I remembered once seeing a tea party some little girls had set up outside, mismatched china, decorations of a plucked pansy blossom and a seashell and a shiny penny and a small circle of red berries and a fern, pressed wetly into the wooden table, the damp outline a beautiful bonus. They didn’t consult the Martha Stewart guide for entertainment and gulp a martini before their guests arrived. They pulled ideas from their hearts and minds about the things that gave them pleasure, and they laid out an offering with loving intent. It was a small Garden of Eden, the occupants making something out of what they saw was theirs. Out of what they truly saw.
Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon
What exactly will your retreat look like? What will you do when?
From the outside, it might not look like much. You take a shower and dress slowly, with care, in comfortable clothes. Perhaps you create a small shrine with a candle and pictures of you at different times in your life. You walk by a creek and dip your foot in, sitting awhile. Then you walk home and sip tea while reading poetry. After closing the curtains and dancing for a long while, you collapse on the floor, weeping, then become very still, and then write in your journal. You make an exquisite salad and eat it with your full attention. Later, soaking in a bath, you do a guided meditation. Putting candles all around your bed, you read a spiritually inspiring passage aloud before going to sleep. You dream. You wake to write your dreams down and work with them a bit. You greet the morning with joy. And so on.
Traditional retreats rely on a schedule that revolves around meditation or prayer, for example, the services marking the hours at a Benedictine monastery or a sitting schedule at a Zen meditation retreat. This way of approaching time has a venerable history, and it works. But there is an important question to consider with regard to women and time. We rarely feel we have enough. Most women in the world live a life of “unspeakable toil,” as Kathleen Norris wrote in The Cloister Walk. When reading an article about a Los Angeles woman who commuted four hours each day and needed her toddler to poke her in the ribs on the way home to keep her awake, I began to wonder if women on retreat need schedules. Or is the primary gift of a woman’s retreat the feeling of time spreading around you, becoming yours for the taking?
That said, there are times when you want a little structure, and at those times a schedule or plan is in order. Here, then, are eleven plans ranging from a few minutes to three days. Each is formulated on the assumption that you have scanned the first section of the book and have decided what your intention is, where and how long you will retreat, and the other logistics. All of the following retreat plans can be expanded, shortened, or rearranged. They are templates representing a balance among inner work, self-trust, self-listening, and fun. Space doesn’t allow constructing a retreat plan for every reason or season, so use these plans to give you an idea of what flow works well, and then construct your own. I imagine that you will be starting a retreat in the morning and ending in the late afternoon or evening, but you could, of course, start at any time and simply adjust where you eat and rest.
This retreat would work well for intentions having to do with needing rest or feeling overwhelmed, ill, or out of balance.
Prepare
Your journal and a pen.
Basic art materials.
Dance and meditation music.
A drum or rattle.
Soothing treats like fluffy slippers, a new pen, a bouquet of freesias and lilies, a minty face mask.
Your opening ceremony might include a massage, a warm bath, or even a nap. (You could start your ceremony, nap, and then finish it upon awakening.)
Do Gathering the Whole (Gathering the Whole). You might spend anywhere from a half hour to two hours here.
Deliberately, worshipfully, drink water or tea. Focus on the sensations.
Practice a form of check-in from What Will You Do?: Check-In (What Will You Do?: Check-In). Your question could be “What do I need to be healthy?” Alter or add to this retreat plan if new information appears.
Using Spontaneous Painting or Writing from Good Ways to Listen (Good Ways to Listen: Spontaneous Writing), explore the words well-being, health, and balance.
Experiment with Good Ways to Listen: Soothe (Good Ways to Listen: Soothe). Celebrate yourself with luxury.
Go outside and attend to nature, even if that means watching clouds for two minutes. If you can, plant your bare feet in or lie down on the earth.
Write a trust list from Courting Yourself (Courting Yourself: Stories).
What could you do right now that would be frivolous, marvelous, and astounding? What pops into your head? Is it self-affirming? Trust yourself and do it. If nothing occurs to you, fine.
Check in with yourself. The question could be “What do I need?” If you are hungry, eat something you desire with your complete attention. Do not read or watch TV while eating.
Investigate The State of Being (The State of Being).
Take time for your body, for something physical yet relaxing—a walk in nature, some yoga asanas, stretching to music, or dancing to trance music.
See Resources.
Check in with yourself.
Do a Being practice from Good Ways to Listen (Good Ways to Listen).
One final check-in. The question could be “What do I still need to do on this retreat?”
Do Getting Juicy (Getting Juicy).
End with a closing ceremony that includes showering yourself with gratitude for taking time for yourself, writing notes on any insights you gained, and studying your calendar. Make a self-promise to do one kind, self-nurturing thing for yourself every day for the next week. Keep it simple and realistic, but by all means consider changing your schedule to include more time for yourself. Write down what you will do on your calendar. Do something in this ceremony to make these appointments with yourself feel as important and real as your other commitments.
A Lunch Hour Retreat (Half Hour to an Hour)
You can also use this mini-retreat at the end of the day to make a transition between work and home, or use it before an important meeting or date.
Prepare
A personal stereo and music that brings you into quiet, interior space.
Begin your opening ceremony with a declaration to the effect that “I am now leaving my work. I have done all that I could for now. I am enough” (Good Ways to Listen: Environment).
Get away from your workplace and co-workers. Go for a walk to a nearby park, stop by that deserted band shell no one ever visits, climb the stairs to the roof, visit a burbling fountain, walk into a dusty library where every sound is muffled, or find a private, quiet restaurant corner. While you walk, play your music on your headphones.
Once you feel you are in retreat space (the movement and music will get you there; you need both), take ten very deep, slow breaths while rolling your shoulder blades down and toward each other.
Check in with yourself. Ask yourself, “What do I need to do to nurture myself right now?” Can you act, now or later, on what you discover?
Do Addressed to the Heart (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Addressed to the Heart) right where you are, walking or sitting for five minutes. See, feel, hear, taste what is being offered to nourish you. See if gratitude comes knocking at your heart.
Imagine the Divine as you know it standing in front of you. You can do this with your eyes open while walking, or find a comfortable place to sit for a few minutes. (If closing your eyes seems weird, put on sunglasses.) Your Divinity showers you with a golden substance made of pure peace and spiritual protection. You somehow know that, once you are anointed with this magic substance, everything nasty, hurtful, stressful, and boring that might be coming your way this afternoon will bounce off your magic shield and slide right off you.
Eat lunch mindfully. Concentrate on slowing down, on tasting your food, on receiving the gifts of nourishment. If you are going to order lunch, check in and ask yourself, “What does my body need?”
End your retreat in two parts. One happens now, with a thank-you to whomever or whatever, followed by quick, energetic movement on your way back to work. Try swinging your arms and walking quickly, or, if you can, stretch your arms high over your head and imagine bringing in energy. Take deep breaths while silently repeating, “I am ready for the rest of my day. I am full of energy. Yes!”
The second part happens tonight, when you get home. Take a shower (preferably in the dark or by candlelight), and name the crap of the day as it goes down the drain, everything that bounced off of your golden, protective shield.
This retreat would support intentions having to do with getting a new project going, recovering and trusting your creativity, solving a problem, or alleviating general depression. Adjust this schedule as needed to fit the availability of your art experiences.
Prepare
Your journal and a pen.
Art experiences (Feeding the Artist: Immerse Yourself).
Several large pieces of drawing paper.
A photo of you.
See Feeding the Artist for examples.
Magazines to cut up and other collage materials (Portrait of Your Authenticity: Prepare).
Music and a drum or rattle.
Books about lives of creative women.
See Resources.
Delicious food.
Arty clothes.
A place to walk.
Silence.
Day One
Touch on all your senses in your opening ceremony, especially the sense(s) you need to recharge. For example, if you are a painter, include visuals or lie with a cold eye pack over your eyes for fifteen minutes. Check your expectations. Be sure you aren’t expecting the idea of a lifetime to visit you and make you richer than Oprah, because that expectation will kill your retreat faster than hoping to have supper with Jesus.
Do Getting Juicy (Getting Juicy).
Read up on creative women. Choose one or two creative women to become the patron saints of your retreat. When you feel stuck, bored, afraid, or too ordinary, invoke one of them. Pretend you are she or that you embody one of her qualities that you admire.
Following the ideas in Feeding the Artist: Immerse Yourself (Feeding the Artist), choose and enjoy an art experience for one to three hours. Remember to try new things. Be willing to be briefly uncomfortable or even bored. Be sure if you go out into the world to take your emotional container along (Where Will You Retreat?: Create Emotional Containment).
Practice a form of check-in from What Will You Do? (What Will You Do?: Check-In). Ask yourself, “What does my creative self need?” Invoke your artist saint to help you.
Take a body break. Stretch your back, eat pâté and crackers, drink sparkling apple juice. Consciously rest and delight your flesh.
Melt into I Am Enough, in Good Ways to Listen (Good Ways to Listen: Environment).
Make a list of everything creative you have ever done. Nothing is too small. Enlarge your definition of creativity. If it comes to mind, write it down. You will return to this list several times. It will have at least one hundred items on it by the end of this retreat.
Time for more art immersion. If you’ve been reading, then do something visual. If you’ve been out in the world, do something at home. If you are afraid to venture out, make specific plans to visit a gallery show of contemporary photography or a slide show on the art of Bali.
Afterward: what does your artist saint say about what you just experienced?
Eat something wonderful, perhaps something forbidden. Linger on the tastes.
The time when we are drifting off to sleep is often the ripest for great ideas. Yet we rarely remember our insights. Take a Thomas Edison nap. Relax sitting up or propped up on pillows, holding something like a book in your hand. When you doze off, you will drop the item, and this will wake you. Do you have any ideas? These ideas could be about anything in your life. Write them down. Then, if you wish, take a normal nap.
Upon waking, ask yourself again, “What does my creative self need?” Pay attention to any dreams.
Do Calling the Muse, in Feeding the Artist (Feeding the Artist: Calling the Muse).
Indulge in more art. Perhaps you want to read, view, or listen to something your artist saint created.
Drink water as an act of creativity.
Choose movement to rest your brain and balance your emotions. Getting Juicy (Getting Juicy), Good Ways to Listen: The Smell of Your Own Sweat (Good Ways to Listen: The Smell of Your Own Sweat), and Soma Source (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Soma Source) in Renewing Your Spiritual Direction are possibilities.
Must be time for a snack or dinner. Perhaps a visit to a café to watch people and sip hot chocolate or wine? Remember to remain in retreat space! Avoid chatter of all kinds! Imagine that every word out of your mouth and into your ear is being etched in granite for all time.
Check in with yourself: “What do I need?” or “What am I feeling?”
Revel in more art, right up to bedtime and after crawling in. If you are at home, sleep someplace different than you usually do—outside in a tent, on the couch, or on the opposite side of the bed. Surround yourself with images, music, and scents if you like. Be sure to have a pen and journal close by your bed.
Before you go to sleep, write a few lines about your day’s experience. Note especially what you felt. As you fall asleep, affirm to yourself several times aloud that you will remember your dreams, and ask your muse and artist saint(s) to help you.
Day Two
Begin your day, before you do anything, by reviewing your dreams. Write down anything that occurs to you, even fragments of images or a word. Dialogue with one dream character or object. If you remember nothing, work with a past dream or write across the top of a piece of paper, “What did I learn about my creative self last night?” Take a few breaths, and start writing with your nondominant hand.
See Courage.
If you like, stay in your pajamas for a while.
Do Addressed to the Heart, in Reviving Your Spiritual Direction (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Addressed to the Heart). Spend at least fifteen minutes observing what is being offered to you.
Have your morning coffee or tea in a different way or place than you usually do. Same with your breakfast. Cook something like pasta and eggs, or have peanut butter and bananas on your toast, or allow yourself a buttery croissant. Add to your list of everything creative you have ever done.
Wear something that makes you feel like an artist: a scarf, a cloche hat, a long dress, lots of bright jewelry, silk pj’s.
Check in with yourself, perhaps by asking, “What does my creative self want to do today?” or “What would my artist saint do today?”
Indulge in more art. If possible, find an art experience that relates to your dreams or to your calling in of your muse or to what you felt or observed when you listened for an address from the heart.
Practice the meditation I Am Enough, in Good Ways to Listen (Good Ways to Listen: Environment), while going for a long walk. Don’t worry about burning calories. Focus instead on the rhythm of your walking and on your breath.
Sit silently for twenty minutes. See Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Discipline for instructions (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Become an Empty Vessel). At the end of the twenty minutes, check in with yourself, perhaps asking, “What divine guidance do I need in my life?”
Wallow in more art. Be sure you are varying your experiences and trying new venues and mediums.
Ask yourself, “What and how would my artist saint eat?” or “What and how would I eat if I believed I were a very creative and talented person?” Give this to yourself when you are hungry.
Take a Thomas Edison nap and then a real one if you wish. If you don’t want to nap, spend a few moments being (Good Ways to Listen).
Dialogue with your muse, your artist saint, or your creative self. There is no goal to this dialogue, no right way to do it. Experiment (Courage).
Do something outrageous. Even something small like wearing a different-colored lipstick or wearing clothes you don’t usually wear can jiggle things into new light.
Sit quietly and ask yourself, “What art do I yearn to immerse myself in? What would I do if it weren’t too ______ (expensive, daring, hard to find, weird)?” Do it now if at all possible.
Make a wish about your creativity. It could be to have new energy, to find someone to sing with, to trust yourself, to start or finish a particular project. Center yourself, close your eyes, and visualize your wish coming true. Use all your senses as you see yourself getting what you want. Allow yourself to enjoy it. Feel an expansion of energy in your heart. If you start to edit your scenario because it feels too good or too big, stop. Forget being small or modest. See yourself accomplishing, feeling, growing, solving, enjoying, blooming.
End this retreat by making a collage that expresses and gives energy to your wish(es). Place a photo of you in the middle of a large piece of paper. Surround yourself with images (drawn, cut from magazines, photos) and objects (search five-and-dime stores, bead stores, craft stores, and New Age bookstores for items) that evoke your expanding creativity and embody your wish coming true. If you get into comparing your collage with anything you have seen over the last two days, stop and do the meditation I Am Enough (Good Ways to Listen: Environment).
Your closing ceremony may include a thank-you to your muse, to your artist saints, or to any Divine guidance you may have received. If you are retreating at home, create a creativity shrine with your muse invocation and collage on it.
This retreat is specifically for women who feel they can’t hear their inner selves. It is a good one to use if you don’t have a clear intention, are especially nervous about retreating, or have never retreated before.
It is especially important to feel physically and emotionally safe on this retreat.
Prepare
Mirror.
Your journal and a pen.
Basic art supplies, clay, or other ways to work with Contemplations.
Round tray and objects that represent your different selves (you can gather these as part of your retreat or skip this part).
Music that draws you inside.
Silence.
Your opening ceremony might include affirmations of self-trust. Use the word choose in your affirmations, as in “I choose to listen and believe myself.” If you haven’t watched too much Saturday Night Live (where lampooning affirmations has been raised to an art), you could repeat them to yourself while looking in a mirror.
Do nothing for a time. This may be difficult. No matter, persist. Even five minutes is a triumph.
Read What Will You Do?: Check-In (What Will You Do?: Check-In). Decide on a question to use. Perhaps “What do I know that I am not willing to see?” or “What am I feeling?” Whatever your choice, stay with the same question throughout your retreat.
Make a list of ten or more times in your life when you received internal guidance—an idea popping into your head, a voice telling you to take a different road or to call a friend, a feeling that you were “channeling” when writing or taking a test or doing a job interview—and times when your prayers were answered. Nothing is too small to note.
Do Gathering the Whole (Gathering the Whole). You may want to skip or shorten the mandala portion because of time. But follow your own guidance.
Take a short body prayer break. See Good Ways to Listen: The Smell of Your Own Sweat: Movement as Prayer for ideas (Good Ways to Listen: Movement to Let Off Steam), or take the words prayer of trust and dance them into life.
Check in with yourself. See What Will I Do?: Check-In (What Will You Do?: Check-In).
Build a trust list from Courting Yourself (Courting Yourself: Stories).
Have a rest and a snack. Ask your body what she needs to eat. Be mindless for half an hour.
Check in again. Where did the mindless time take you? What did you do?
Experiment with one of the offerings in Contemplations (Contemplations) that has to do with trust or that intrigues you.
Under One Who Chooses (One Who Chooses: Part 1), do Part 1, starting with the words “Imagine a loving presence” and ending with “Nothing to do” a paragraph later.
Include in your closing ceremony an acknowledgment of any inner guidance you received, any ways you trusted yourself to change this plan, and a commitment to check in with yourself at least twice a day for the next week.
A Three-Day Spiritual Renewal Retreat
This is a good retreat for checking your expectations about your spirituality. Sometimes we go on retreat hoping to see God, lose ten pounds, and write a dozen symphonies like Hildegard of Bingen. Well, maybe not this time.
Prepare
Before your retreat, make a mask of your face. You need another person to help you. You also need fast-drying (not superfast) bandage tape (you’ll find it at a pharmacy that caters to hospitals), petroleum jelly, something to hold your hair off your face, scissors, a bowl of water, and two cotton pads. Making a mask of your face can be claustrophobic, so do it in a calm place with someone you trust. Cut the bandages into approximately half-inch strips, with a few quarter-inch ones, too. Pull your hair off your face, and slather your face with petroleum jelly, especially around the hair line. Lie down. Your friend places the cotton pads over your eyes, then wets each strip of bandage before laying it on your face. She builds a support for the rest of the mask by first making a T of half-inch strips across your nose, chin, and forehead, and under your eyes, overlaying each strip a bit. Then she builds a circle along the edge of your face, repeating this twice to reinforce the mask’s edge. She fills in the rest of your face, doing your nose and mouth last. The mask takes less than five minutes to dry. You will feel it lifting off your face as it dries. Wiggle your cheeks and mouth to help it along. Have your friend help you pop it off. The whole process takes about fifteen minutes. Let it dry for several days, then apply a coat of gesso (you can get it at any art supply store) or wood glue to smooth the surface.
Water-based paints, charms, beads, flowers, herbs, rub-on tattoos, and wood glue to decorate your mask with. See Portrait of Your Authenticity: Prepare for how to do a symbol-gathering scan (Portrait of Your Authenticity: Prepare).
Drawing supplies and perhaps clay.
One or two books for reflective reading. Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, stories of women on spiritual quests, the Bible, the Koran, Buddhist sutras, or the Bhagavad Gita.
See Resources for more.
Music that takes you inside, music that compels you to dance, and/or a drum or rattle.
Alarm.
Day One
Allow plenty of time for your opening ceremony. You need to believe your retreat container is strong, because three days can feel like a mighty long time. You may be tempted to break your container, but if it feels very real and strong, it will help you stay in the betwixt-and-between place. You might wish to include a metaphorical action that relates to your quest for spiritual renewal. For example, Shelly retreated at a Catholic retreat center, although she had left the church twenty years earlier. She did this not because she wanted to renew her faith in that particular religion but to signal a softening about her religious past. You might also want to make a poster or collage of your intention.
Read over Renewing Your Spiritual Direction: Discipline (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Become an Empty Vessel) and choose a simple practice that draws you inside yourself. You will do this practice throughout your retreat. Take ten to twenty minutes for your discipline. You can work up to longer periods if you like. After you are finished, answer in writing or painting, “After doing this practice, I feel….”
Experienced Retreatants
If you are currently dedicated to a spiritual practice and are feeling stale with it, you must spend a few minutes checking in with yourself about whether you should practice this on your retreat. Center yourself and ask, “What do I really need on this retreat?” If nothing comes to you, go for a walk and ask yourself again. You may find yourself wanting to try something different for these three days. That can feel like a radical, even scary departure. It might help to affirm your faith in your current beliefs, to ask for a blessing from your Divinity, or to simply acknowledge, perhaps by writing a note to yourself, that you will return to your own path after this retreat. Imagine you are taking a spiritual vacation. Or you may find yourself sticking to your current practice, needing that recommitment to get your spiritual juices flowing again. You are the guide. You can trust yourself.
Do Stuck: Creating Energy, the second exercise (Stuck in the Airport of Life). Your focus will be, of course, your spiritual life. Do this even if you don’t know why or don’t think you are stuck. That may be part of the reason you are on retreat.
Rest, if possible, while in bodily contact with earth, water, or a tree.
Do Defining and Undefining Your Spiritual Life from Reviving Your Spiritual Direction (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Define and Undefine Your Spiritual Life).
Take a luxury break. Appease your body, your senses. Be present and utterly enjoy yourself. Bask in the sun, sink into a hot bath, eat fresh raspberries with homemade whipped cream.
Do Addressed to the Heart (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Addressed to the Heart). Note what time it is and where you do it. You will return to the same place at the same time each day of your retreat. Find a way to remind yourself.
If you can, put on some music that makes you feel hopeful and expansive, or drum for a few minutes. Or you might light a candle. Meditate on your blank mask for a few minutes. Then make a list of one hundred things you love or like or at least tolerate about yourself—things you have done, things you like to do, moments when you have demonstrated physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual attributes. Yes, one hundred. You will have to be very specific. Some items from my list:
1. My sense of humor
8. My doggedness
11. My ability to write
25. My love of books about creativity
31. My love of reading
59. My love of gardening
61. That I cleaned my friend’s kitchen one night
Do Imagining the Divine (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Prepare). After you have created an image, communicate with your image of the Divine. Especially explore your fears, anger, or curiosity about this (perhaps) new or expanded image.
Take a mindful mindlessness break for at least half an hour but for no more than two hours. What makes it mindful is choosing ahead of time what healthful, self-nurturing, mindless activity you will do. Avoid breaking your retreat container by doing something profane (ordinary) like calling home, watching TV, or eating too much.
Spend some time in body prayer. See The Smell of Your Own Sweat (Good Ways to Listen: The Smell of Your Own Sweat) or Soma Source (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Soma Source).
Check in with yourself using the question “What does my spiritual self need?” Do whatever occurs to you now. Do not stop yourself because it feels crazy to hug a tree, talk to plants, or anoint yourself with oil. Follow your inner prompting.
Take a short mindfulness break. Eat, drink, stretch, or walk while staying present to your senses and your reactions.
Do Addressed to the Heart (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Addressed to the Heart) at the same place.
Repeat your spiritual discipline. Lengthen the time you do it by five to ten minutes. After you are finished, in writing or painting answer the question “How does this spiritual discipline relate to my image of the Divine?”
Read reflectively, several times, a reading selected from what you brought with you. Read aloud. Read silently. Bring the words into your body. If you have energy and wish to, work with your passage using one of the ways listed at the beginning of Contemplations (Contemplations: Ways to Work with Questions and Other Material).
End your day with a ceremony of gratitude. You could do another session of Addressed to the Heart (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Addressed to the Heart). You could list what you are grateful for. You could give thanks to your Divinity, communicate with your new image of the Divine. Note and release any disappointments about what hasn’t happened yet or any expectations about what might happen over the next two days.
Day Two
Greet the day with a ceremony of renewing your intention. Upon waking, first thing, do something with your intention. What feels right? It might be reading it over a few times, or it might be a bit of spontaneous ceremony or prayer. Meditate on your intention, bring it to life in some internally resonating way.
Work with your dreams in whatever way you wish. See Retreating with Others: Dream Circle (Retreating with Others: Dream Circle).
Communicate with, come into a relationship with, pray with the image of the Divine that you created yesterday.
Do your morning ablutions as an act of veneration. Treat your body like the most precious body in the universe. Make yourself something perfect for breakfast. Or if you always eat because of your schedule, check in and see if you are even hungry yet. Avoid caffeine and sugar if possible.
Repeat your chosen spiritual discipline.
Do the second exercise in Why Are You Stuck? (Stuck in the Airport of Life: Prepare). It starts with “Grab your journal….” Switch the statement to “I first started to feel stuck in my spiritual life when….”
Note what time you did Addressed to the Heart (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Addressed to the Heart) and repeat it.
Read Portrait of Your Authenticity (Portrait of Your Authenticity). If you find yourself getting bored or stuck, stop and do some body prayer, or do Getting Juicy (Getting Juicy), or take a run. Instead of doing a life-sized portrait, make a mask of your spiritual self. Read over the questions in the practice, then substitute these questions for each age:
What was my spiritual life at this age?
What images, feelings, places, events represent my authentic spirit?
When you come to the present day, focus on these statements:
What I most value in my life right now is…
My authentic self looks like…
Before you do the Reflecting part of this practice, put on your mask and look at yourself in a mirror.
Experiment with Touching Grief (Grieving: Emotional Container), even if everything seems okay in your life.
Do something from Good Ways to Listen: Divine Landscape (Good Ways to Listen: Divine Landscape).
Take a mindful mindlessness break for about an hour. Nap, exercise, eat, sew, listen to music, read. If you nap, pay attention to your dreams and your feelings upon awakening. If you walk, pay attention to what shapes and beings you see in the rocks and trees or the buildings and faces of people you pass.
Repeat your spiritual discipline. When you are through, ask yourself, “What does my spiritual self need?” Record and/or act on any ideas that occur to you.
Encounter ecstatic body prayer. See Movement as Prayer (Good Ways to Listen: Movement to Let Off Steam).
Surrender through Melting (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Addressed to the Heart).
Add to your list of one hundred things you love about yourself.
Is it time yet to repeat Addressed to the Heart (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Addressed to the Heart)?
Read reflectively a passage from a spiritual book. Work with this passage however you choose. See Contemplations (Contemplations: Ways to Work with Questions and Other Material) and Good Ways to Listen (Good Ways to Listen).
End your day with a ceremony of faith. Explore the definitions of the word faith: (1) confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, an idea, or a thing; (2) belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence; (3) loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance; (4) the theological virtue defined as secure belief in a Divine Being and a trusting acceptance of that Divine Being’s will; (5) the body of dogma of a religion; (6) a set of principles or beliefs.
What do you have faith in? Does faith seem impossible or stupid to you? Have you lost your faith? Ruminate. Meditate on your mask. Sleep with your mask close by, so that you can see it first thing upon awakening.
Day Three
Begin your day by communicating with your image of the Divine and with your mask. What feels right? What doesn’t feel right? Read over your intention. What is it still trying to tell you? What is left undone?
Once again, treat your body with sweet, loving kindness. Start your day in the best possible way. Perhaps take a long soak in the bath.
Repeat your spiritual discipline.
Name your spiritual obstacles or yearnings. Frame them as hopeful questions using, “What could my spiritual life be like if…?” See One Who Chooses: Part 1 for ways to reflect on this question (One Who Chooses: Part 1).
Indulge in the realm of the senses. Check out Soothe in Good Ways to Listen (Good Ways to Listen: Soothe).
Remember to do Addressed to the Heart (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Addressed to the Heart), same place, same time.
Read over Returning Home (Returning Home). Give some thought to returning home. What feelings arise? What plans need to be made?
Do a Being practice from Good Ways to Listen (Good Ways to Listen).
Finish your list of one hundred things you love about yourself. Make sure it has one hundred items on it.
Repeat your chosen spiritual discipline.
Work with the second quote in Soma Source (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction). When you are finished, sit quietly and ask yourself, “What is emerging in my spiritual life?” Paint, sculpt, write the thoughts and feelings that emerge.
Listen to an uplifting piece of music while doing nothing else. If you are in nature, lie on the earth and listen to the symphony around you.
Do spontaneous writing for three pages or for three minutes on the statement “I will bring this retreat into my everyday life….” Keep your hand moving. Don’t edit or censor.
Spend whatever time you have left directed by and listening to your own spirit. Don’t do another practice. Follow your own yearnings and promptings.
End your day and your retreat with a ceremony of hope. Make a painting of your wishes. Recite a litany of what you have confidence and trust in. Make a ceremony out of your favorite spiritual quote or passage. Honor and celebrate yourself, the Divine, and anyone or anything else for this retreat.
A One-Hour Getting Current Retreat
This is an easy retreat that you can do often. You will not have formed an intention yet, so that activity is included.
Prepare
Your journal and a pen, and perhaps basic drawing materials.
Something soothing to do, like a warm bath, a hand or foot massage, or rocking in a hammock.
Spend two or three minutes working on the first two statements found in Forming Your Intention (Intention: Forming Your Intention):
Be open to surprises.
Create a brief opening ceremony inspired by your intention. Or relax by breathing deeply for several minutes and try this one: Visualize yourself in your present life but with everything just the way you want it to be—the ultimate control fantasy. The laundry is all finished and put away, the cupboard is full, letters are answered, work is caught up. End by washing your face, hands, or teeth and saying, “I am now cleansed and in sacred space.”
Place your writing or drawing materials close by. Do the end of the practice Standing on Top of Your Life (Emerging from Chaos into Balance: Standing on Top of Your Life), starting where it says, “Get out another sheet of paper” and ending a couple paragraphs down at “symbols that is important.” Meditate or dialogue with what comes up for you.
Do something soothing for yourself. If you can’t think of anything, look over Good Ways to Listen: Soothe (Good Ways to Listen: Soothe) or do one of the practices in Courting Yourself (Courting Yourself).
Remember to do some kind of closing ceremony, no matter how brief. Choose a centering word or “songline” that will help you remember the sense of peace or well-being you may have felt in this hour. Repeat this word to yourself through the coming hours and days.
A Half-Hour Jump-Starting Your Creativity Retreat
Do this retreat before beginning work on a creative project, before going into a important meeting at work, or before spending time with a young child. You can do this as a retreat in the world, although if you work in a cubicle with no privacy, you will need to find a private space or go for a walk.
Prepare
Any materials you need for your opening and closing ceremonies.
Spend a couple of minutes working with the second intention statement from Forming Your Intention:
Your opening ceremony needs to include changing your location in space. Move your body someplace different (if you are working in your office or studio, walk outside), or if you do this retreat often, move to the same place each time. Center yourself by lying down with an eye pillow on, putting on headphones and listening to music that is very imaginary and inspiring, drinking a glass of water very slowly and with full attention, or taking a shower and doing I Am Enough in Good Ways to Listen (Good Ways to Listen: Environment).
After your opening ceremony, do Calling the Muse from Feeding the Artist (Feeding the Artist: Calling the Muse). Focus on the section starting with “Center yourself however you choose” and ending with “Does the muse demand anything from you?” at the end of that paragraph. Take about ten minutes for this fantasy.
Do something outrageous or out of character or simply something you wouldn’t usually do at this time. Say “I love you” aloud to yourself, decide to call your lover later and tantalize him or her with sexual talk, decide when you walk back to your office to give five dollars to a street person, eat chocolate for lunch, or take off all your clothes and roll around in your backyard.
Imagine in your body that you are totally, completely, oh-so-ready to be creative. Feel the creative engine revving throughout your body. Imagine your mind coming alive. Feel your muse whispering in your ear. Feel as if you are already working, already surging into it, feeling fantastic. Say over and over to yourself, aloud if possible, “Yes. I am eager. I am ready. Yes!”
End with a moving closing ceremony. Repeating the statements above (“Yes; I am eager; I am ready; yes!”), begin moving toward your work. More than moving, be aching, charging, bolting for your work. As you reach your workplace, your studio, your computer, your piano, your meeting, or your child, imagine your muse blessing you, infusing you with burning, validating light. See this light coming out of your fingertips, out of your eyes, out of your mouth. Affirm to yourself that you are back from your retreat and ready to create.
You don’t need to be grieving something specific or tragic. This may be a good choice if you are feeling depressed, listless, or cut off from your feelings or if something final, big or small, has occurred.
Prepare
An especially safe physical and emotional container. Have a check-in person on call (Courage: Getting Support from Others).
A bit of nature.
Music that puts you in touch with sadness, intensity, and depth of feeling and music that makes you want to dance.
See Resources.
Your journal and a pen.
Several large sheets of paper and basic drawing supplies and perhaps clay.
Drum or rattle.
Create an especially nurturing, safe physical container as part of your opening ceremony. You might also wish to create a grief shrine with pictures and symbols of what you are grieving.
Begin with Nature as Mirror (Good Ways to Listen: Nature as Mirror).
If you don’t know or need to become clearer on what you are grieving for, work with Getting Current (Grieving: Getting Current).
Move and then relax your body. A brisk walk in nature followed by a massage given by someone who comes to you would be ideal, or do yoga followed by a hot, fragrant bath.
Immediately after, do the Touching Grief (Grieving: Emotional Container) exercise. End by listening to uplifting music, taking another bath, sipping hot chocolate, napping, or doing anything you have carefully chosen beforehand that makes you feel taken care of.
Try Standing on Top of Your Life (Emerging from Chaos into Balance: Standing on Top of Your Life) or Why Are You Stuck? (Stuck in the Airport of Life: Prepare) or Ceremony for Letting Go in Grieving (Grieving: Ceremony for Letting Go).
Attend to your bodily needs with great love and care.
Under Suggestions for Wooing Yourself (Courting Yourself: Stories), do the practice that begins “Imagine love beaming from your hands.”
Do as much as you wish of Imagining the Divine (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Prepare) or Melting (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Addressed to the Heart).
Repeat Nature as Mirror (Good Ways to Listen: Nature as Mirror) one last time.
Jive with Getting Juicy (Getting Juicy). Segue right into your closing ceremony.
Perhaps close with a symbolic gesture of letting go. You might burn, bury, mail (no mail bombs, please), or give away something, or do the second practice under Creating Energy (Stuck in the Airport of Life), the one where you cover yourself with mud. The mud could represent your grief. Name it before you wash it off. You might wish to create a memorial: send money in a loved one’s name to a beloved cause, or paste together a collage representing that time in your life that is no more.
This can be expanded into a weekend celebration that includes other people. Remember that when you include other people, everything takes much longer and you must be open to change.
Prepare
Pictures of yourself at different ages.
Your journal and a pen.
Music that takes you on an interior journey.
Excellent self-nurturing tools and opportunities: the directions to a great hike, an extravagant lunch of fresh lobster and Swiss chocolate, a warm rock to lie on.
If you are going to do Portrait of Your Authenticity, see Prepare in that chapter, Portrait of Your Authenticity: Prepare.
Create a shrine as part of your opening ceremony. The shrine will include pictures of you as a child, as a teenager, at other important times in your life, and in the present. You might also wish to carve into a candle a word or words that represent one or two wishes for the coming year. Light the candle and let it burn throughout your retreat. (But don’t leave a candle unattended, especially outside.)
Love yourself with Reclaiming Your Desires (Courting Yourself: Reclaiming Your Desires).
Rollick in some first-class soothing and self-nurturing. Use Check-In (What Will You Do?: Check-In) or the questions you just did to point you in the right direction.
Make a list of everything you did in the last year that you are proud of, that you liked, enjoyed, loved, relished.
Check in with yourself and take a break as directed by your check-in.
Play with Marking a Passage (Marking a Passage) or Portrait of Your Authenticity (Portrait of Your Authenticity).
Do Touching Grief (Grieving: Emotional Container), even if everything seems okay in your life.
Addressed to the Heart (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Addressed to the Heart) is calling you.
Check in with your cherished self.
Shake a leg to Movement as Prayer (Good Ways to Listen: Movement to Let Off Steam).
Frame your life, set your sights, name a resolution for your coming year. Use The State of Being (The State of Being) to tell you what you need and want. Be sure one of your resolutions is based on becoming more self-accepting.
Check in with “What do I want?” and give it to yourself.
End with a closing ceremony that affirms and energizes you and creates a commitment to your new goals. Happy Birthday!
A One-Day Retreat with a Friend
This plan is designed to help you reconnect with someone you love but haven’t seen for a while or someone you need to get current with.
Prepare
Each woman gives thought on her own to how she wants to open and close the retreat. You might wish to bring photos or mementos of your friendship and build a friendship shrine. Also, each person must review the guidelines for deep listening.
Journals and pens.
Objects that represent your different selves (you can gather or make these on retreat).
Music to meditate to and music to dance to.
See Resources.
Drums and rattles (optional).
When you meet in your retreat place, spend some time getting unpacked and settled. Decide where your main retreat space will be.
See Retreating with Others.
Do the exercises in Intention together (Intention: Forming Your Intention). Form an intention for your shared retreat. You can do this before you retreat if you like. Discuss briefly how you would like to open and close your retreat, but don’t plan exactly what you will do. Instead, talk about your intent and your ideas, and decide how you will begin each deep listening circle; holding hands, breathing, or lighting a candle are simple and perfect.
Go for a walk together and chat. Agree to spend the last ten minutes of your walk in silence, to enter your retreat space in silence, and to begin your opening ceremony in silence.
Dedicate your time together with your opening ceremony. The different elements you each brought will come together if you listen to yourself and your friend.
Craft a trust list (Courting Yourself: Stories). List what you trust about your friend. Read your lists to each other.
Sit facing each other, knee to knee, and in a deep listening circle explore the following questions and topics. You can also do them as timed spontaneous writing practices and then read them to each other.
End with a hug, stretching, or dancing together.
Take a solitude break.
Remaining in separate space, do Gathering the Whole (Gathering the Whole). Come together to work on your mandalas. When finished, discuss in circle what you learned. Add to each other’s mandalas.
Take a break together. Walk, eat, laugh, relax. Down time. But remain conscious of cutting off feelings or deep discussion out of fear of intimacy. Note this and bring it up in the next circle. Do a check-in somewhere in the break.
When you are ready, come together for another circle. The topics this time are:
End this circle by doing the first practice under Suggestions for Wooing Yourself (Courting Yourself: Reclaiming Your Desires).
Time for more solitude. A nap or exercise might fit here. Notice how much more you appreciate your friendship when you have a moment to step away from it.
Listen to yourself. See Good Ways to Listen (Good Ways to Listen).
Come together. Contemplate something from Contemplations together (Contemplations).
Reading it to each other, do Melting (Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Addressed to the Heart).
Take a rest and fun break together. Segue into Getting Juicy (Getting Juicy). Play off each other’s energy. Be silly together.
Sit in a final deep listening circle around the questions
As part of your closing ceremony, express thankfulness to each other for venturing into such scary, intimate places. Make a covenant of what you are each willing to do to keep your friendship blazing bright. Find or make a token to remember your covenant. Commit to a firm date to retreat together again.
This can be done wherever you are.
Prepare
If you can get outside easily, do so.
Take five deep, cleansing breaths. Drop your jaw. Breathe into your belly. Run your fingers through your hair. Pull slightly on the roots of your hair. Scrunch your shoulders into your ears, tense, and release. Repeat three times.
For your opening ceremony, enclose yourself in a cone of protective white light (Where Will You Retreat?). (You can do this with your eyes open, in a meeting, or on the subway; it just takes suspension of disbelief and a little practice.)
If you can do so without attracting unwanted attention, reach your arms over your head, stretch, and imagine you are bringing this brilliant, healing light into your body through your outstretched hands. If you can’t do that, imagine it entering you through the crown of your head.
Allow this light to penetrate to wherever you feel tired, anxious, sad, or worried. Let it bathe that area for a moment.
Smile (even if you don’t feel like it) and say silently to yourself, “This is the present moment. There is goodness in this present moment. I trust myself to find it.”
For your closing ceremony, thank the cone of light and then imagine it condensing into the palm of your hand so that your palm glows with warmth and power. Place your hand over your heart, or clasp your hands together.