Heart-Based Mindfulness

with Kate Mitcheom - CNM, MSN, RYT, EMP

#katemitcheom

2018 St John Retreat at Concordia Eco-Resort

Took place – January 27th – February 4th 2018: Mindfulness and Yoga Retreat

With retreat leaders Kate Mitcheom and Ellen Saltonstall

Concordia Eco-Resort Heart-Based Mindfulness

Enjoy a nourishing, restorative vacation and mindfulness retreat all rolled into one!

Message about the Retreat from Kate Mitcheom:

This past January, eighteen of us spent a week in Retreat at the Concordia Eco-Resort on the Island of St. John, Virgin Islands. We enjoyed morning yoga that was adapted for any body, followed by breakfast, then a couple hours of Mindfulness and meditation followed by lunch and then an excursion either hiking, snorkeling or just hanging out at the beach or pool.  At the end of the week we had connected and made new friends, strengthened our bodies, eased our minds and replenished our spirits.  I do hope you can join us this coming year!

All the best, Kate

Last year’s participants had this to say about their experience:

“Thanks for a transformative adventure!!”

“It was really a life altering experience for me on many different levels.” 

“A time to breathe, work out the knots and find the joy.”

“To be on an island that is so much National Park was a true privilege.”

Sound good?

Cost of Retreat  = $2094.

Price includes lodging/travel/excursions on the island/ yoga workshop… Does not include airfare/ground transportation/ferries or food.

St John

Consider….

  • Grounding yourself in sustainable eco-lodging, close to the earth, the warmth of the sun and the steady gentle breezes, go to sleep with the lapping of the waves.
  • Exploring ruins, hiking the national park trails, snorkeling with through colorful coral with rays, sitting by the pool or a moonlit stroll on the beach.
  • Nourishing yourself with fresh and easy meals from the Cafe Concordia or making your own in the kitchenettes provided.
  • Bringing along a friend or meeting new friends at the outdoor cafes and dancing into the evening with the locals.

This retreat at Concordia Eco-Resort from Jan. 27th – Feb. 4th 2018, includes daily sessions of yoga, meditation, and Bodymind Ballwork. Afternoon activities will include a range of water sports, with the opportunity to relax and reflect in an unforgettable location where tree frogs and hummingbirds feel as comfortable as you do.

[one-half-first]

Explore….

Concordia Eco-Resort’s

[one-third-first]

Traveling With Us

  • Stress free logistics
  • Amazing community of folks
  • Time alone whenever it beckons
  • Opportunities to practice mindfulness on and off the mat
  • Sense of adventure

[/one-third-first]
[one-third]

You’ll Love

  • Well organized travel and itinerary
  • Stunning destinations/exciting side trips
  • Deep yoga and mindfulness teachings
  • Skilled facilitators
  • Sense of being fully present

[/one-third]
[one-third]

Experience Counts

  • Over 40 years teaching yoga and meditation
  • Savvy travel guide
  • Dynamic community builder

[/one-third]

Sample Schedule: Daily Classes & Workshops
7:00 – 8:45 am Yoga
Breakfast
10:30 – 12:30 pm Mindfulness Workshop
 Lunch
1:30 – 5:00 pm  Afternoon of swimming, hiking, snorkeling, napping
4:40 – 5:30 pm BodyMind Ballwork (none on Sunday, Monday or Thursday)
5:30 pm onwards  Dinner

More testimonials from previous participants:

I really loved this retreat!!! I feel so much more centered and calm since coming back. I find myself back in the magic of St. John every morning when I meditate. Every part of that week was so wonderful!! I did so much more than I had expected to do with regards to the yoga and swimming. (I can still see the Eagle Ray in my mind). What a great experience! There were so many interesting people on the retreat and I felt a special connection to many of them. [My roommate] (best roommate ever) and I have already gotten together. What a great match!!

Thanks so much to both you and Ellen for putting this whole thing together! It was really a life altering experience for me on many different levels.

A really wonderful week of spiritual enrichment and growth both for those with some experience with yoga and meditation and those just getting started in an amazing setting. A time to breathe work out the knots and find the joy.

It was great—the morning meditation and ballwork /yoga were really well done, and the opportunity to see such beautiful places, fish, turtles and coral reefs are amazing. I might emphasize that a lot in telling folks why doing this in St. John’s was SO worth the travel, cost, etc. To be on an island that is so much National Park was a true privilege.

I am so calm about my torn up tire from driving to Newark airport and getting the rim repaired and getting the new tire and riding on a donut and I have stopped cursing potholes and have accepted that I am throwing away gelt hard earned and staying mellow and mindful all day at work.  Haven’t even put all my clothes away from trip. Thanks for a transformative adventure!!

Resistance and Surrender

One thing about the new year is that the beginning of 2017 combined with the darkness of the season just naturally invites inner reflection.

I sometimes wonder about how much we miss because we are in the habit of saying “no”.  No thats not the way I do it, No, I don’t like it that way, No, I don’t care for that or her or him or them….etc

It can be refreshing to pause for a moment when “No” arises and check it out, not with any expectation of change but just with curiosity.  How does “No” feel in the body, notice especially the jaw, the belly, the shoulders, the forehead. Maybe there is tension in the brain. It can be helpful to be aware of how different states of mind feel in the body. Simply gathering information to be able to see and then to choose.

We can use “No” to keep the status quo in place or we can use “No” to give ourselves a sense of safety or boundries.  Those boundries can turn into walls and those walls not only keep others out but keep us locked within.

I offer this poem for your reflection…..

The Healing Time


Finally on my way to yes
I bumped into
All the places
Where I said no
To my life
All the untended wounds
The red and purple scars
Those hieroglyphs of pain
Carved into my skin, my bones
Those coded messages
That send me down

The wrong street

Again and again
Where I find them
The old wounds
The old misdirections
And I lift them 
One by one
Chose to my heart
And I say holy
Holy
-Peshawar Bertler-


“Thanks Robert Frost” by David Ray

Kate Mitcheom Mindfulness Meditation and MBSR“Thanks Robert Frost” by David Ray
from: Music of Time: Selected and New Poems

Do you have hope for the future?
someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end.
Yes, and even for the past, he replied,
that it will turn out to have been all right
for what it was, something we can accept,
mistakes made by the selves we had to be,
not able to be, perhaps, what we wished,
or what looking back half the time it seems
we could so easily have been, or ought…
The future, yes, and even for the past,
that it will become something we can bear.
And I too, and my children, so I hope,
will recall as not too heavy the tug
of those albatrosses I sadly placed
upon their tender necks. Hope for the past,
yes, old Frost, your words provide that courage,
and it brings strange peace that itself passes
into past, easier to bear because
you said it, rather casually, as snow
went on falling in Vermont years ago.

DOWNLOAD HERE

An interesting reflection on this poem can be found here:

ON BEING

Copyright © 1990 by Joy Harjo.
Reprinted from Wesleyan University Press
via The Poetry Foundation Website

“Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952

“Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952
from “Words Under the Words: Selected Poems”

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye.

DOWNLOAD HERE

“With that Moon Language” by Hafiz

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, “love me”
of course you do not do this out loud,
otherwise someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.
why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying,
with that sweet moon language,
What every other eye in this world is dying to hear?

DOWNLOAD 3 Poems

“Coconut” by Paul Hostovsky from Bird in the Hand

Bear with me I
want to tell you
something about
happiness
it’s hard to get at
but the thing is
I wasn’t looking
I was looking
somewhere else
when my son found it
in the fruit section
and came running
holding it out
in his small hands
asking me what
it was and could we
keep it, it only
cost 99 cents
hairy and brown
hard as a rock
and something swishing
around inside
and what on earth
and where on earth
and this was happiness
this little ball
of interest beating
inside his chest
this interestedness
beaming out
from his face pleading
happiness
and because I wasn’t
happy I said
to put it back
because I didn’t want it
because we didn’t need it
and because he was happy
he started to cry
right there in aisle
five so when we
got home we
put it in the middle
of the kitchen table
and sat on either
side of it and began
to consider how
to get inside of it

Uh Huh by Holly Near

I feel so sad…ah ha
I feel so bad…ah ha
I feel so mad…ah ha – Breathe in, breathe out

My mind is here..ah ha
My mind is there…ah ha
Life is unfair….ah ha – Breathe in, breathe out

I feel so blue…ah ha
Too much to do…ah ha
I’m blaming you…ah ha – Breathe in, breathe out

It moves so fast…ah ha
And nothing lasts…ah ha
Just let it pass…ah ha – Breathe in, breathe out

I want to kill..I want to kill
Afraid I will…afraid I will
Try to be still…try to be still – Breathe in, breathe out

Come back to here…ah ha
Let go of fear…ah ha
My mind is clear…ah ha – Breathe in, breathe out

I feel so sad
I feel so bad
I feel so mad – Breathe in, breathe out…AHHHH HAAAA