Villas
Sumaya - Lake Atitlan, Guatemala
Yoga
& Writing Retreat
August 6-13, 2011
with Charles MacInerney
Cost: $1700
Yoga and writing retreats in Guatemala with Charles Macinerney are held each year at a Yoga Retreat Center on the shore of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, considered by many to be the most beautiful lakes in the world.
Since his first collaboration on a Yoga and Writing retreat in 1995 with Patricia Lewis, Charles has continued to offer 3 or 4 Yoga & Writing retreats each year, in Texas, Massachussetts, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Mexico. Charles Has been teaching yoga since 1989 and holds the highest registration currently available through the Yoga Alliance E-RYT-500. He is also a certified writing group facilitator through the Amherst Writers and Artists method.
Many of the participants are yoga students with little writing experience, and others are writers with little yoga experience. This is a wonderful opportunity for the yogis to fall in love with writing, and the writers with yoga.
Registration fee is $1700 for double occupancy delux room. Private rooms may be available for an extra fee, subject to availability. $500 non-refundable deposit required to hold space. Balance due July 20, 2011.
Price includes:
- Accommodations for 8-days and 7-nights
- Three gourmet vegetarian meals per day (fresh fish available upon request)
- Daily Yoga classes (see Schedule)
- Daily Writing workshops (see Schedule)
Please contact Charles prior to booking flights to discuss options for meeting up at the airport, or making your own way to the retreat center.
WHY
MIND/BODY WRITING? Stories are waiting in our bodies to be
told in our own voices. Memories are stored not only in our
brains but, perhaps even more powerfully, they are hidden
in our muscles, our glands, our guts, our breath. They are
wrapped in feelings. The practice of yoga, the joining of
body and mind, can open pathways into the feelings, memories,
stories and images embedded in the tissues.
This workshop is designed to help you shift your awareness and write from those deeper levels of consciousness. Through Hatha Yoga we will get in touch with our kinesthetic sense of self. We will use special meditation techniques to slow the mind and create and sustain a sense of the sacred throughout the retreat. A variety of special exercises utilizing tactile, visual, auditory, kinesthetic and olfactory "prompts" will help us reach deeply held images, and we will learn how to use Mind Mapping & Clustering techniques to generate, associate and manipulate ideas and information in new ways.
There
are usually a few students with experience in both writing and yoga, and
a few with no experience in either.
All levels of students are welcome, and all are made to feel comfortable in both the writing and the yoga. Although most participants choose to participate in all of the various activities and exercises, students are encouraged to consider the entire retreat as free time.
It is common to find a student napping in a hammock, kayaking, or reading, while others are participating in a workshop or class.
Charles is often assisted by at least one other yoga teacher and/or a writing facilitator with whom he works closely to ensure that new students get a solid introduction to the basics, and learn how to adapt each exercise to meet their needs and abilities, while more advanced students are challenged and encouraged to take their practice to a new level.
We hope you will be able to join us for Eight days and Seven nights of Creative Writing, Hatha Yoga, Meditation, Visualization, vegetarian cooking, and the renewing pleasures of Villa Sumaya and the incomparable Lake Atitlan.
QUOTES FROM PREVIOUS RETREATS
"Combining the physical limbering of yoga genuinely stretched my creativity. I touched parts of my talent I was not able to reach before." Ron Seybold - Editor of a professional newsletter
"The mindset that the retreat promoted and created stayed with me during subsequent weeks, making me more open to others and myself..." Carol Mackay - Professor of English at the University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
"My self consciousness and inexperience with yoga did not matter a whit. I found a quiet, slow pleasure in the movements." Gayle Miller.
"As
an M.D., having practiced medicine for 25 years, I have become acutely
aware of the critical importance of integrating body, mind and spirit
if one is to achieve wholeness and lasting health. This body-creative
mind experience was a wonderful opportunity for me personally to work
toward the goal that I have long tried to stimulate in my patients but
have often not been able to achieve myself. This workshop was for me a
magical experience and indeed a sacred endeavor." Dr. Don Charles
Wukasch - Thoracic Surgeon, Houston Texas.
"Even with no experience, I felt completely at ease in the same room with others who had been involved in yoga for years. I left the weekend with confidence, energy, and a new group of friends!" Ruth Kline.
 Photograph courtesy of Kathryn Bouma |
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