Breath and Savor – a Mindful Eating Retreat
Breath and Savor – a Mindful Eating Retreat
With Juliana Griese and Nicky Woodward
Wednesday April 6th to Sunday April 10th, 2022
Food and eating are so much a part of our lives, but how much are we present to it? When we attend to our food and eating habits we can ask ourselves questions such as: Why am I eating? What am I really hungry for? Am I at peace with food, with eating and my body?
With these questions in mind, I have been exploring ways to change my relationship with food and eating, and to fulfill my emotional need for love and care in a different way. You are welcome to join me on this massive journey! Massive because it feels impossible to go in another direction sometimes: compulsive eating, battling with weight and body, eating habits that end in chronic diseases… Lifelong conditionings playing in the mind and body. But the willingness to change is here and the tools are available all the time: awareness, self love and connection.
Jan Chozen Bays, the doctor and zen buddhist teacher, author of “Mindful Eating – a guide to rediscovering a healthy and joyful relationship with food”, says that it is our birthright to eat healthily using our inner wisdom, the one that is with us since the beginning. Life circumstances can upset this capacity and we can find ourselves confused around our food choices ending up with a loud inner critique that is self destructive. Through Mindful Eating we can rediscover this innate wisdom and bring back the joy of eating in a way that connects us to a healthy and good life.
In this retreat we are going to work to become more aware of our body before, during and after eating. To deepen the connection with the body, practicing to distinguish the different hungers that are part of human nature and need to be respected (physical, social, pleasure and emotional or the 9 hungers as Jan Chozen Bays teaches). We will explore the gut-brain connection through attention to the way we move, and learn how to create neurological balance and ease. Collectively these activities will enable us to eat without guilt or shame and operate from a place of care and love for the whole aspects of ourselves and the world.
This process of learning will be simple and gentle work. We will enjoy our meals with Mindful Eating practices. We will share our stories and listen attentively to each other. We will offer daily movement for awareness sessions in a way that helps us reconnect to our body’s innate inner wisdom. We will deepen our practice of breathing meditation and nature connection as a fundamental support for these explorations. With gentleness and respect this retreat will provide a way for us to be even more aware of what is going on in our body and learn to love it!
Everybody is welcome!
The Facilitators
Juliana Griese: I’ve been exploring and sharing progressively since 2007, contemplative practices (meditation) to know myself better and relate to myself healthier; to cultivate wholesome relations to other humans and the ecology of life. I was trained as a Mindfulness Instructor in Brazil by the Kiwi Jangchub Reid who has a strong history of contribution to the unfolding of Wangapeka Centre. In 2016, I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue and an autoimmune disease and realized that my relationship with food, eating and my body was full of struggling and masking something deeper that I needed to address. I had to do something about it. It became my path for awakening and I feel that it is time to share and explore this with a community.
Nicky Woodward: I have a professional background in health and have been involved with mindful movement through education, rehabilitation, Yoga and personal practice for over 30 years. I am a certified Awareness Through Movement© (ATM) teacher and NZ Guild certified Feldenkrais practitioner (2010). I have been influenced by a number of teachers over this time, and as part of this have studied with both Tarchin Hearn and Leander Kane at Wangapeka.
I have been studying mindful movement and completed an Advanced Yoga Teacher Training programme with Donna Farhi (2000), Ruthy Alon’s Bones for Life programme (2009), and I attend regular somatic movement seminars and Advanced Feldenkrais teacher training programmes. More information about my practice, current work and interests can be found from my Movement Rewired website – http://movementrewired.co.nz/
Costs
Cost includes food, accommodation, a cooks fee, and a resource fee.
Member: $384 (hut/unit); $312 (camp)
Non Member: $424 (hut/unit) $324 (camp)
Dana/Koha for the facilitators is not included in these prices. To let the energy flow and contribute you can choose to give what is in your heart combining with what is possible for you at this moment. A Dana/Koha box will be available at the Centre.
Registration
Everybody is welcome!
For more information, please contact the Course Manager, Juliana jugriese@gmail.com
To register please fill out our online registration form
If using Paypal please add 5% of the total cost and include with your payment to cover Paypal’s fees – many thanks.
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