A weekend retreat to support effective, regenerative social change work.
This weekend is offered to resource activists, community workers, educators, organisers and advocates to work with the complexities of social change.
We will explore how the integration of inner and outer practice can sustain our efforts while increasing our impact.
Over the weekend we will:
- Connect around shared experiences and challenges of social change work
- Learn foundational skills for mindfulness in stillness and in movement
- Use creative, embodied group processes to explore responses to complex issues
- Have contemplative time in the forest
- Practise periods of silence to support integration and insight
- Use ritual to strengthen intention in how we work.
The exact form of the weekend will respond to the needs of people who attend.
Why attend?
Trying to work for a better world is too often marked with burnout, feelings of isolation, and unhelpful conflicts. Our best intentions meet with complexity as the very forces we are trying to change shape our interactions. Experiences of privilege and marginalisation rub while unconscious habits, reactivity and urgency make effective responses difficult.
Through practicing presence, we can more clearly see and engage with social and ecological issues. In being mindful of what is going on for us in each moment we can also work more effectively with others. This can free us from stories of right and wrong, us and them, and increase our potential for social impact.
The Wangapeka retreat centre offers a place of peace and natural beauty to take a step away from everyday patterns and challenges. Overlooking mountains and valleys on the edge of Kahurangi national park, it is a supportive environment for reflection, insight and healing.
About the facilitators
Rowan seeks to support people to realise their power together and create soulful social change. He has a decade of experience in grassroots community projects and political campaigns and an academic base in ecology and community psychology. He facilitates trainings and events that draw on this together with six years of dedicated meditation practice, extensive rites of passage work, clowning, poetry, gardening, and dancing in the wild world.
Marama draws on 12 years of yoga practice and two years of meditation practice. She started grassroots organising in 2003 and has been working with unions for 8 years. She is an artist, gardener and cat lover.
Costs
$225 (early bird $195 if paid in full at least one week before the course starts).
The costs include: your own room, 3 meals a day (including tea and coffee) and the cook’s fee.
Plus Dana (donation) to Rowan and Marama for their facilitation.
If using Paypal please add 5% of the total cost and include with your payment to cover Paypal’s fees – many thanks.
To register please fill out our online registration form
*Please consider becoming a Wangapeka member – click here for details.