Everything Beautiful Is Already Right Here
A conversation with meditation teacher Marcy Ahn Crawford
She landed in Liberia, and felt it right away. "There was this deeper regulation that was going on. People were attentive. Nobody was rushing.” A few hours later, driving into the Harmony Hotel, the feeling only deepened: howler monkeys in the trees, the deep green, and the layered sounds of the jungle.
Marcy is a meditation teacher and the founder of the Center for Contemplative Enrichment in California. She has been coming to Nosara for several years as an Artist in Residence, and this August, she led the first daylong meditation retreat ever held at the Harmony Hotel. We sat down with her afterward to talk about the day, the practice, and the place.
How Harmony found her
The story begins several years back. One of Harmony's founders was on a meditation retreat when he asked about teachers working with kids. He was told to reach out to a certain Marcy, a mother of three who had taught mindfulness in schools.
They started working together, a friendship grew, and eventually, the founders invited Marcy to Costa Rica. "I think they were hoping all along that I would love it here and want to come more often," she says. "Which of course is exactly what happened."
Retreat Practice
Mediation classes and apps are wonderful for a first taste, she says, but the relief of a ten-minute practice "is just scratching the surface." To glimpse what's truly possible, you need several hours of focus and quiet, for at least a day. That's why she was thrilled when Alicia, the Artist Residency coordinator, proposed a daylong.
The August 8th retreat welcomed a mix of first-timers and seasoned retreatants, all of whom, Marcy says, arrived with the same openness. Together they practiced sitting and moving meditations, turning their attention to the sights, sounds, and sensations of the present moment. They began and ended with group sharing, made space for gratitude, and closed with metta, a classical meditation on unconditional love.
Alicia had suggested Marcy teach for about two hours and take the rest of the day for herself. Instead, Marcy stayed with the group all day and met privately with each participant, in the style of traditional training. "The teacher is available throughout the day," she says, "so each meditator can talk about their practice away from the group."
The day was infused with her approach: learn to pay attention to your actual sense experience, in real time, and let a grounded yet aspirational view of life grow from there.
A Visit to the Sloths
On this visit, Marcy decided to go further inland. She had never been to the cloud forest, and was curious to see a sloth, an animal that can’t be spotted on our Pacific coastline. She spent a couple of days in the rainforest; drove up to Monteverde; and saw her sloth, a poison dart frog, and blue butterflies.
Then she drove back to Harmony on a Sunday night, to iguanas, lush gardens, and the sound of the ocean, and something clicked. "Here you go again, looking somewhere else, when everything beautiful is already right here."
Other places are different, she reflected, but not better. "It's the same lesson over and over," she laughs, well aware that the lesson is at the heart of everything she teaches.
Small moments
Ask her for a favorite memory and she can't choose one. There was an afternoon floating alone in the tide pools until friends joined her. A stretch of rainy days spent wading through puddles and chatting with new friends. A spontaneous day trip to San Juanillo, sunrise walks to the beach, and the little troupes of Halloween crabs.
"There's just possibility in every direction. The possibility for deep regulation, for wonder, and for a gentle but profound restoration.”
What's next
Marcy is working on her 2027 schedule, which will include a weeklong retreat at Harmony. In the meantime, the Center for Contemplative Enrichment has several upcoming offerings. Sitting groups, half-day, and multi-day events are open to all levels of meditation practitioners. She also works with students privately and has two books underway: one on the teacher-student conversation, and one on relational mindfulness.
To be first to hear about her upcoming retreats, join the Harmony newsletter or the Center for Contemplative Enrichment’s mailing list. When the time comes, we'll be here, in the verdant jungle, dropping into the well of possibilities.
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