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*trigger warning: Suicide

Jaqui was a young, 22 year old free-spirited young woman who loved to plant trees and was a part of a tree-planting community.

She was an artist, a tattoo artist and an adventurer. Her dad had no longer needed a contractor van so she renovated it into a traveling van and went exploring.

Jaqui loved meditating and had been trying to get into a 10 day Goenka meditation retreat for awhile and when her name came up on the list to be able to go, she was very excited.

A few days into the retreat, Jaqui's mom received a phone call from a volunteer saying that Jaqui had left in the night and they just wanted to make sure she had gotten home safely. In fact, Jaqui had not gotten home, and this led to a call to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in order to file a missing person's report. While the police were able to locate her van about 30 miles from the retreat center, they did not find Jaqui.

Jaqui was found to have taken her own life.

This is not the first time someone has commit suicide after a Goenka retreat. We sit down and talk to Nathalie St-Maurice, Jaqui's mom, about this story, about Jaqui, and what she and other families would like to see change with these type of Vipassana retreats.

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These retreats were a part of an investigative podcast on The Financial Times. You can listen to those here.

Here is the article from John Pendall on the dark side of meditation.

Check out Cheetah House here, a website and community organization that helps support those who have experienced distress during/after meditation. Cheetah House will also have an online event on June 3 called Behind the Scenes at Retreat.

Here is the foundation Jaqui's family started to celebrates and supports education in arts called Nice Day Shining. Their purpose is to advance education by providing scholarships to study arts at post-secondary educational institutions, and o raise awareness and provide support for mental health through disbursement to charitable organizations.

If you need help, or need someone to talk with please reach out by calling 9-8-8.

*Podcast edited by Brad Parsons at Train Sound Studio, www.trainsoundstudio.com

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