The 2019 Women’s Mindfulness Retreat Nov 14-17 was very powerful!
One of the women who attended the 2019 Women’s Mindfulness Retreat this past weekend up at the Rocky Mountain EcoDharma Retreat Center shared at the end of the weekend that what I was teaching in her experience here were: “Tools for the Path to your Soul. These tools are not just like the ones I learned to stop drinking and survive, they are tools that take you deeper into your real Self,” she said. Gratitude kept her alive, now Kindness is helping her drop deeper.
Self-Compassion and Mindfulness are tools for finding the Path to your Soul, but it’s not until you actually start practicing these tools that your experience shows you what they are all about. When we sit and listen deeply; when we stop judging what is there and learn to be curious, we start noticing a new awareness of ourselves. Then we learn to not push it away, the uncomfortable and the exciting, but to be there in the silence and just sit with it all. 
On this retreat, we have 2 days of talking and connection time along with our meditation sessions. On our third day together we sat, walked and ate in silence for 12 hours and there was a notable difference in how deeply we dropped into our sensory experience of body and breath, wind and sunshine on the face and body, feet gently touching the floor in rhythmic steps over and over. We were just getting in touch with the pain and joy held in our bodies waiting to be noticed and attended to. 
These tools are what I call the path to your inner transformation; and they allow you to pay closer attention so you can find the healing you deserve and want. Isn’t that our soul, our essence and our authenticity? This path allows the layers to begin to fall off as we learn to listen and slow down, to learn how to witness ourselves and what we are feeling and needing. Befriending ourselves.
Another participant told me she felt like she was able to move into grieving (step 3 Deep Diving) her major losses and issues from her childhood at the retreat, when she couldn’t do it before. These tools can bring you right to the place inside of you where you need to go to grieve. But, you have to be courageous enough to listen and pay attention and not run away. There was so much fierce courage in the room at this retreat!!
When we are on this path, then we start noticing who we really are inside. In midlife, we have many opportunities to listen, to grow, to re-define or re-orient ourselves to something calling us deeper. Each time we go deeper, move into our pain and losses and face them, we allow more of our authenticity to come forward. This is the Midlife Voyage of Transformation!!
Take a look at the 5 Steps of the Voyage on my website here and take the Assessment to see where you are in your midlife transition now.
