Retreat means to back out of something. So why do we call an adventure designed to rejuvenate, refresh and reignite us, a retreat? What are we backing out of? Backing away from? Pulling the plug on?
Maybe it’s life. Maybe we need to reset. So we back away from situations, routines, relationships, jobs, even scenery, and retreat into something new.
What we need when we retreat is something that will awaken us, astonish us, shake us out of our everyday lives, and show us something we have never seen or experienced before.
I have just returned from a week in Iceland. Not my first time there, but it had been a few decades. Now I was there to create a retreat, my post-Covid pivot. My next venture is finding startling beautiful places to gather together in landscapes that offer peace and serenity. An opportunity for us to go within, get quiet, allow ourselves to be touched and transformed by something we didn’t even know existed. Something bigger than us. We retreat.
I learned something during Covid which has led me to this place. Two weeks before the world shut down in March 2020, I was in Florida for a writing retreat. An email from an unknown sender showed up in my inbox and saw the words: writing, meditation, shamanism, massage, and healthy food. I was sold.
I had never done anything like it before. The leader, Suzanne Kingsbury, seemed warm, nurturing, and funny in her intro video on her website. I went because of that. I knew nothing else. She teaches a method of writing that accesses the theta waves in our brains. Creativity. Flow. Fearlessness. It’s called Gateless. A new way of looking at the world opened up to me.
Soon I was a certified teacher of the Gateless method and began holding zoom and in-person writing salons. I wrote in my journal that I wanted to create international writing retreats when the time was right. I wrote a blog on how the healing of writing and the healing of Ayurveda relate to each other. I felt it all connect. So here we are.
This is a whole lot of background to tell you WHY WE RETREAT and why I created a Write/Hike/Yoga Retreat in Southern Iceland, for October 2023.
10 of you will join me and our days will include meditation, writing and feedback session, trips, and hikes to incredible sites nearby including geysers, waterfalls, volcanic craters, and more. We will soak in hot springs and search for the Northern Lights. Our food will be local and organic.
The Writing: The Gateless Writers method is gentle, kind, and encouraging. It supports and builds rather than tearing down and criticizing. It’s for all people from journalers to journalists, from scribblers to memoirists. Fiction writers to essayists. A way of expressing yourself in a safe, warm place. You will be met exactly where you are. You will be showered with love.
Why Iceland? The silence of the mountains. The heat of the geysers. The warmth of the people. Less than 350,000 of them spread out in this gorgeous, foreboding, mystical landscape. Exploring the land will open the mind. Opening the mind leads to endless possibilities. To heal. To create. To discover. The big questions like Who am I? Why am I here? This place gives time and space to have an inner exploration and conversation. The crystal clear lakes and rivers flow to the roiling Atlantic Ocean, and boiling hot springs. It’s wild.
And Yoga. Through gentle yoga, and sound healing with gongs and crystal bowls, we will revel in the stillness and explore the mind and body to promote healing, harmony, and happiness.
On the page, in the body, and in the world.
My co-leader, Heiða Björk Sturludóttir is an extraordinary woman, an Icelandic Ayurvedic practitioner, yoga teacher, tour guide, teacher, writer, and simply one of the loveliest people I’ve ever known. More about our story later, which is so sweet.
So save the date: October 23-October 29, 2023. Email me at susan@breatheayurveda.com with questions, or to hold your place.
Pricing and details will be sent first to those who are paid subscribers to my Substack. You will have the first chance to sign up at the early bird price. Details will be posted on my website and sent to free subscribers on Friday, March 3.
what a beautiful journey you have found and embraced for yourself. 🌻❤️