Upcoming Jhanas Meditation Retreats

Our online and in-person meditation retreats teach you how to tap into profound joy and wellbeing on command.

Our retreats fill up quickly and past retreats have sold out. Sign up for retreat information to get started now.

What do you teach?

Our team has been amazed by the transformative power of jhanas, and we believe they should be practiced more widely by both beginners and experienced meditators. These profound meditative states, validated by modern science, can be accessed quickly with the right guidance, offering life-changing growth and depth.

What are the jhanas?

The jhanas are extraordinarily pleasurable, non-addictive altered states of consciousness that you can learn to enter on demand through meditation practice. Often described as the "opposite of an anxiety loop," they create a positive feedback cycle between attention and pleasure, deepening your physiological and neural responses. Beyond pleasant states, jhanas also tap into an innate sense of inner well-being, providing a foundation for profound inner work. While these states have long been an "open secret" among serious meditators, recent research from institutions like Harvard and McGill confirms their existence, suggesting that accessing jhanas may be easier than many people believe.

Fall 2024 Jhanas Meditation Retreat Dates

  • Choose your own location with our full-time online retreat. Enjoy the flexibility to participate from wherever you are, making it easy to fit into your schedule.

  • Join us near Playa Del Carmen, Mexico with our full-time in-person retreat. Immerse yourself in a transformative experience in a beautiful setting.

Instruction

Conducive Environment

Participants are expected to join from an environment that allows for silence and sensory reduction during the retreat.

Secular Interpretation

We’ll teach a secular interpretation of the jhanas, inspired by various contemplative traditions and western psychology.

Traditions Included

Our teachings are influenced by TWIM, Kemma/Brasington, and Thanissaro/Burbea, with an emphasis on making meditation enjoyable and accessible.

Meet Your Instructors

  • Judah Newman

    Judah Newman

    For 6 years, I knew meditation was good for me but it was an internal battle to get myself to meditate. After my first jhanic experience, I began looking forward to meditation.


    Since then, I’ve spent hundreds of hours seeking to understand these experiences in depth. Reading everything I can, talking to different teachers, and doing deep personal exploration. It’s a gift that keeps giving — the more I invest, the more I get out of the jhanas.

    Teaching others these states has been an incredible opportunity to condense the years of exploration I have done into something simple, enjoyable, and effective.

  • Stephen Zerfas

    Stephen Zerfas

    In 2018 I broke up with a cofounder and girlfriend at the same time. I went on a meditation retreat, where mental health got so bad I had 3 migraines in 8 days. Just when things couldn’t get any worse, I had an experience that seemed too good to be true.

    Waves of euphoria moved through me and I quietly cried tears of joy for 60 minutes. It was the most blissful thing that had happened to me in over a year, but the teachers didn’t understand it, and told me to go back to following the breath.

    In the months after retreat, I taught myself how to recreate that experience every morning in 15 minutes. The bliss was fun, but I was more excited about the personal growth.

  • Alex Gruver

    Alex Gruver

    In late 2022, I broke up with my significant other and less than 24 hours later, I was on a bus to the hospital where my mom was in surgery. Even though I was emotionally devastated, the fact that I had learned the jhanas a few weeks earlier let me to continue to find joy...

    In the following years, the jhanas have helped me deal with a harsh inner critic and unlock lasting personality change. I’m excited to teach them — consistently accessing the jhanas is the most important skill I’ve ever learned.

What Past Students Are Saying

  • Francisco Lorrain, CTO of Topsort, Former Head of Engineering at Groupon

    Francisco Lorrain, CTO of Topsort, Former Head of Engineering at Groupon

    "This is absolutely amazing. The fact that you can build a feedback reward mechanism with dopamine from just sitting down is unbelievable. This is a secret nobody is talking about, and I’ve never felt anything like it. I’m so grateful; I’m a better and happier person."

  • Nick Cammarata, AI Safety Researcher & former founder

    Nick Cammarata, AI Safety Researcher & former founder

    "Why would I have a second piece of chocolate cake when I know I can beat that by 100x in 10 minutes with my eyes closed?"

  • Ruby Yu, founder of YC-backed 10 Lives, formerly at UCSF & Harvard

    Ruby Yu, founder of YC-backed 10 Lives, formerly at UCSF & Harvard

    "This experience was the best thing that’s happened to me this year. I had no idea how enjoyable meditation could be."

Jhanas Meditation Retreat Programs

  • Participants adhere to silence throughout the week and meditate for 6-10 hours a day (including individual and group sits). Tools like biofeedback may be incorporated, but the focus will be on traditional teachings.

    Schedule: Daily programming from 7:30am - 8:30pm PT. Lectures will be recorded, but group experiences and interviews must be attended between 7am - 4pm PT.

    Participants are expected to meditate ~8 hours per day.

  • This retreat includes full retreat days on both weekends and ~1.5 hours of meditation practice before and after your workday during the week. Perfect for those seeking a balance between work and retreat.

    Join us if you are excited, open-minded, and ready to learn meditation conducive to jhanas without taking too much time off work.

  • Conducive Environment: Participants are expected to join from an environment that allows for silence and sensory reduction during the retreat.

    Secular Interpretation: We’ll teach a secular interpretation of the jhanas, inspired by various contemplative traditions and western psychology.

    Traditions Included: Our teachings are influenced by TWIM, Kemma/Brasington, and Thanissaro/Burbea, with an emphasis on making meditation enjoyable and accessible.

  • Morning Sessions: Each morning includes meditation instructions followed by a group sit. Instructions will progressively build upon each other over the week.

    Evening Sessions: Group meditations will be followed by learning frameworks designed to integrate meditation experiences into everyday life.

    Frameworks for Understanding: These frameworks will help participants better understand meditation's role and optimize their practice.

Investment

Online Retreat

$1295 or $324/month for four months

Our online retreats are designed to offer flexibility and accessibility. Enjoy the benefits of our retreat from the comfort of your home.

In-Person Retreat

Starts at $2395

In-person retreats depend on the venue, single vs. double room, etc. Experience our retreat in a beautiful setting and make the most of your journey with us.

How You May Benefit

  • Unlock the ability to enter into temporary altered states of peace and joy described by many as the best experience of their year.

  • Experience firsthand how access to altered, joyful states can lead to a felt sense of abundance that makes it easier to let go of reactive habits and cultivate virtuous qualities.

  • Boost your baseline wellbeing witha sense of fundamental okay-ness that comes from periodically entering into unprecedentedly grateful or relaxed states.

  • Master your attention, not through fixation & effort, but relaxation and finesse, so that you can enter flow inside and outside of meditation.

  • Discover how in the right headspace, it’s possible to spot and then permanently adjust mental habits that lead to personality & psychological growth.

  • Cultivate mastery by activating joy and peace in daily life while walking, off-the-cushion, and in everyday conditions.

  • Generate more progress in less time by blending insights from multiple meditation traditions, Western positive psychology, and engineering design principles.

  • Discover that altered states on-command are just the beginning — deeper insights into your own nervous system await; we’ll leave you with ideas to explore next after the course.

  • A community of practice with other curious, technically-minded explorers.

Is Our Meditation Retreat for You?

A few groups that have benefitted so far:

Engineers and tech operators who believe meditation or psychedelics can be transformative, but find it challenging to sift through vastly different teachers and techniques.

Execs and founders who have realized their moment-to-moment mental habits determine wellbeing and performance, and are ready to learn technical relaxation techniques.

Experienced meditators with a 30+ minute regular practice who have not yet learned to have deterministically blissful experiences when they sit.

This program may not be for you if:

Buddhist metaphysics is a requirement for your meditation. We’re happy to refer out to teachings that are compatible with this view. We emphasize how these practices can fit into your life with an attitude of flexibility and pragmatism.

You don’t want to commit ~7-10 days (or two weekends) to meditating ~6+ hours a day.

You’ve recently experienced trauma or mental health challenges that you think may have a serious adverse impact on your emotional state during the retreat. We’re here — join us when the time is right! You can learn more about our policy and screening process here.