Tending Liminality: Consciousness, Body, and Earth

The simplest pattern is the clearest.

Content with an ordinary life,

you can show all people the way

back to their own true nature — Laozi (Lao Tzu), Tao Te Ching, verse 65

When we tend to and align with the cycles and seasons, we glimpse the divine. The period between the start of the calendar new year and the beginning of the lunar new year is a time of liminality. Midwinter is a time for reflection, gestation, and non-doing, while we await the birth of a new cycle. It is a beautiful phase to synchronize our minds and bodies with the phenomenal world. Within our collective work, it is an equally poignant time to mend our Western psyches to nature, tending to our disconnected and disjointed worldviews and practices. 

During this five-day retreat, we will work with our minds, bodies, and nature to bring our earth-based origins and contemporary, often problematic Western psyches into greater harmony. Participants should be prepared to engage in substantial embodied practices — including meditation, taijiquan, and qigong — listen to short talks, spend time in nature, work in pairs and small groups, keep a contemplative journal, and be in respectful, compassionate community. Our work will bring the balance of the feminine water and earth as we prepare to welcome the Year of the Fire Sheep.

Participants in this workshop will experience:

• Extensive sitting, standing, and walking meditation
• Short talks that introduce key ideas and themes
• Substantial embodied practices, including taijiquan and qigong
• Interactive experiential exercises in pairs and small groups
• Time in nature
• Contemplative journal reflections

Please bring clothing layers for comfort both indoors and outdoors, comfortable flat walking shoes, and a waterproof jacket in case of rain. We also recommend bringing a journal and pen.

Recommended reading: Cultivating Qi: An Introduction to Chinese Body-Mind Energetics by Jun Wang, Returning the Self to Nature: Undoing Our Collective Narcissism and Healing Our Planet by Jeanine M. Canty, Tao Te Ching (any version and suggest Stephen Mitchell’s New English Version)