What Tara Mandala Offers: Retreats, Programs, and a Complete Path

Tara Mandala is simultaneously a physical place, a teaching lineage, and a global community. These three elements work together: the land in Colorado provides the conditions for deep retreat, the lineage provides the map, and the community provides the support to navigate it.

Core offerings include:

• Residential and solitary meditation retreats at the Pagosa Springs campus, ranging from a weekend to several months
• Structured long-term practice paths, including the Gateway, Ösel Nyingtig, and the Magyu Mother Lineage programs for advanced study
• The Feeding Your Demons® Certification program, a method derived from the teachings of Machig Labdrön for working with fear, grief, trauma, and inner conflict
• Mandala Method Certification Program (MMCP) provides training for those interested in working one-on-one with others utilizing the Mandala Method practices. 
• Online courses, livestreamed teachings, and virtual sangha gatherings that connect practitioners across the globe
• Community programs rooted in ecological awareness, ethics, and social responsibility
• Teacher training that equips practitioners to lead practice groups and serve their own communities

As a nonprofit 501(c)(3) religious organization incorporated in Colorado, Tara Mandala operates with a commitment to financial transparency, equitable access, and long-term sustainability.

Scholarships, sliding-scale offerings, and donation-based programs reflect the organization’s belief that practice should not be limited by economic circumstance.

One of the qualities practitioners most often name when describing Tara Mandala is coherence. The programs are not isolated events. They fit together into something a person can actually follow across years, building on each other in a way that mirrors how practice itself deepens over time. That coherence, rare in the landscape of contemporary contemplative offerings, is one of the organization’s most deliberate achievements.

Who Comes to Tara Mandala: People Seeking Practice, Healing, and a Place to Go Deeper

Tara Mandala draws a wide range of people. Many arrive with no prior background in Buddhism. Others are experienced meditators from different traditions looking for a deeper or more structured path. Some come specifically for the sacred feminine teachings. Others are drawn by Feeding Your Demons®, the practice method Lama Tsultrim developed from the Chöd tradition of Machig Labdrön, which offers a concrete way to work with the inner forces that drive suffering.

People typically come to Tara Mandala when they are:

• Seeking a meditation retreat center in Colorado with a clear contemplative framework
• Interested in the intersection of Buddhist practice and Western psychology
• Exploring sacred feminine spirituality, goddess traditions, or feminine approaches to awakening
• Working through trauma, grief, anxiety, or patterns of self-conflict and looking for tools that complement conventional therapy
• Wanting to go deeper in practice and find a community of serious, committed practitioners

• Searching for a spiritual home that is inclusive, ethical, and grounded in real teaching relationships
• Drawn to Tibetan Buddhist practice but unsure where to begin

Tara Mandala welcomes people of all cultures, races, genders, sexual orientations, ages, abilities, and life circumstances. Its commitment to inclusivity is not incidental. It is structural. The organization’s bylaws require a majority of board members to identify with the feminine and to recognize its importance in the world, an expression of the same value it carries into practice.

The Heart of the Teaching: Feeding, Not Fighting, What Troubles Us Most

The central insight at the core of Tara Mandala’s approach is simple and counterintuitive: the things we struggle against most, fear, anger, shame, grief, the patterns that seem to block our lives, are not enemies to be defeated. They are messengers asking to be heard.

This idea comes from Machig Labdrön, an 11th-century Tibetan woman who developed the practice of Chöd, a word that means “to cut.” What Chöd cuts is not the demon itself but the belief that it is other than us. In the practice of Feeding Your Demons®, Lama Tsultrim translated this teaching into a structured five-step process that can be practiced by anyone, regardless of religious background.

The method has applications in personal healing, clinical psychology, conflict resolution, and creative work. Its premise, that resistance intensifies suffering and that nourishing what we fear can dissolve it, aligns with contemporary findings in trauma research, somatic therapy, and contemplative neuroscience. This is one reason Tara Mandala’s work reaches people who would not describe themselves as Buddhist at all.

Mental health professionals, therapists, and social workers have trained in the Feeding Your Demons method and integrated it into clinical practice. Educators and organizational leaders have applied it to team conflict and institutional change. The teaching travels well because the problem it addresses, the human tendency to fight what we most need to understand, is not specific to any culture, tradition, or circumstance.

The Sacred Feminine as a Living Principle, Not a Decorative One

Tara Mandala understands the sacred feminine not as a concept reserved for women or as a corrective footnote to patriarchal tradition, but as a quality that the world urgently needs and that practice can restore. This includes qualities of receptivity, embodied presence, relational wisdom, ecological attunement, and the capacity to hold rather than overpower.

Lama Tsultrim has written and spoken extensively about the loss of feminine qualities as both a psychological and ecological wound. Her work draws on goddess traditions across cultures, on the lineage of great Tibetan women practitioners documented in her foundational book Women of Wisdom, and on the daily reality of communities trying to function with more balance, more care, and less harm.

At Tara Mandala, the sacred feminine is not an aesthetic. It shapes curriculum, governance, teacher development, and how conflict is addressed when it arises. The Trikaya Tara Temple, the three-story temple at the center of the retreat campus, is dedicated to Tara, the female Buddha of compassion, and its art and architecture reflect a world in which the feminine is central, not marginal.

This orientation resonates well beyond Buddhist circles. Many people who come to Tara Mandala are drawn by a broader sense that something essential has been missing from the spiritual and cultural traditions they inherited, and that restoring it matters not only personally but collectively. The sacred feminine, as Tara Mandala holds it, is an answer to that felt absence.

700 Acres in the Colorado Mountains: Land as Practice Partner

Tara Mandala Retreat Center sits on 700 acres of forest, meadow, and high-altitude terrain in southwestern Colorado, near the town of Pagosa Springs. The land is roughly two hours from Albuquerque, NM and about five hours from Denver, CO. It is ringed by mountains and largely free from the noise and interruption that make sustained practice difficult elsewhere.

The campus includes the Trikaya Tara Temple with its meditation halls, library, and sacred art; the Community Building for gatherings and

shared meals; Prajna Residence Hall; solitary retreat cabins for short and extended personal retreats; and walking trails and outdoor practice spaces woven through the natural landscape.

Tara Mandala treats the land itself as a participant in the community’s spiritual life, not as a backdrop or a venue. The property has been consecrated through ceremony over three decades of use, and the organization holds a long-term commitment to ecological stewardship and preservation for future generations. Visiting teachers from many traditions have described the land as a “power place” for practice.

For many practitioners, especially those coming from urban environments, the land itself is part of the teaching. The silence is real. The sky is vast. The rhythm of the day slows in ways that allow something interior to settle. That quality is not incidental to what Tara Mandala offers. It is one of the reasons the organization has always understood the care of the land as inseparable from the care of the community.

Lama Tsultrim Allione: Founder, Spiritual Director, and Pioneer in Western Buddhism

Lama Tsultrim Allione is one of the most recognized figures in Western Buddhism and a leading voice in the global conversation about the sacred feminine in spiritual life. She was ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun in 1970 by the 16th Karmapa, making her one of the first American women to receive that ordination. After four years living and studying in the Himalayas, she returned her vows, married, and raised a family, a path that brought lay practice and the integration of wisdom with ordinary life to the center of her teaching.

She holds an M.A. in Buddhist Studies and Women’s Studies from Antioch University. Her book Women of Wisdom, first published in 1984, documented the lives of six great Tibetan women practitioners and helped open a wider conversation about women’s roles in Buddhist history. Her national bestseller Feeding Your Demons® brought the teachings of Machig Labdrön to a mainstream audience, connecting ancient wisdom with the realities of modern psychological struggle.

In 2009, a panel of Buddhist scholars and practitioners from the Association for the Promotion of the Status of Women in Bangkok recognized her with the Award for Outstanding Women in Buddhism. She founded Tara Mandala in 1993 and continues to serve its development through teaching retreats, contributing curriculum, and advising the training of the next generation of teachers.

A Global Community Rooted in Local Practice: Sanghas, Teachers, and Shared Paths

Tara Mandala is more than its Colorado campus. More than forty sanghas and practice groups affiliated with the organization meet regularly around the world, in person and online. These groups are led by Senior and Apprentice Teachers trained in Lama Tsultrim’s lineage, as well as authorized practice leaders who are part of the organization’s structured training programs.

The Magyu Mother Lineage offers a complete long-term path of practice and study in the lineage of Machig Labdrön and Lama Tsultrim Allione. The Gateway program is based on the Dzinpa Rangdröl terma cycle and provides an intensive opportunity for a householder practitioner to engage in the practices of a traditional three-year retreat, but spanning over eight years, beginning with ngöndro. The Ösel Nyingtig is a multi-year program for dedicated practitioners who desire a profound and direct path to realization based on a recently revealed terma cycle on the Luminous Heart Essence of the Great Perfection, the Ösel Dzogpa Chenpo Nyingtig. Together, these three programs support a diverse community of practitioners who are committed to engaging in authentic, meaningful, and deep practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition at Tara Mandala.  

Community leadership at Tara Mandala includes Dorje Gyaltsab Tulku Ösel Dorje, who serves as Vajra Regent after completing multiple long retreats, and Dorje Lopön Charlotte Z. Rotterdam, lead teacher of the Magyu Mother Lineage and an author and educator and Director of 

Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. The council is rounded out with Dorje Lopön Chandra Easton who serves as the Assistant Spiritual Director, is a teacher in Buddhist and yoga traditions, and author.  These leadership structures reflect Tara Mandala’s investment in lineage continuity and the long-term health of the community beyond any single teacher.

How Tara Mandala Came to Be: A Vision Thirty Years in the Making

The vision of Tara Mandala began in the early 1970s, when Lama Tsultrim was a young nun studying in the Himalayas. She carried an image of a place in the West where practitioners could go as deep as the great meditators of ancient Tibet, and where the bridge between Buddhist wisdom and Western psychology might be explored seriously.

Following years of practice, teaching, and searching, she and her late husband, David Petit, found land in southwestern Colorado. On September 18, 1993, they purchased the property. In 1994, they incorporated Tara Mandala, Inc. as a Colorado nonprofit and consecrated the land in a ceremony that those present still describe vividly: a hard rain fell during the ritual, and when it ended, a rainbow appeared on the land itself rather than in the sky.

The retreat center grew slowly, funded almost entirely by the generosity of a wide community of donors. Early structures were

teepees, tents, and canvas yurts. The Community Building was completed in 2005. Prajna Residence Hall and the first solitary retreat cabins opened in 2007. The Trikaya Tara Temple, the visual and spiritual heart of the campus, was completed in 2010 and formally consecrated by Lama Tsultrim and other lineage holders.

A formal strategic planning process beginning in 2012 helped clarify the organization’s core priorities: Lineage, Sangha, Culture, Generosity and Stewardship, and Land. These five areas continue to shape organizational decisions, from program development and teacher training to fundraising strategy and ecological care.

Ethics, Safety, and Organizational Integrity: What the Community Holds Itself To

Tara Mandala holds a clear and publicly stated commitment to participant safety and organizational ethics. A Participant’s Code of Conduct applies to all programs, whether in person at the retreat center or online. The organization adopted a Sexual Harassment Policy in 2010, making it one of the earlier Buddhist organizations in the West to formalize such protections, and has spoken out against sexual misconduct in Dharma settings more broadly.

Tara Mandala maintains clear ethical guidelines for teachers, staff, and participants. Concerns can be raised through formal reporting procedures designed to address them with transparency and genuine care. These commitments are not external compliance measures. They reflect the organization’s understanding that a community whose teachings center healing and interdependence must embody those values in how it treats its own members.

Common Questions About Tara Mandala

How to Connect with Tara Mandala: Retreats, Online Programs, and Local Sanghas

Whether you are new to meditation, returning to a practice that has lapsed, deepening a path you have already begun, or searching for a community that takes both wisdom and ethics seriously, Tara Mandala offers a range of ways to engage.

• Visit the retreat center in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, for a group retreat or personal cabin stay, open house, or volunteer week
• Enroll in an online course or long-term program to practice from home and join the global sangha
• Find a local practice group or sangha affiliated with Tara Mandala in your region

• Explore the Gateway, Ösel Nyingtig, or Magyu programs if you are looking for a supported, structured long-term path of practice 
• Attend a Feeding Your Demons guided practice session on the FYD Network, attend a weekend workshop, or begin the certification training
• ​Explor​e the ancient Tibetan Buddhist template of the mandala as it applies to our inner path of transformation and our outer experience in the world​ through the Mandala Method Certification with a course such as Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine.
• Support the community through donation, legacy giving, or sharing these teachings with those who might benefit

Tara Mandala is a living tradition, rooted in Colorado and connected to communities across the globe. It holds an old lineage and asks a modern question: what does it mean to be well, and to contribute to the well-being of others, in a world that is both deeply troubled and, still, worth tending with care.