This weekend will explore a fourfold Dharma practice: stopping, calming, resting and healing. These four movements offer a practical way of understanding the path of awakening that can be applied in the midst of ordinary life while also opening into some of the deepest insights of Buddha Dharma.

We will begin by exploring what it means to stop the habitual momentum of distraction, craving and resistance, and to meet our experience through a progressive process of recognising, accepting, embracing, looking deeply and insight.

From there, we will focus particularly on looking deeply. Through meditation on the elements of our own bodies and the lenses of interconnectedness and interbeing, we will investigate the boundaries we habitually construct between self, other and world. Following this investigation more deeply brings us towards understanding emptiness as vast, un-pin-down-able freedom - the natural ground of genuine rest.

And we will explore what it might mean to heal into wholeness: coming increasingly into alignment with the way things are, and discovering the possibility that love and compassion need not always be manufactured, but can arise increasingly naturally as our contraction around separateness begins to relax.

The weekend will combine guided meditation, Dharma teaching, inquiry and discussion, with an emphasis on bringing these teachings into direct experience and everyday life.

*About the Facilitator: Grant Rix has been a dedicated student and teacher of meditation for over two decades. He trained extensively under Tarchin Hearn, completing a three-year study and retreat programme at the Wangapeka Retreat Centre in the mid-2000s. He has also studied with teachers including Ven. Namgyal Rinpoche, Lama Mark Webber, and Sonia Moriceau. More recently, he has received Dzogchen and Longchen Nyingthig transmissions from Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche.

Grant is the creator of Pause Breathe Smile, New Zealand’s own curriculum-aligned and secular mindfulness in schools programme, which has now reached over 550 schools, 10,000 educators, and 170,000 children nationwide. He currently serves as Chair of the Pause Breathe Smile Trust and as its Director of Mindfulness Training and Development. Grant is also the resident teacher at the Queenstown Dharma Centre, offering weekly classes.

Grant has a clear understanding of the distinctions between secular and Buddhist approaches to mindfulness. He values both, recognising that each can be beneficial depending on a person’s background, beliefs, and needs. Known for his grounded, open teaching style, Grant creates a welcoming atmosphere free of pressure or expectation. His approach helps people from all walks of life connect with timeless wisdom in ways that feel natural and accessible.

He has presented at conferences nationally and internationally and contributed to multiple research publications on mindfulness in education.*