The Reset Retreat: Bringing the Joy of Dharma to Your Work and Life

This is a short reset for people sitting with practice already but caught in work-life speed. San Francisco Zen Center frames it explicitly around bringing Dharma into work, not stepping away from it for days. The retreat is structured around presence rather than deepening technique: meditation, time in the Marin Headlands (hiking and ocean walks), meals eaten together, sound bath, and periods of conversation. It's not silent throughout—conversation is built in—which signals something closer to a working retreat than a traditional sesshin.

Green Gulch Farm, SFZC's rural site north of the city, sits on coastal bluffs overlooking the Pacific. The location itself is part of the offer: walking in that landscape in silence has its own teaching. A 48-hour window means Friday evening through Sunday afternoon, roughly, so it's accessible for people who can't take a week.

The device-free requirement is deliberate. In a retreat explicitly about bringing joy back to work, the removal of phones and laptops for two days becomes the central practice—not as asceticism, but as permission structure.