Why are retreats important?

~ Retreat comes from the Latin word meaning "to pull back." Choosing retreat practice means that you commit to a specific period of time where you pull back from regular life.
 

1. Pull Back
It’s strategic. You step back from your regular life, pulling in all the energy that’s otherwise fanned out and thinned out in multiple directions.  Unplug from technology and gather your attention to focus on something you really love.  Settle into bed when the sun sets and open your eyes when it rises.

2. Deceleration
By stepping out of your scheduled day-to-day there’s new space and time to explore.  Commitment to work, family, communications, volunteer work, household and daily transport all get a breather.  Retreat offers deceleration — simple patterns and fluidity to experience being instead of doing.

3. Listen
As you settle on retreat all of your senses come alive!  Listen to the sound of your breath, trees blowing in the wind, the sound of wildlife, simple village life, and most importantly the call of your own heart.

4. Recover & Remember
Can you feel the ways you need to recover?  It could be from the death of a loved one, illness, broken hearts, intense work, a big wedding, school, project culmination and more.  We wear so many roles!  Retreat invites us to recover and remember our inner landscape of body and outer landscape of the world. What happens when you get a little distance from your persona to just be.

5. Routine, Practice & Habits
Retreat is a distillation of healthy habits in a concentrated space and time just for you.  Explore yoga, healthy movement patterns, meditation, writing, textural study, plant based food, and nature as an annual ritual of retreat.  You will leave retreat more fit, rested, content, clear to reset and do the work you want to do in the world.  

6. Inspiration
Inspiration comes from the Latin word inspiratus and means to breathe into.