Meditation, yoga & prayer

Stillness is probably the oldest unifying technology humans have. Every tradition that has ever taken root in this city keeps some door open for it — a meditation hall, a yoga mat, a pew, a prayer rug, a circle. This page is a growing list of those doors: real organizations and programs in Toronto, across Ontario, and online, checked one by one.

Status v0.1 — growing, crowd-built
We list doors; we run nothing here; there is nothing to join on this page. Every entry below was checked against the organization’s own site on August 17, 2026. Found something closed, wrong, or missing — or belong to a tradition we haven’t reached yet? Bring it to the Harvest.

A note on respect, before you go anywhere on this list: prayer and worship spaces welcome visitors very differently from one another — some keep an open sanctuary any day, some ask you to call or check a calendar first, some reserve certain rituals for members. Check before you go. And ceremony — especially Indigenous ceremony — is entered by invitation, not tourism; where a listing below names public programming, that is what we are pointing at, not an invitation into anything closed or sacred.

Why this page exists

The Day 7 letter frames unity — yoga, in Sanskrit — as a daily practice with three parts: mastery of body and breath; mastery of mind, through focus and sense-withdrawal — silence, stillness, listening; and integration, through rest, reflection and study. The letter’s “meditate” link opens here. It also opens the Unity Lexicon, on the word itself across languages, and its sibling on music & dance, another door into the same practice through the body first.

Nobody needs our permission or an account to start. Sit down, close your eyes, breathe. Everything below is just a door, for whenever company, a teacher, or a tradition helps.

In Toronto

Secular & scientific

• Consciousness Explorers Club (CEC) — a pluralistic Toronto meditation community drawing on science and psychology alongside Buddhist and mindfulness traditions, with a weekly Monday night sit and retreats. Check their calendar.

Buddhist

• Toronto Zen Centre — the oldest Zen group in Canada, founded 1967 in the Rochester/Kapleau lineage. Daily sittings, an introductory workshop, and retreats. Check their calendar.
• Zen Buddhist Temple — Toronto — the first temple founded by the Venerable Samu Sunim, offering public services, meditation instruction and retreats for “urbanites leading a hectic life.” Check their calendar.
• Riwoche Tibetan Buddhist Temple of Toronto — a Vajrayana temple in the city’s west end, with regular practices, teachings and an events calendar. Check their calendar.
• Gaden Choling Toronto — a Tibetan Gelug meditation centre, one of the oldest of its kind in Canada, offering Buddhist teachings and mindfulness meditation classes. Check their calendar — the centre currently runs on a limited, in-person-and-online schedule.
• Satipañña Insight Meditation Toronto — a Theravada community offering weekly insight (vipassana) meditation, Dhamma talks and study, welcoming beginners and experienced practitioners alike, online and in person. Check their calendar.

Hindu & yogic

• Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre Toronto — teaching Hatha yoga and meditation in the Annex since 1962, with beginner courses, meditation instruction and free group meditation sessions. Check their calendar.
• BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Toronto — a large Hindu temple open to visitors of all backgrounds. Check their site before visiting.
• Yoga in Trillium Park — free, no-registration outdoor yoga at Ontario Place each summer, open to all levels, rain or shine. Check their current season’s schedule.

Sikh

• Ontario Khalsa Darbar (Dixie Gurdwara) — one of the largest Sikh gurdwaras in North America, in Mississauga. Gurdwaras keep an open-door tradition — visitors of any background are generally welcome, and langar, the free community kitchen, is offered to all who come. Check their site and visitor guidelines before you go.

Muslim

• Noor Cultural Centre — a Toronto Islamic cultural, educational and social-justice organization. It sold its Wynford Drive building in 2021 and now runs its programming online; check their site and social channels for current offerings.

Jewish

• Makom: Creative Downtown Judaism — a pluralistic downtown Jewish community whose programs include neyShev, a recurring Jewish meditation sit open to all levels, alongside Shabbat services and learning. Check their calendar.

Christian

• Church of the Redeemer — an Anglican church on Bloor Street West running a recurring Tuesday meditation group and evening “Be Still” Taizé-style contemplative services, alongside its regular worship. Check their events calendar.

Indigenous public programming

• Native Canadian Centre of Toronto — a 60-plus-year-old urban Indigenous community hub offering cultural, spiritual and wellness programming, circles, and access to Elders. As above: ceremony and sacred practice here are entered by invitation, not as a visitor activity — check with the Centre first about what is open to the public.

Multi-faith & civic

• University of Toronto Multi-Faith Centre — an interfaith space on the St. George campus running daily drop-in “Mindful Moments: Meditation & Yoga” sessions alongside prayer space and programming across traditions. Primarily serves the U of T community; check their site before visiting if you are not affiliated.
• Toronto Public Library — Health & Wellness programs — mindfulness, yoga-adjacent and wellness drop-ins rotate by branch and season. Free, and open to anyone with a library card or none. Browse and filter by your local branch’s calendar.

In Ontario, beyond Toronto

• Dhamma Torana — Ontario Vipassana Centre (Egbert, ON, about an hour north of the GTA) — residential ten-day Vipassana meditation courses in the S.N. Goenka tradition, run by donation. Check their course schedule and how to apply.

This section is the thinnest on the page — one verified door for the whole province outside Toronto. If you know a retreat centre, ashram, monastery or meditation hall elsewhere in Ontario worth listing, tell us at the Harvest.

Online

• Insight Timer — a free meditation and sleep app with an enormous library of guided meditations across traditions and teachers, a meditation timer, and live yoga. Free to use, with an optional paid plan.
• Plum Village — the global mindfulness community founded in the tradition of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, offering online Days of Mindfulness, dharma talks, guided meditations and a free app. Check their calendar for current online sessions.
• UCLA Mindful — UCLA Health’s mindfulness education centre, offering free daily drop-in meditations, a free guided-meditation library, and low-cost weekly classes. Check their current schedule.
• Waking Up — a secular meditation app built around Sam Harris’s teaching, with a free introductory course and a no-questions-asked scholarship for anyone who can’t afford a subscription.
• Smiling Mind — a free, not-for-profit mindfulness and meditation app from Australia, built by psychologists and educators for all ages.
• Palouse Mindfulness — a complete, 100% free, self-guided eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course built on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s program, with a certificate of completion for those who finish.

Nearby

• Day 7 — unity for Toronto, together — the letter that opened this door.
• The Unity Lexicon — on the word “unity” itself, across the languages spoken here.
• Music & dance — the sibling practice door, into the same unity through the body and good vibes.
• Act — the whole ladder of ways to help.
• Connect and Tribes — find your people, or add yours to the map.
• The Harvest — corrections, additions, and doors we missed go here.