Taking Mindfulness Deeper: 5-night Sharpham House Retreat

Lynette Robinson

Lynette Robinson is a qualified Breathworks mindfulness teacher and accredited life coach. She teaches mindfulness to a diverse range of groups, such as seniors living in residential complexes, men in prison and women’s groups.  During 2020 lockdowns this diversity expanded to teaching online mindful-working courses for home-workers. Her freely given Zoom group ‘Stop The Week & Rest to Calm' supported the mental and emotional well-being of attendees from four different countries.  Author of the book 'Reclaimed', and' Mindfulness Mediations for Modern Day Women' CD, Lynette lives life with passion, following the energies of creativity and contribution. In 2016 she volunteered as Retreat Coordinator for three summers, at The Barn.

In recent years elder-hood has become a growing focus of Lynette’s mindful offerings.  She facilitates a local elders group called  ‘Living Well, Ageing Mindfully’  and feels this theme offers fertile soil for practice, in her own life as she enters her 60th year.

Nina Jankelson - Assistant Barn Manager

Nina began practising mindfulness in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, attending retreat in Northern India and Nepal and later drawing inspiration from the Insight Meditation tradition and the teachings of Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

A former residential coordinator at Sharpham's Barn Retreat, Nina has been facilitating meditations, ceremony and retreats for the past five years. Her practice is grounded in a connection to the land and in contacting moments of ordinary beauty and grace in the every day.

She is interested in exploring how contemplative practices can open up our experience of the world and is passionate about creating opportunities for others to do the same. 

Steve Banks

Steve trained as a mindfulness teacher with Mindfulness UK. He started practising meditation in 1990 within the Buddhist tradition, and has attended retreats, mostly at Gaia House, with many different teachers. Steve is a qualified Psychosynthesis counsellor and has engaged in many forms of personal development and menswork over three decades, including co-leading transformative Rites Of Passages retreats for men. He leads workshops on Ken Wilber’s ‘Integral’ model and is a musician and composer. ‘Blue Pearl: A One World Oratorio’, Steve’s ground-breaking sacred choral work, had its world premiere in 2022; the film of the concert is on YouTube. Steve has presented seminars on sacred music, ‘The Power Of Music’, at many events, including the Integral European Conference, the foremost global gathering of Integral thinkers and practitioners. He has attended the one-week Mindful Self-Compassion retreat with Chris Germer and Kristin Neff. He is passionate about passing on the gifts of mindfulness, meditation, and deepening our connection with nature.

Will Evans

Will has been meditating in various Buddhist and Non-Dual traditions for a decade, guided by a spirit of exploration and experimentation and a sense of wonder and possibility. He mostly finds his home in the Insight Meditation tradition. In 2019 he trained as a mindfulness teacher with the Mindfulness Training Institute under Martin Aylward and Mark Coleman, and in 2020 he joined the team at the Barn Retreat, where he spent over a year facilitating both online and in-person retreats. He has a passion for helping people find approaches and relationships to meditation that work for them, with the view that meditation practice is not a fixed path but a vast landscape to explore.