What’s New?
3 Day Yoga & Mindfulness Retreat ~ Bahamas, December 2023
December 15 – December 17, 2023
~ Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
and Ancient Yoga ~
[Read more…] about 3 Day Yoga & Mindfulness Retreat ~ Bahamas, December 20237 Day Mindfulness & Yoga Retreat ~ St. John, January 2025
January 25-February 1, 2025
~ Eco Resort Regeneration Retreat ~
7 days 7 nights
[Read more…] about 7 Day Mindfulness & Yoga Retreat ~ St. John, January 20255 Day Silent Meditation Retreat ~ Online March 2024
March 1 2024 – March 6 2024
~ Mindfulness-based approach to
meditation and yoga practice ~
[Read more…] about 5 Day Silent Meditation Retreat ~ Online March 2024Equanimity during the holidays
~Evenness of mind especially under stress~
Hello lovely friends,
At this time of year when we gather with family whom we treasure deeply (and who may present opportunities to practice evenness of mind and ease with ever-changing circumstances), the Equanimity Practice can be most valuable.
The practice, found on the Meditations page of my website, includes phrases to tuck in your back pocket in case Auntie Edna asks you questions you’d rather not answer. 🙂
Listen as often as you wish, and download to your device for easy access as you move with grace through the holidays.
xoxo,
Kate
Listen to Equanimity Practice – 8 minute guided meditation
The Equanimity Practice includes four phrases:
- May I accept things as they are
- May I accept others as they are
- May I accept myself as I am
- May I be at ease with ever changing circumstances
Remember – acceptance does not mean to agree with or condone. It just means “I see it is here and I will not suffer more by denying and constricting around what already is.”
If you only have time for one phrase over the holidays, pick the 4th. It reminds us that all things change. What is won’t last. Can we ride the wave until the storm is over? Or at least calms down?
Equanimity in the holiday season – or any time – is possible with practice.
Mindfulness Travel/Retreat
Seven years ago, in January, 2017, we had our first Mindfulness-Based Travel/Retreat. A group of us went to the Concordia-Eco Resort in St. John, Virgin Islands. As I anticipate taking another group there in January 2024, I reflect back on that amazing week ~ a delight to make new friends and renew relationships in the service of self-care radiating out to the world.
Recently I read The Last Best Cure about a woman with multiple medical problems and incapacitating illness. She spent a year with a doctor at Johns Hopkins doing all that was recommended and in fact was drastically improved. The research shows 4 things contributed to her changed health.
- Mindfulness Meditation
- Yoga
- Nature
- Acupuncture
St John USVI has 3 of 4 to offer!
Testimonials from the 2017 trip
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!!
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 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 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.
This trip was the perfect opportunity to get lost while finding myself. It was life-changing in just the way I needed without even knowing it.
This is a great retreat! Gets one away from it all. Sign me up for next year!
Ecotourism
Concordia Eco-Resort is part of the movement for Ecotourism which:
- Provides incentives to enhance biodiversity and preserve natural resources.
- Promotes conservation.
- Provides locals a source of income.
Our 2017 announcement is true for the 2024 Retreat:
Experience total peace, relaxation and renewal amongst thousands of unspoiled acres at the Concordia Eco-Resort on the quiet side of the Island of St. John. Morning meditation and yoga sessions will leave you feeling rested and renewed with a greater sense of awareness and a reduced sense of restriction. Optional (but included) afternoon activities will challenge your status quo. They will help you learn to make the most of each and every day by facing personal and professional challenges in a mindful way.
The cabins at Concordia-Eco Resort are elegantly simple and use sustainable building materials.
Mindfulness-Based Travel
Notes from Southeast Asia ~ October 7, 2023
Like a good movie that needed no editing,
there was not a day I would have wanted to miss.
We are having an amazing adventure, first in Bali, then Vietnam and now Cambodia.
Some highlights:
- Bali as a spiritual pilgrimage, doing water purification rituals, visiting night temples on Hindu holy days
- Balinese Women’s Center, in the mountains, providing a healing place for women and children.
- Motorcycle ride around the city of Saigon with sweet Vietnamese women
- Visit to the War Memorial in Vietnam, seeing photos and hearing stories of that time
- Visit to Killing Fields in Cambodia
- Cruise along the Mekong, noticing the juxtaposition of the old and the new, with daily meditation and yoga
Because we are practicing Mindfulness, in addition to morning yoga and meditation, we have used our practice as we have experienced the War Memorial in Vietnam and the Killing Fields in Cambodia.
This is what strikes me…
Whether you think about it in terms of humanity, nations, communities or individuals…
There is no time for anything less
Than truly appreciating the brief
Interaction we have with one another.
And
We’re not going to survive unless we walk
Gently on this earth together,
Until we touch something in others that
Feels just like the shards of our own pain,
The fluttering warmth of our own joy,
Until we sew their wounds into our hearts
And seal it with our own skin
These experiences are what, for me, links mindfulness with travel.
We are opening our hearts to what is and has been, the hurt and the healing, and have met so many beautiful people, making the world better, one breath at a time.
~~~~~~
Kate is leading the Southeast Asia Immersion Retreat and Tour.
More photos are available on Instagram/
Why Travel?
Notes from Southeast Asia September 17, 2023
Why travel? Such a lot of work and effort to plan and then make it happen. But of course, once we leave home (and all the “things” we think we have to get done before we depart) we remember: the newness of everything, the not-knowing of where to go or how our experience will be. The discovery, really calls us to live in the present, exercise our muscle of flexibility, and remember to pivot as gracefully as possible each moment a new challenge arises.
Two new “wake ups” I’ve realized thus far:
- Nineteen hours on a plane is a long time
- Singapore is a beautiful place, clean, safe and expensive (also cheap in some ways)
Public Housing Singapore
Public housing isn’t a scourge here. Eighty percent of people live in public housing and there are no homeless on the streets. Our bicycle guide (who is 34 and lives with his mom in public housing) told us there are three differences in public and private housing:
Public housing has (1) no pool,(2) no gym and (3) no fence around it. Interesting huh?
Singapore has to plant a tree for every tree that is cut down. It is green here everywhere. Plants grow on buildings and on walls and the air if full of O2. The beauty of life is thriving.
Street food now has been moved from street stalls (which were unsanitary) into food centers where now you can go and have 157 choices of what to eat. There are 17 Hawker centers around the city and the variety of clientele is matched by the variety of delicacies.
Our farewell last night was at the Garden on the Bay with Supertrees and a Cloud forest and a light show playing “Blue Moon, Marvelous Night for a Moon Dance, Clare de Lune, Moon River, and more. (image at top of page)
On to Bali today!!!
~~~~~~
Kate is leading the Southeast Asia Immersion Retreat and Tour.
More photos are available on Instagram/