The retreats we host are open to all. Our one-day meditation retreats last from the morning to the late afternoon, while our multi-day meditation retreats include overnight lodging at the center.
During these retreats, our teachers provide insightful teachings and discussions as well as guide participants through different types of meditation, mindfulness activities, and more. For more information, please check out our upcoming retreats below.
For solo retreats, please visit our Personal Retreat Cabins page.
Please click here for more information and registration through our main website
Teachers' Training Certification Program
Mindfulness and Meditation – Teacher Training Program (2026–2027)
September 2026 – May 2027
Begin your journey toward becoming a certified Mindfulness and Meditation Teacher through this transformative, nine-month training program. Designed for dedicated practitioners, this program blends ancient wisdom with modern understanding to help you develop both personal depth and professional teaching skills.
Through a rich combination of online sessions and in-person training and teachings, you will explore the foundations of mindfulness, the historical and spiritual roots of meditation, Buddhist teachings, and the essential qualities of a skillful teacher. Each module is thoughtfully curated to strengthen your personal practice while preparing you to guide others with clarity, confidence, and compassion.
Whether you are seeking to serve your community, enhance your current profession, or deepen your spiritual journey, this training provides a strong, supportive pathway toward embodying and teaching mindful living.
Please click here for more information and registration through our main website
Meditation Retreats
Retreats in 2026
Liberating the Mind: Insight and Freedom
November 19-22, 2026 | Metta Meditation Center, Janesville MN
Discover the Buddha's complete roadmap to awakening through the Seven Factors of Enlightenment (Saptabojjangha). This transformative four-day retreat with Bhante Sathi offers deep teachings and practices on mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity—the seven essential qualities that lead to genuine spiritual liberation.
Through guided meditations, dharma talks, and contemplative practices, you'll learn to systematically cultivate these awakening factors, transforming reactive patterns into awakened awareness. Experience the profound peace that comes from a mind liberated from suffering and discover your innate capacity for wisdom and compassion. Click here for more details.
7-Day Vipassana Retreat
End-of-Year Deep Practice Retreat
December 13-20, 2026 | Metta Meditation Center, Janesville MN
*** Most meditators attending this retreat will also be joining the next one during the holidays.
Close the year with profound inner transformation through this immersive Vipassana meditation retreat. "To see things as they really are"—discover the ancient practice of insight meditation in noble silence, allowing space for deep self-exploration and mental purification. This intensive week includes guided meditation, walking practice, dharma teachings, and mindful daily activities.
Led by Bhante Sathi (author of "The Mind Workout"), this challenging yet transformative retreat offers both beginners and experienced practitioners the opportunity to disconnect from daily distractions and reconnect with inner peace, clarity, and wisdom. Click here for more info about the retreat.
Retreats in 2027
2027 Retreats at Metta Meditation Center
Throughout 2027, Metta Meditation Center will offer a series of residential meditation retreats led by Bhante Sathi, a meditation teacher with over thirty years of experience teaching mindfulness, meditation, self-reflection, insight, the cultivation of compassion, and the path to inner peace.
Held at our peaceful lakeside campus in Janesville, Minnesota, each retreat offers an opportunity to step away from the busyness of everyday life, deepen your meditation practice, and explore practical ways to bring greater clarity, compassion, wisdom, and peace into daily life.
Drawing from Buddhist teachings and decades of meditation practice and teaching, Bhante Sathi presents timeless wisdom in practical, accessible language for people of all backgrounds.
Bhante Sathi is also the author of The Mind Workout: For a Lifetime of Happiness, a practical guide to bringing mindfulness and greater awareness into everyday life. His second book is scheduled for publication in 2027.
Whether you are new to meditation or have an established practice, you are warmly invited to join us for a time of meditation, self-reflection, renewal, and inner discovery at Metta Meditation Center.
Awaken to a New Beginning
January. 14- 17, 2027
Clarity, Compassion, and Purpose for the Year Ahead
A new year offers more than an opportunity to make resolutions. It allows us to pause, look within, and ask: How do I truly want to live?
This retreat is an invitation to begin the year by creating space for clarity, reflection, and renewal. Through mindfulness meditation, guided reflection, loving-kindness practice, and periods of silence, we will explore what we may be ready to release and what qualities we wish to cultivate in the year ahead.
Rather than trying to become a different person, we will learn to see ourselves and our lives more clearly. From that clarity, meaningful change can naturally begin.
Come begin the year not simply with new goals, but with a clearer mind, a compassionate heart, and a wiser sense of direction.
Click here for more details
Awakening Joy(Insight Meditation)
March 4-7, 2027
Cultivating Gratitude, Contentment, and Inner Well-Being
We often imagine that happiness will arrive when circumstances finally become the way we want them to be. Yet genuine well-being does not have to depend entirely upon what happens around us.
Joy can be cultivated.
During this retreat, we will explore how mindfulness, gratitude, generosity, appreciation, and contentment can awaken a deeper sense of well-being. We will also examine some of the habits that quietly interfere with happiness—constant wanting, comparison, expectation, and overlooking the goodness already present in our lives.
Through meditation, reflection, and mindful living, we will learn to recognize the simple conditions that allow joy to grow.
Joy is not something we have to chase. Sometimes we simply need to learn how to recognize and nurture what is already here.
Click here for details
Coming Home to Yourself
April 8- 11, 2027
A Retreat for Mindfulness, Self-Reflection, and Inner Peace
Much of our lives are directed outward—toward responsibilities, relationships, expectations, problems, and the constant stream of things that need our attention.
This retreat offers an opportunity to turn gently inward.
Through mindfulness meditation, periods of silence, self-reflection, and compassionate awareness, we will explore what it means to become more deeply acquainted with our own minds.
Instead of immediately judging, correcting, or escaping what we discover, we will practice simply seeing ourselves clearly.
When we learn to observe our thoughts, emotions, habits, and reactions with greater wisdom, we begin to understand ourselves rather than struggle against ourselves.
Sometimes the peace we are searching for is not somewhere else. It begins when we learn how to come home to ourselves.
Click here for more info
Women's Retreat
May 20th-23rd, 2027
This special retreat offers women an opportunity to step away from everyday responsibilities and enter a supportive environment of mindfulness, reflection, connection, and renewal.
Through meditation, periods of silence, mindful movement, reflection, and shared practice, participants will have space to slow down, listen inwardly, and reconnect with what is most meaningful in their lives.
The retreat will explore themes relevant to living with greater awareness, compassion, emotional balance, and wisdom while creating space for both individual practice and supportive community.
Whether you are new to meditation or have practiced for many years, this retreat is an invitation to rest, reconnect, and nourish the qualities that support a peaceful and meaningful life.
Click here for more information.
Seeing Clearly- Vipassana Retreat
July 10-17th, 2027 (7-Day Retreat)
A Vipassana Retreat in Mindfulness, Insight, and Inner Freedom
Vipassana means seeing deeply and clearly into our experience.
During this seven-day silent retreat, participants will have an opportunity to step away from ordinary distractions and devote themselves more fully to meditation and mindful awareness.
Through sitting meditation, walking meditation, mindful daily activities, teachings, and periods of silence, we will learn to observe the changing nature of body, feelings, thoughts, and mental states.
Rather than immediately reacting to what arises, we practice seeing experience with greater clarity and balance.
As the mind becomes quieter and more attentive, we begin to recognize patterns that are easily overlooked in everyday life. With understanding comes the possibility of responding differently—and with that comes greater freedom.
The purpose of Vipassana is not to escape life, but to learn to see life more clearly.
Click here for more info
Beyond the Busy Mind
A Mindfulness Retreat for Calm, Clarity, and Inner Balance
August 26–29, 2027
Our minds are rarely still. We move from one thought to another—planning, remembering, worrying, analyzing, and trying to keep up with the demands of everyday life. Even when the body stops, the mind may continue running.
But a busy mind does not have to control our lives.
Beyond the Busy Mind is an opportunity to step away from the constant noise and rediscover the simplicity of being present. Through mindfulness meditation, guided reflection, periods of silence, mindful walking, and practical teachings, we will explore how to slow down and develop a healthier relationship with our thoughts.
Rather than trying to stop thinking or force the mind to become quiet, we will learn to observe thoughts without becoming caught in them. As awareness grows, we begin to recognize habitual patterns of worry, overthinking, distraction, and reactivity—and discover that we do not have to follow every thought the mind creates.
This retreat is not about escaping a busy life. It is about learning how to live within it without allowing the mind to become overwhelmed by it.
When we learn to pause, become present, and see clearly, calm does not have to depend on everything around us becoming calm.
The world may remain busy.
Our mind does not have to be.
Click here for more info
Befriending Yourself
September 30, October 3rd
A Retreat in Self-Love, Self-Compassion, and Inner Peace
We often offer understanding and kindness to people we care about while speaking to ourselves in ways we would never speak to a friend.
This retreat invites us to examine that relationship.
Through mindfulness, loving-kindness meditation, self-reflection, and compassionate awareness, we will explore the difference between healthy self-love and self-centeredness. We will learn how to recognize self-judgment without becoming trapped by it and how to meet our imperfections with wisdom rather than condemnation.
Befriending yourself does not mean believing that everything you do is right. True compassion includes honesty, responsibility, forgiveness, and the willingness to grow.
When we stop treating ourselves as an enemy, something begins to soften. We become more capable of caring for ourselves—and often more capable of extending genuine compassion to others.
Click here for more info
The Grateful Heart
November 11- 14th, 2027
Cultivating Gratitude, Contentment, and Inner Peace
Our minds naturally notice what is missing, what went wrong, and what we still want. In doing so, we can easily overlook how much of life is already worthy of appreciation.
This retreat invites us to rediscover the practice of gratitude.
Through mindfulness meditation, reflection, loving-kindness, and periods of silence, we will explore how gratitude changes the way we experience our lives.
Gratitude does not mean pretending that everything is perfect or ignoring life's difficulties. It means learning to recognize goodness even while understanding that life contains uncertainty, change, and loss.
As appreciation deepens, the endless feeling of “not enough” can begin to loosen its hold. We discover that contentment is not found by possessing everything we want, but by learning to appreciate life more fully.
A grateful heart does not need a perfect life in order to know peace.
Click here for more info
Vipassana Retreat (7 days)
December 12-19th, 2027
Closing the Year in Silence, Mindfulness, and Insight
As the year comes to an end, this seven-day silent retreat offers an opportunity to step away from ordinary routines and turn our attention inward.
Vipassana meditation trains us to observe experience carefully and directly, to notice the body, feelings, thoughts, emotions, and changing conditions of the mind without immediately clinging to what we like or resisting what we dislike.
Through sustained periods of sitting and walking meditation, mindful daily activities, silence, and teachings, participants will have the opportunity to deepen concentration, strengthen mindfulness, and cultivate insight.
Rather than ending the year by simply looking back at everything that happened, we can use this time to understand more deeply how we have been relating to what happened.
In silence, the mind has an opportunity to settle. As the mind settles, we begin to see more clearly.
And when we see clearly, we create the conditions for wisdom and inner freedom.
Click here for more info
Curious about what to expect? Check out this discussion recorded at the Loving Kindness Retreat in August 2019.
Food Policy
Our food policy is to serve the food that best reflects the Buddha's teachings of compassion and non-harming. All of the food served to participants on retreat, and the monastics who live there and visit, is fully plant-based which supports compassion for animals, our planet, and the health of our families and ourselves.