Saturday June 15, 2024 from 11:00 AM - 4:30 PM, Emeryville, CA - INVESTMENT: $222 - Lunch Provided
Come join us for a menu of experiential practices aimed at enhancing mind-body awareness, connection, and embodiment. We will engage in practices that utilize a multi-sensory approach to bring people more fully into the present moment. By spotlighting the somatic experience, or what is occurring in the body, we will support people in accessing their deepest levels of self and a richer connection with the world. Techniques are pulled from various modalities, including energy healing and Reiki, psychedelics, imagery and visualization, Hakomi, somatic experiencing, and internal family systems.
Beginning from within, embodiment and mindfulness honors the mind-body-energetic connection and supports an increased awareness of all aspects of the self. Research points to several benefits of utilizing mindfulness and somatic practices including lasting decreases in physical and psychological symptoms, an increased ability to relax, reductions in pain levels and an enhanced ability to cope with chronic pain, greater energy and enthusiasm for life, improved self-esteem, and an ability to cope more effectively with stressful situations.
We will also support people in exploring perceived challenges to embodiment and begin to create a practice for living life as a waking meditation, as well as facilitate and teach practices that support emotional release, spiritual emergence, creativity enhancement, stress management, exploring life purpose, cultivating connection, and self-discovery.
The purpose of this retreat is to offer a space of unconditional acceptance, access to serenity, practices in cultivating loving connection, nourishment, and connection to joy, play, and beauty.
Lunch and beverages will be provided and served at approximately 12:30 PM.
The retreat will take place in Emeryville, CA indoors and the exact address will be provided to those who sign up three days prior to the retreat. The investment to attend the retreat is $222. NO REFUNDS will be provided for cancellations, however, if something comes up and you need to cancel, you will receive a credit which can be used toward a future retreat, workshop, or course. Cancellations given with less than 72 hours will receive a 50% credit, and cancellations given with less than 24 hours notice will not receive a credit.
The day will begin with a centering and settling practice and an opening circle with introductions and intention setting. We will then learn some basic tools and “tips” for mindfulness and breathwork, and how to deal with critical expectations and/or judgments. Moon Blossom guides will facilitate a 30-minute breathwork experiential using tantric, energy, and visualization techniques, taking participants on a journey into the self and the aliveness of the body. This will be followed by a space of reflection, journaling, drawing, and/or painting, then an opportunity to share if you feel called.
Moon Blossom will serve lunch, during which time you are invited to eat and talk with the community we’ve created thus far in our day, or to spend some time with yourself in a more private location on the grounds.
We will get our bodies moving after lunch with a movement and dance experiential. NO, you do NOT need to know how to, be good at, or even like dancing! This is a practice in cultivating spontaneity, playfulness, creativity, sexuality, self-expression, mind-body connection, and unconditional acceptance. We invite you to share with us your favorite song that makes you want to move, in whatever way-slow and sensual, quick and excited, flowing, twerking, twinkly-toes, whatever it is! We will incorporate your song into this practice.
We’ll follow this with a conversation about finding meaningful purpose through self-expression and the fear of failure, as well as what failure is and what it is not. An experiential practice where we come face-to-face with our own mortality and death will be facilitated, then a guided practice in envisioning true purpose once you are given back one more day, one more week, one more month, one more year to live.
We’ll facilitate a connection exercise cultivating unconditional acceptance of yourself and others. A closing circle will wrap up the day, where you are invited to share anything you wish to express, including insights, challenges, what worked, what didn’t work for you, asking questions.
Ending time is approximate and the day will end between 4:00-4:45 PM.
Facilitators
❀Sarah Burkle, Lead Facilitator
Sarah began her own journey back to wholeness about 10 years ago when she began studying to become a mental health therapist, and she recognized the wounded filter that she saw the world and life through. A filter that helped her survive, yet one that was based solely on the past, created from survival instincts in response to perceived hurts and threats that no longer existed. Years of personal therapy eventually gave way to psychedelic-assisted therapy, breathwork, sound healing, acupuncture, energy work and all kinds of various forms that provided access to profound transformations.
Sarah earned a master's degree in counseling with a specialization in marriage and family therapy from Saint Mary's College of California in 2013. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist (88866) and certified in MDMA-assisted therapy with MAPS, Integrative Somatic Trauma-Therapy, Emotional Freedom Technique, and Reiki (master level). She has also trained extensively in the areas of somatic-based approaches, trauma-informed care, ancient spiritual traditions, and energy healing practices.
❀Katrina Stuart, Co-Facilitator/Nourishment
Katrina is a lightworker who continuously seeks truth to help others heal and live life to its full potential. She holds a core belief that anyone can grow in a positive direction when embracing the proper tools and remaining open-minded.
Her journey of exploring holistic practices began about a decade ago, after she survived a terrible car accident in which she almost lost her life. The experience shook her to her core and served as a powerful catalyst for change. Afterward her perspective towards life fundamentally shifted. Not only was she thankful to simply be alive, but she also decided she needed to make the most of this life and find ways towards mending.
The change in her post-accident life naturally began with nutrition and cooking because she’d always enjoyed learning about these subjects so much. It was then that she came across a book titled The 10-Day Green Smoothie Cleanse by JJ Smith, and decided to give the cleanse a try. It was the first one she ever dedicated herself to, and she saw encouraging results. So she continued on this path of nutrition.
❀Dawn Bratton, Co-Facilitator
Her creative story begins in earnest fifteen years ago, when she found herself heading down a consuming professional path as a CPA that left her with an overwhelming sense of dissatisfaction. Driven by a desire for a fuller experience of life, she stepped back from her nascent career and took a hard look.
From 2021 - 2023 she served as secretary, and then vice president, for WordSwell Literary Journal, based out of Oakland, CA; and her own poetic work has appeared in journals like Oracle, Matter, The Opiate, Modern Literature, The Metaworker, Global Poemic, and Disquiet Arts, among other literary journals.
Along with creative writing, she also nurtures a meditative and therapeutic relationship with art, which she uses as a method of reaching that inner space where she goes quiet and just is. Mostly she collects items headed for the trash heap and breathes new life into them by transforming them into pieces of Art.
❀Veronica Hernandez, Co-Facilitator
Veronica works in the fields of spiritual counseling, shamanic healing, and the arts. Her practice draws on the Shipibo and wider Andean traditions of Peruvian shamanism, Jungian theory and eco-therapy practices.
Veronica received her degree and license in clinical psychology in Peru and received her clinical training at the Institute of Rational-Emotive Therapy, New York, under the supervision of Dr. Albert Ellis. She was assistant professor at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia and research assistant at the Hospital Psiquiátrico Noguchi de Lima (Peru). In the United States, she worked as a Social Services Clinician at John Muir Health Hospital’s Inpatient Psychiatric Adolescent Unit, California before opening her own practice as a holistic healer and guide.
She earned her doctoral degree at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), San Francisco, where she carried out research on the healing and transformative benefits of entheogens, especially Ayahuasca.