Mobile Monastery Chautauqua
A spiritual community on wheels
Background
The Mobile Monastery Chautauqua is deeply rooted in modern monasticism. Founder Autumn Turley is a long-time practitioner and has spent years as a “modern monastic”. We specialize in teaching meditation, chanting and mindful relating inspired by our training at MAPLE (Monastic Academy for the Preservation of Life on Earth). We draw from an eclectic group of Mobile Monastery Teachers whose offerings range from embodiment to sound healing to nature bathing. Our events also feature art, music, massage, and tea. We have the flexibility to creatively customize our offerings to best serve your community’s interests and needs.
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The Mobile Monastery Chautauqua was inspired by the circuit chautauquas of the early 20th century. Circuit chautauquas traveled the country sharing education, culture, and spiritual teachings through lectures, workshops and performances. By the 1930s the original Chautauqua Movement nearly died out, due to mass transit and mass media, as well as other factors. Our goal is to carry forward the spirit of the Chautauqua Movement by sharing practices that foster culture and community through in-person connection.
Purpose
Just as our bodies need nutrients, exercise, and sleep to thrive, we need nourishment throughout all aspects of our lives. Now more than ever we are called to bring wellness, spirituality, and community to the world. The Mobile Monastery Chautauqua connects local communities through our traveling spiritual carnival. We leverage an ecology of practices from modern monasticism, earth-based modalities, and healing arts. It’s our joy to nourish hearts, minds, and spirits throughout the land.
Autumn Turley
Autumn is a 5th generation Californian with a background as a Violinist, Massage Practitioner, Contact Improv teacher, Poet, and Project Manager.
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Before joining The Monastic Academy in 2017, she co-founded the Bridge Within movement and traveled the US and Canada doing massage, teaching Contact Improv, and organizing events. At the Monastic Academy she has served as Director of Care, Director of Operations, and Assistant Director. She is passionate about networking, growth, helping people discover and actualize their dreams, going on adventures, sharing art and healing and movement, creative collaborative projects, community-building, Spiritual Practice, and the ocean.
Nathan Kessel
Joining us from Sirius Ecovillage in Western MA, Nathan is deeply passionate about the awakening of society into one that is more regenerative and that serves all life.
After co-founding Openthink.org (an online platform for social justice collaboration), Nathan was greatly inspired by his time at MAPLE and journeyed onwards to live and train in monasteries and spiritual centers across the world to pursue awakening more fully.
Nathan genuinely believes in the transformative power of practices like meditation, medicine song circles, circling, authentic relating, and martial arts to help guide us towards a world that is more kind, compassionate, emotionally fluent, embodied, and loving.
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Namgyal Schaltegger
Namgyal was raised in Tennessee, but found “home” after moving out west to Portland, Oregon. Having graduated with degrees in nutrition and kinesiology, Namgyal began a short but intense career of personal training all the while deepening a daily meditation practice of one - two hours per day. Late 2020 during Namgyal’s first meditation retreat, he experienced a heartfelt encounter with collective, planetary wide suffering and the importance of compassion and wisdom as antidotes. This direct experience catalyzed an even deeper commitment to the practice of meditation as well as a newfound direction towards the practice of Buddhism, spiritual Awakening, and work in the field of existential risk. Namgyal has since completed twenty four formal, silent meditation retreats ranging from one to two weeks in length and as of late 2022, began formal training at the Monastic Academy as a full time resident.
Aliona Manvae
Aliona is a transplant from Eastern Europe, “raised there and matured here” as she refers to it. Shifting career at the age of 30 from finance and data analytics to human-interactions-based work was in some ways an even bigger shift than coming to US.
Over the years, her spirituality evolved to encompass Hindu, Buddhist, Earth-honoring, Daoist and other consciousness-focused philosophies and practices. Stewardship at MAPLE has been instrumental in deepening both meditative and sound-based aspects of her practice.
Aliona’s life is currently flowing in two parallel streams: supporting teens’ and adults’ mental health, and helping build communities. She is working on founding a House for Emotional Intelligence Practice in Vermont.