My love for Retreats (especially those with heart-centred practices) all began back in 2012…the start of the end….or the start of the start?! I knew there was something more than the stress and frozenness I felt in my body and heart so I immersed myself in Silent Retreats, Dark Retreats and Sacred Sexuality Retreats.
And as I felt the profound impact of removing myself from my day to day roles and identities I realised what an immense gift these spaces were for embracing my shadow and connecting to the light of my Heart..AND most importantly that the insights gleaned during these retreats were long lasting (if I prioritised time for integration).
When I left Australia in 2010 I spent a couple of years travelling and having a lot of fun exploring who I was outside of a marriage and corporate career…oh what a book the stories of that year would make! But in 2012 I knew it was time to invest my energy into something more solid and the whispers of a Yoga Hostel or Retreat Centre began to form. I had an investor looking at properties in Brazil with me and we were all lined up to partner in creating a Yoga Hostel in an incredible old castle in Rio de Jeneiro but the deal fell over and I was gutted.
I took it as a sign that I wasn’t quite ready…and I planned to take myself offline to ground and get a little clearer of my vision before looking for another property. I searched the web for a Yoga Hostel to go and stay at and pretty much only found one back then.
Never being one to do things by halves (although I’m a little more discerning about the adventures I take now!) 11 hours in the air (and $1000 in airfares) later I found myself on a one month Yoga and Meditation intensive in Guatemala. It didn’t make much sense when I thought I was looking for property in Brazil, but something in my heart told me to go anyway.
So I did. And I walked into my first Hridaya Yoga class at what was then Kaivalya Yoga (now the beautiful Love Evolve Awaken) and my life changed in ways I’m still digesting today. During that first month of retreating into the heart my vision for a retreat space continued to take root.
Those dreams have been bubbling away in the back ground for over a decade. During one 7 day dark retreat the words that just kept coming again and again were a bit cliche but all I could hear was “Create the space and they will come”.
I thought literally make the space, the physical space so I worked hard at planning and discussing options with a couple of beautiful spaces in Guatemala, I looked at buying land there but eventually I settled into supporting others in their projects. I immersed myself in the way of Yoga and let my dreams gently simmer in the background.
Over the years I was involved in several very beautiful spaces around the world but my full retreat dream just never blossomed as I thought it would. And it’s only been in the last year that I’ve come to realise the ‘Space’ that I needed to create was inside of me…humbling to realise now how obvious that sounds. Funny how the mind can have blinkers to the obvious sometimes!
When I returned to Australia the busyness of life had slowly crept back in, between working part time jobs, running a cafe, step mumming and building my small business I began to feel a build up of stress and disconnection in my nervous system again not so dissimilar to how I’d felt when I left Australia originally. I felt over full in ways that were deeply uncomfortable to me. Then life gave me a big nudge last year to empty out a little…or completely is probably the more accurate description. And I’ve spent a year of watching this beautiful land that I’m blessed to now live on (that ironically has everything we need for nature based retreats!). A year of reconnecting to mother nature through birds and animals and insects, trees, the sun, the moon and the wind and my own inner seasons and cycles. A year of offering Yin based programs to beautiful women. A year of healing old trauma patterns and wounds, and in many ways a year of me retreating from the wearing of busyness as a badge of success.
And late last year the desire to welcome people for residential retreats began to bubble up again. A remembering of my original vision for Heart of Rest to be a space where Carers, Healers, Practitioners, Sensitive Souls and Giant Hearted Humans could retreat from their (YOUR) every day roles and identities and the hustle and bustle of the modern world while they expanded internally.
A place where you could feel held while you slowed down, shed some layers and experienced your natural state of aliveness and inner wisdom. So that you could go back out into the world to share your magic from a grounded, expansive, enlivened, inspired space.
I wanted you to have enough time to remember how easily you respond when in the right conditions for your nervous system. And I wanted you to have the space to begin to trust yourself again as you felt the joy of BEING rather than DOING.
The land here at Treeby has very clear seasons, and so do I! While the Summer season has it’s flurry of social connections, the heat and dryness demand I slow in order to see the beauty of the land. And it’s been a beautiful reminder to not try to fight against nature’s flow. In the past couple of weeks the promise of Autumn and her first rains can be felt in the cooler mornings and evenings….and with that the opening of Retreat season here at Treeby.
I’ll be going slow to begin with while the land awaits for the first rains to replenish Her (and me!) but our Nurture overnight stays are open again for booking and my 3 night Easter retreat is up and running (and half booked).
So this is just a little love note to you to say thank you for everyone along the way who has listened to my Retreat dreams, embarked on them with me, believed in me and encouraged me to keep dreaming.
And an extra big thank you for all of you who have been very loud and clear in echoing back to me your love for this land and desire to spend more time here. I’ve been listening, and I can’t wait to welcome you for a Retreat into the Heart of mama nature.
With Love
Lani
