing!”
And the Zen Master said,
”Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions and speculations.
How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
This retreat:
We are both the Zen Master and the professor. And while this is not a Zen retreat, the spirit of the story captures the spirit of the retreat. As we transition into the new year, let’s first empty ourselves before we re-begin.
This is like emptying a cup, cleaning and rinsing it, so we can use it again.
In the emptiness, we experience what you might call no-mind.
Inside no-mind, we discover an intrinsic fullness.
Then we can begin again, from fullness, not from lack.
To live from fullness is liberation.
This retreat is a time to return to your intrinsic fullness, your inner knowing that always lives here beneath the surface of daily noise. As the Buddha once said, "When you go into nothingness, everything becomes known.”
So this new year, we will first allow ourselves to let go of the previous year, enter the state of no-mind, experience the emptiness and fullness, and then flow into the new year with presence and peace. Hence, this 3-day at-home retreat is divided into three parts:
Day 1: Emptying
We empty the contents of the mind through meditative practices and conscious silence.
Day 2: Receiving
We experience the fullness of emptiness through inner listening, and then express what we have received.
Day 3: Flowing
We integrate the retreat experience and prepare to flow from presence into this brand new year.
A group-personal hybrid retreat:
This is partially a group retreat and partially a personal retreat. You can lean more into the group aspect or the personal aspect, depending on what feels right. See below for details on the group and personal elements respectively.
Group elements:
We will meet as a group through hour-long Zoom sessions facilitated by Saqib & Charles in which we will meditate together and explore various topics. You can either engage in these live or asynchronously via recordings we will share with you. Once we have our group of attendees, we will determine meeting times to best accommodate the group.
Here’s the planned schedule for our group sessions:
Day 1: Emptying
Session 1: Welcome and Introduction
Session 2: The Art of Emptying
Session 3: Pure Emptiness
Day 2: Receiving
Session 1: The Art of Receiving
Session 2: Experiencing the Fullness
Session 3: Wu-Wei
Day 3: Flowing
Session 1: The Art of Flowing
Session 2: Integration
Personal elements:
Mainly, this retreat is focused on you guiding yourself and feeling the encouragement and motivation of the group as you go inward. Leading up to the retreat, we will help you create your own personalized retreat experience. This might mean you practice at home, or maybe you choose to go somewhere else (e.g., a nearby isolated AirBnB) if that would more conducive to your practice. For example, I’ve found an AirBnB treehouse that’s a bit of a drive for me, but it’s worth it to facilitate the atmosphere for a personal retreat.
We will ask you to create a personal schedule (in addition to the group sessions) to share with us prior to the retreat. This could be in document form or just a photo of something hand-written. I find this invaluable in terms of leaving the mind as free as possible to be present, unburdened by any sort of decision-fatigue. This also allows you to make the experience what you would like it to be (you’ll notice my example below has several personal touches).
We will provide feedback and suggestions ahead of time if you’d like our help in creating a schedule.
Here’s a sample schedule I’ve used in the past:
***This is not including the Zoom meetings.
So you can imagine fitting those sessions into the schedule during the morning, afternoon, and evening.
5:00am: 15 minutes of light exercise
Jumping jacks, push-ups, stretching
5:15am: 45-minute silent meditation
6:00am: Light breakfast
Oatmeal with fruit and black coffee
6:30am: Hygiene
7:00am: Morning walk
8:00am: Reading/Writing
10:00am: 45-minute silent meditation
11:00am: 45-minute hatha yoga practice
12:00pm: Light lunch
Fruit and vegetable smoothie
12:30pm: 30-minute silent meditation
1:00pm: Afternoon walk
2:00pm: Listen to a favorite album all the way through while drawing from a reference photo
D’Angelo - Voodoo (78 minutes)
3:30pm: 45-minute silent meditation
4:30pm: Reading/Writing
6:00pm: Light dinner
Salad with roasted vegetables
6:30pm: Evening walk
7:30pm: 30-minute silent meditation
8:00pm: 30-minute hatha yoga wind-down practice
8:30pm: Hygiene
9:00pm: Reading or silent meditation before bed
As you can see in my example, there is plenty of space for silence and receiving the inner knowing, but there is also space for my own interests and creative practices. We want this to be a fun, exciting, and unique opportunity for you.
Last words:
I got excited just writing about this. We’ll plan to do more throughout the year to help us reconnect and re-begin (if you find this one worthwhile). So I hope you join us to begin the new year!
And feel free to reach out with any questions here.