Mindful Living & Soulful Aging: Weekend Retreat for the Inner Life

The inner life regularly calls for our attention, but it takes a real commitment to bring our focus within when so much grabs our attention in the routines of daily living. Whether or not you have been able to do your inner work along the way, we are inviting adults & elders who are motivated now for prioritizing their inner work to come together in co-creative community for this weekend retreat. We will embrace the second adulthood, or what Jungian analyst and author James Hollis calls “The Middle Passage, when the demands of the true self press persistently in an uprising against the acquired persona.”

This retreat will provide opportunities for silent meditation & reflection along with stimulating presentations and workshops on the processes of living with awareness and aging with grace. You will be supported to explore and express your inner life through poetry, creative writing, guided imagery and music, dance, small group discussions and soul collage art.

Each day will offer a balance of guided offerings and free time for inner exploration inside the Bermed Lodge and out in the forest and trails surrounding the Floyd EcoVillage. You will have time for tuning in, and renewing and deepening your skills in the practices of soulful aging and mindful living.

There will be a featured poetry reading on Friday Eve on the theme of soulful aging titled: Mining the Gold of the Inner Life. Colleen Redman and Katherine Chantal’s call-and-response poetry readings delve into primal wounds, honoring the past, humbling ego deaths and transcendence into elderhood and beyond. They approach poetry as a healing art that is informed by contemplation and depth psychology. They give voice to a process that poet David Whyte calls “apprenticing to our own disappearance,” a time when one is obliged to ask ‘Who am I, apart from my history and the roles I have played?’

Delicious meals, snacks and beverages provided throughout the retreat.

All levels of experience welcome!