RETREATS COLLECTIVE — THE MANIFESTO

Retreats as sanctuaries of Practice & Love.

Retreats Collective is a community that creates unique immersive retreats with purpose. In every corner of this world, large or small, you will find your kith and kin, a community that follows rituals for self-reflection, connection and healing day in, day out.

A return to the heart.earth.hearth / The truest sense of retreat — a return to something essential, the Hearth.

The hearth is the ancient, sacred center of the home, a place of warmth where life gathers. Long before electricity, it was where fire was kept alive, where meals were shared, where stories were told, where people warmed their hands and their hearts.

To return to the hearth is to return to belonging, to community. It is a place to rest our bones, to warm our hands by the fire of shared silence, to breathe deeper than the day allows. It is a space where we are held, where we feel safe enough to soften, to share. A space of remembering that healing doesn’t have to be solitary, and that there is power in being witnessed. The Hearth is the embering flame of intimacy with life itself.

Our core philosophy is expressed through three principles, coloring all of our retreats.

Kula ― a Sanskrit word that can be translated as ‘community’ or ‘tribe’. The word implies a group of people coming together and the sense of belonging that we need to flourish and thrive. A soulful kinship we all require, where we can seek guidance and listen to the whole-hearted. It is also the physical place of rest and repose. The place of love and compassion where we hang our hearts, offer our anger, jealousy and fears. A community offers a stable ground, a home and hearth where we can return, again and again, to take refuge. It is a safe, non-judgmental and experimental place where we allow the most vulnerable expressions of body.mind.heart to blossom.

Sādhana ― ‘conscious daily spiritual practice’ or rituals. This is a steady repeated practice involving discipline, a process said to occur over time. Sādhana can imply many different liberation practices but only filled with a pure intention. Sādhana prepares us physically, energetically, emotionally, intellectually and blissfully for moksha, liberation. When we engage ourselves fully and give our whole heart to any ritual, this will bring us closer to the state of Yoga.

Moksha ― ‘liberation from all forms of suffering’. Moksha is the concept of ultimate liberation also known as ‘mukti’, relating to freedom of the Self. Yoga provides teachings for the body.mind.heart that can liberate and heal the individual soul, jivanmuktih. Moksha helps us clean the dirt of ignorance, avidya and desires of a worldly existence. We come to the fact that it is possible to have a beneficial and fulfilling life in the modern world and also grow spiritually, perhaps even attaining a little enlightenment while living.

About our retreats

A retreat worth creating, a life worth living.

Our retreats are designed to uncover our birthright — which is love and freedom. Once nurtured, the body.mind.heart can experience these essences as space and liberation.

Our retreats are made from the tapestry of being (our lives, our stories, our bodies, our bones), from the weight we carry (our sorrows, our cries, our shadows, our longing) from the light we hold (our hopes, our laughter, our voices, our hearts) and from the quiet between (our prayers, our silence, our whispers, our breaths).

Our retreats offer a down-to-earth approach to nurturing and healing — collective and individual — for soft vulnerability, unhurried slowness, and the steady weaving of calm resilience. A communal (and personal) journey, honouring our philosophy and values, where footsteps are softer and voices louder.

More and more, we encounter the need to set aside space and time to dedicate ourselves to the practices, to perform our vows with sincerity, to feel safe enough to soften the hardened shell of self-preservation, alongside a healthy serving of self-love. To remember the living tradition, a complete system for accessing the lasting happiness available to all beings.

To sit in circle

We wish to honour and remember each one of the participants of our past retreats, who once chose to join us along the way, offering their own stories and voices for the benefit of the collective.

When we sit in a circle, we dissolve the lines of before and after, above and below. Only unity remains — a shared oneness of mind and heart. This is the ground we return to, the philosophy that holds us all.

When we tend to our own needs and dare to sit with our vulnerabilities, we learn the language of compassion for all beings, and grow our ability to care for one another. What begins within us ripples outward - a quiet strength that nourishes the collective. We are in this, equally, together. For ourselves, for the whole.

So we return to the knowing that we are not alone.

So we return to a world ready to love extravagantly & unconditionally.

A place where love always leads us to listen more deeply, understand more fully and forgive more freely. A place where we can dance under the gentle rain that will blossom hurt into healing.

With love, reverence and joy,

We hope to quest, to voyage and explore with you — for the benefit of something greater.

Let our retreats be our pause, our prayer, our permission.

To return. To land. To belong.

Words by Eva Lucie Daniela.

Visuals by Retreats Collective.

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