Opening to Life Retreat
Hello from beautiful, peaceful Amed on the eastern tip of Bali, this ‘desert’ part of this lush, tropical island.
I’ve just spent a week with a small group in Ubud, with the Opening to Life retreat. Where we bravely explored how to step into responsibility for ourselves and away from shame and blame.
The beautiful souls who came were passionate about their own Healing and wholeness. Together we explored how to live differently. Knowing that we can create a life which is energised, alive and unfolds with flexibility and ease.
Why go on retreat?
This week is a tight container for change. You will have the opportunity to reflect on your life and experience your deepest needs without pushing them away or denying them. It is an invitation to step up into an expanded version of yourself. With this you can experience how powerful you are and begin to live vibrantly, with choice and excitement.
Building Self Awareness
We do this by building awareness around our emotional responses to life as they unfold over the week. Making connection first with our own deep inner processes, which are often hidden and out of awareness. The journey requires courage!
You will be invited to reflect and to ‘fess up to yourself about what is happening for you.
It requires courage to step into and feel your emotions as they rise up, trusting that they are designed to move and direct you towards wholeness. Making connection with your deep inner space is the first step in the process. It feels so alive! The challenge is to stay with the emotion as it rises, to not judge or dismiss it, to not hide it. To not cast more arrows about the rightness or wrongness of your emotional response, but simply to stay with it and allow the feelings. The group will support this process safely.
Authentic self expression
The next piece in this magical jigsaw is the sharing of experience with the group. As the group work unfolds, you will be invited into experiments to deepen and explore unfolding experience. These experiments are designed to create connection between group members, to share and work with emerging beliefs. Here we can challenge them and create opportunities for new behaviours to emerge.
Simply discovering the universality of our human experience is deeply healing of shame and judgement.
It sounds hard, but it’s beautiful on the other side!
As we take responsibility a magical thing happens.
The shaming and blaming stops.
Ownership begins and with it comes the choice and freedom to try different ways of being in life. When I take full responsibility for myself I am in charge! I can decide powerfully to try new ways of being and step out of old familiar patterns which no longer serve me.
Blame is a contracted emotional state. It comes from a place of feeling victimised and powerless, while Ownership is expansive. It becomes a springboard for doing life differently.
The group supports this deep work. It builds connection with yourself and with the others in the group, forming a safety net of relationships.
While it is not a Yoga retreat, you will use yoga to support the process of turning inwards and increasing awareness of your emotional space. You will also have access to massage and bodywork to build self awareness. The three strands Segway together in a beautiful symbiosis, each supporting the work of the other, and this change towards health and wholeness.
The process requires gentle support
I watched as this beautiful group came to life, their faces softening and bodies straightening and strengthening.
When shame is met and kindly received there is a lightening of the body and mind.
I am in Bali with this retreat twice a year in May and October, come with me and experience the change for yourself!
I love watching my clients blossom as they drop the stories they have been telling themselves, replacing old patterns with new, more vibrant ways of living.