Dharma of Spring Awakening with Lama Rod at EarthSpirit Centre, Somerset

Dharma of Spring Awakening is a spiritual retreat with Lama Rod Owens at EarthSpirit Centre in Compton Dundon, Somerset, England. It is a chance to study and practise Buddhist teachings in person with a Black, queer, Southern-rooted lama known for bringing meditation, social change and emotional honesty into the same room. It suits anyone drawn to Tibetan Buddhist teachings, whether you already have a practice or are looking for one that can hold the difficult parts of life.

What to Expect

Lama Rod's teaching centres on freedom, self-expression and radical self-care. He is known for showing people how to work with challenging emotions such as grief and anger and turn them toward liberation rather than away from them. One of his best-known lines gives the tone: there is no liberation without leaning forward and looking at the things we habitually run away from, so that we see them as they are and not as we have imagined them.

His approach is practical. He calls it "laying hands," a phrase from his Southern roots, meaning guidance for the everyday choices that free us from the traumas that bind us to self-sabotaging patterns. Expect teaching, meditation and reflection offered with warmth and directness, not abstraction.

His recent book, The New Saints, gives a sense of the themes he returns to. It speaks of an era that calls for people who live in this time and place and bring social and spiritual liberation together, and it explores how to build a sustainable spiritual practice that serves others and the planet. Readers of Tara Brach and Nova Reid have praised it for its honesty about grief, loneliness and radical acceptance.

About Lama Rod Owens

Lama Rod Owens is a Buddhist minister, author, activist, yoga instructor and authorized lama in the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. He describes himself as a Black Buddhist Southern Queen. He holds a Master of Divinity degree in Buddhist Studies from Harvard Divinity School, where his focus was the intersection of social change, identity and spiritual practice. His stated mission is to show people how to heal and free themselves, and he is widely known for teaching how to transform grief and anger into liberation.

The Setting

The retreat takes place at EarthSpirit Centre in Compton Dundon, a village in Somerset in the south-west of England. It is a quiet countryside base for a few days of study and practice away from ordinary routines.