Why should you retreat?
Because your nervous system can’t reset in a state of constant stimulation. A retreat shifts you from fight-or-flight to rest-and-digest, recalibrating your internal compass toward clarity and calm.
📈 Most of us spend our days in overdrive—juggling deadlines, managing relationships, squeezing rest between pings, posts, and pings again. The truth is, our nervous systems weren’t built for constant acceleration.
📉 But they are built for recovery. And that’s exactly what this retreat offers.
Research shows it only takes a few hours in nature to lower cortisol, restore focus, and improve decision-making. What most of us need isn’t more stimulation. It’s a pause long enough to feel like ourselves again.
That’s what this day delivers.
Awaken In Nature Summer Daylong Mindfulness Retreat
This daylong immersion experience welcomes you to truly set aside the hustle and bustle of the city and your daily life. Drop into what some call “slow living”, first by considering the first invitation of the day:
- Drop off your phone & disconnect from technology.
- The day’s agenda invites further "arriving" and "dropping in" to the present moment.
- Pause & Reflect at our Intention Board, also known as your “sankalpa” or aspiration of becoming and how you will incline your heart for the day.
- Take Your Seat: Awaiting you is a special jewel-toned meditation cushion, a personal journal, your very own Heart Stone, and color-coordinated yoga mat.
This unique offering is meant to create a core of community practitioners who are drawn to Nature, to lay the foundation toward ways of living more gently within the Cycle of Life with all living beings and to explore ancient meditation and contemplation practices.
Grounded in the 2600 year old practices of insight (vipassana) and present moment attention, the day will guide retreat guests to “put down” the hectic hustle and open themselves to the soothing rhythms of “the nature pill at Patch” which permeates our 20 acre forest preserve and nature sanctuary.
Mindfulness in Nature has been shown by the NIH (National Institutes of Health) to reduce anxiety and increase calm. Many of us “know” that a walk helps calm the savage beast, yet few of us know how to actually experience Nature as Nature itself.
We will guide you through the foundations of how earth-focused awareness practices began, weave you into the neuroscience of anxiety and offer the antidote of the Mindful Pocket Park’s “deep dive” into how to Pay Attention With Your Senses or P.A.W.S. When we learn through Sight, Sound, Scent, Touch and Taste how to offer ourselves present moment awareness, we open to the joys of birdsong, the sweetness of a breeze, the the lilting uplift of the chimes in our Sound Garden, and the sacred act of offering a prayer to the air before our Tibetan Prayer Wheel in the Touch Garden
Led by trained teachers of mindfulness, yoga, resilience and sound healing, you’ll experience first-hand the benefits of increased awareness, concentration, meditation and contemplation. Learn more about each of them below, check out the day’s treats of soothing spaces, tastes and time together.
