Dancing with Rain and Rainbows: The Life and Teachings of Yeshe Tsogyal (Hybrid)

With Lama Liz Monson, Kathe McKenna and Ron Thomas, PhD

June 4 - 11, 2026

Date and Time Details: June 4 - 11, 2026

Contact: register@naturaldharma.org

REGISTRATION: This hybrid retreat has both residential and online components. For more information and registration, please use the links below depending on which component you're interested in.

RESIDENTIAL Details & Registration
Click to register for RESIDENTIAL (at Wonderwell)

ONLINE Details & Registration
Click to register for ONLINE (via Zoom)

Assisted by Eric Brus

Registration opens at 12pm ET on Saturday, April 11.

This Hybrid retreat is offered in person at Wonderwell (Residential option) and Live via Zoom (Online option). To Register, please choose one of the options in the YELLOW panel.

In this annual Vajrayana retreat, we gather in practice, study, and ritual while exploring the life and teachings of the great female adept Yeshe Tsogyal. Through meditation, community, and close engagement with her story, we will deepen our connection to the wisdom and liberating insight she embodies.

Revered as a powerful source of blessings and a guide through challenge and transformation, Yeshe Tsogyal’s life offers profound insight into the compassion and wisdom needed to navigate turbulent times. As a manifestation of the divine feminine principle of nondual wisdom, meditating with Yeshe Tsogyal invites us to experience the full range of our emotions as gateways to liberation.

Please join us to:

  • Explore Yeshe Tsogyal’s life and teachings as a guide for awakening
  • Deepen your connection to her blessings and protection
  • Reflect on the divine feminine as nondual wisdom
  • Participate in study, practice, ritual, and community with NDF’s Vajra Sangha

Throughout this retreat, we will explore the life and teachings of the female adept, Yeshe Tsogyal, while joining together in practice, community, and ritual. As the preeminent example of how to traverse the path of awakening through challenge and turmoil, Yeshe Tsogyal’s life story offers profound insight into the will, focus, compassion, and insight available to us for living well during these volatile times.

For Vajrayana practitioners, Yeshe Tsogyal is famous as a potent source for blessings. First, we supplicate her to help remove obstacles in our lives, practice, and minds. We pray to her to mitigate the forces of the setting-sun world—both the dark age of “disease, famine and war” and the human karma of struggle that expresses itself in aggression, intolerance, and prejudice. She bestows the blessing for the blossoming of long life and the deepening of prajna, or penetrating insight, the wisdom that sees the truth of things as they are. 

Inseparable from her humanity is Yeshe Tsogyal as a manifestation of the divine feminine principle–experiential nondual wisdom that takes female form (as well as male form) when it is represented symbolically. To meditate on or with Yeshe Tsogyal is to enhance our capacity to experience the outflow of our emotions as portals to liberation. Please join us for this unique retreat where we will learn to dance with the full spectrum of life’s expressions under the guidance of this yogini’s gentle hand.

Text: Please purchase prior to the retreat.

To help us to explore these practices and teachings more deeply, this retreat will include Dharma talks, practice sessions, ritual practice, breakout groups, and close reading sessions of The Life and Visions of Yeshe Tsogyal: The Autobiography of the Great Wisdom Queen, by Terton Drime Kunga and Yeshe Tsogyal, translated by Chonyi Drolma.

This retreat is open to NDF Vajrayana practitioners enrolled in the 2026 program.


Typical Retreat Schedule

(All times are Eastern time zone)

First Day — Hybrid evening session begins around 7:00 pm.
Last Day — The closing session typically ends by 12:00 pm.

These times are just for reference. An expanded schedule will be provided in pre-retreat information emailed during the week prior to the event.


Natural Dharma Fellowship Full Calendar

About the Teachers

Lama Liz Monson

Lama, Managing Teacher, Spiritual Co-Director Elizabeth Monson, PhD, is the Spiritual Co-Director of Natural Dharma Fellowship and the Managing Teacher at Wonderwell Mountain Refuge in Springfield, NH. Liz was authorized as a dharma teacher and lineage holder in the Kagyu Lineage of Tibetan Buddhism after over 30 years of studying, practicing, and teaching Tibetan Buddhism […]

Learn more about Lama Liz Monson

Kathe McKenna

Kathe McKenna currently serves as President of Natural Dharma Fellowship’s Board of Directors. She is deeply engaged in shepherding this unique, collaborative Buddhist dharma vessel. She helped launch the feisty, multi-faceted human service provider, Haley House, and led it through 50 years of organic growth. Kathe’s roles as mother, wife, and grandmother have enriched her vision and sparked […]

Learn more about Kathe McKenna

Ron Thomas, PhD

Ron Thomas, PhD, is the Vajrayana Study Coordinator and a mentor for Natural Dharma Fellowship. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard University, where he received degrees in social anthropology and clinical psychology. He practiced psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy in the Harvard Medical School system. For many years, he has explored the spiritual traditions of contemplatives and […]

Learn more about Ron Thomas, PhD

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