Cultivating Balance in the Eight Worldly Winds with Aishah Shahidah Simmons

Gain and Loss. Status and Disgrace. Censure and Praise. Pleasure and Pain. These four pairs of opposing states move through every life like intense winds, and without awareness of impermanence and equanimity, they can wreak havoc. Various forms of oppression make these realities more acute in some lives than others, and yet we are all navigating some form of the eight worldly winds. It's often that you don't have one of the pairs without the other. The work, through dharma and mindfulness practice, is to cultivate balance, not by avoiding the winds, but by learning to meet them with wisdom and care. This daylong retreat invites practitioners of all experience levels to explore the eight worldly winds together through meditation, dharma teachings, relational practice, and chanting. This retreat is freely offered, and dana (generous donations) may be given in support of DVI and Aishah in support of her teaching and guidance. Join us on Saturday, September 26, 2026, from 10am to 4pm. Attend in person with Aishah at Summit Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, or online via Zoom. Teacher Bio Aishah Shahidah Simmons (she/her) is a Black feminist lesbian survivor-healer. She is a Sufi Muslim-raised Buddhist practitioner, Insight meditation teacher, and filmmaker-writer. She has practiced vipassanā since 2002, beginning in the S. N. Goenka tradition, where she trained for 17 years before continuing in the Insight tradition, with over a year of silent retreat practice in the United States and India. Aishah serves as Resident Teacher at Delaware Valley Insight and is a trainee in the 2025–2028 Spirit Rock and Insight Meditation Society Residential Retreat Teacher Training Program, with her primary teachers Tuere Sala, DaRa Williams, and Shelly Graf. Her award-winning survivor-centered cultural works, NO! The Rape Documentary, and love WITH accountability, illuminate truth-telling, healing, and non-carceral responses to harm. Learn more at aishahshahidahsimmons.com.