THE PLACE THE LIGHT ENTERS

*Save the date! Tickets go on sale Jan 1st 2018*

MORE INFORMATION AND TO BOOK:

https://theplacethelightenters.eventbrite.com/

THE PLACE THE LIGHT ENTERS

A 5-Day Journey of Deep Rest, Radical Self-Compassion, and Returning Home

With nondual author JEFF FOSTER and psychotherapist MATT LICATA, PhD

*Plus special guest mindfulness and Yoga Nidra trainer KELLY BOYS*

“The wound
is the place
where the light
enters you.”
–  Rumi

Are you on a path of psychological growth, emotional healing, or spiritual transformation? 

Despite the many insights and realizations, do you find yourself longing for something more?

Does it still feel as if something is missing?

On this retreat, we will turn the entire search upside down, dissolve the trance of shame and unworthiness, and embrace ourselves as we are.  

Rather than abandoning our lives, our hearts, and our bodies, we will travel directly inside the core wound of separation and infuse it with presence, with holding, and with love. 

We will discover the light that’s blazing at our center, allowing the search of a lifetime to unravel. 

And return Home together. 

COME JOIN US IN LOVELAND, COLORADO, AND LET MIND, BODY AND SPIRIT UNWIND, UNRAVEL AND REST IN A WARM, EMPATHIC HOLDING FIELD OF PRESENCE.

These days, it’s clear that a full-spectrum path of spirituality and healing must address multiple dimensions of what it means to be an open, awake, and compassionate human being. Meditation, emotional healing, psychological work, relational maturity, and being grounded in the body are all required to live lives of freedom, connectedness, and presence. Even if we have a profound spiritual realization, but the fruits of that realization do not infuse the relative world of our body, emotions, relationships, and work in the world, we sense something is missing. 

From April 4-9, we will gather in beautiful Loveland, Colorado, where we will engage an in-depth journey of nondual spirituality and meditation; guidance and support in shadow work, emotional healing, and discovering the tantra of everyday life; plus gentle movement and embodied mindfulness practices, all in the context of a grounded awareness which does not seek to “fix” us, but celebrates the mystery and sacredness that we already are. Together we will exlore the mysteries of both being and becoming, acceptance and change, deep rest and a full embrace of life. 

During the course of the retreat, each morning you will rest in nondual spaciousness and presence with international author and spiritual teacher Jeff Foster; in the afternoon you will explore the alchemy of psychological and emotional integration with psychotherapist and author Matt Licata, PhD; and prior to the evening session, you will enjoy somatic-based mindfulness practices with author and mindfuless trainer to the United Nations and Google, Kelly Boys.

At the conclusion of each day, in the evening there will be a dialogue between Matt and Jeff, where they will explore the ground of a loving, embodied, nondual presence – the place where spirituality and therapy meet, the Home we never leave – and how the divine expresses itself in the chaotic, sweet, glorious mess of our ordinary lives.

With humour, playfulness, insight, and compassion, Jeff and Matt will make spirituality simple, reachable, and human again, questioning and exposing outdated myths of enlightenment and healing along the way!

Through the provocative and compassionate guidance of three experienced authors and teachers, you will be invited to a place of deep inner stillness and a full-spectrum embrace of your humanness. In the space between meetings, you can walk and rest in the holding field of the Rocky Mountains, and enjoy delicious and nourishing food prepared by expert chefs, using ingredients grown locally using sustainable methods, served with love.

With over five hours of teaching, support, and guidance each day, this retreat is open to anyone who is ready to discover their true nature and explore how this realization might infuse their daily life. From beginners to advanced meditators, from therapists to artists, businesspeople, healers and everyone in-between, if you have an interest in spirituality and healing, mindfulness, meditation, self-compassion, or you just long to live a life of rest, presence, grace, and creativity, we would love to meet you, here in the Heart.

“‎Perhaps everything that frightens us is,
in its deepest essence,
something helpless
that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

                                    KELLY BOYS, OUR SOMATIC-BASED MINDFULNESS TRAINER

                                                                 BEAUTIFUL SUNRISE RANCH

                                                         TYPICAL GUEST ROOM AT SUNRISE

INFORMATION ON THE RETREAT

RETREAT SCHEDULE

The schedule is subject to change at any moment, but in order to give you some sense of how the days may flow, we have provided a sample schedule below:

10:30am to 12:00pm – Meditation and talk with Jeff Foster

1:30pm to 3:00pm – Meditation, talk, and questions/ answers/ dialogue with Matt Licata

4:00pm to 5:30pm – Guided mindfulness, yoga nidra, and integration with Kelly Boys

7:30pm to 9:00pm – Meditation and talk/ dialogue with Matt Licata and Jeff Foster

HOW TO REGISTER

Please note that there are two registration processes required to attend the retreat! You will register and pay here at Eventbrite for tuition (starting January 1st). In addition, you must also register directly with Sunrise Ranch, for acommodations and food, even if you plan to stay off campus. While there are commuter rates available for those of you staying elsewhere, we do suggest that you stay on campus if that is possible for you and if space permits. Please stay tuned for a link to Sunrise where you can find all of the information you’ll need about this second part of the registration process.

IMPORTANT – PLEASE READ! 

Please note that while therapeutic methods and approaches will be covered, the retreat is not a therapy group or a substitute for personal psychotherapy. The retreat is not designed to work personally with psychological or emotional disorders, or for those with challenging trauma, anxiety, or depression. If you are suffering from difficult forms of these conditions, please consider whether this retreat is appropriate for you, as you keep in mind that we will not be able to provide personal psychological work during the retreat. 

While it is not a formal silent retreat, please note that it will take place in a contemplative, quiet, and meditative environment. Given the nature of this work, it is important that we create a very sacred container in which we can make this journey of the heart together, one that is safe, supportive, and honoring of the deepest longing within us. While not a formal meditation retreat, it is similar in spirit, as we take time out of our busy lives to rest, to inquire, to open our hearts, to listen, and to remember something we may have forgotten.

While deep relationships with your co-journeyers can and do form on these retreats – lifelong friendships – it is important to remember that the retreat is not primarily a social gathering, and it is our invitation that you spend the majority of your time in quiet, contemplation, attending to your body, your heart, your psyche, and your spirit. Listening deeply and bringing a new level of awareness, care, compassion, and love to yourself. Thank you for your co-operation. 

TESTIMONIALS FROM PAST PARTICIPANTS

“Thank you for such a beautiful and powerful event. I came away with such a deeper understanding of the power of our presence and self-love through this practice. The retreat was lovely, and I felt such rest and relief.”

“It was a life game-changer, a beautiful, rich and exquisite line of demarcation in my non-path path, journey without destination…”

“After a lifetime of spiritual quest, after all the insights, experiences, revelations, I finally found the missing ingredient that gives the courage to stay here, now, without the reference to my personal drama. The infinite tenderness that addresses the human being. Infinite, beautiful, human mystery…”

“Over 25 years of jumping from one “next best method” to the next, feels like it’s finally over. The lessons are so easily applied in daily life, don’t have to burn special incense, ring a bell 33 times or squeeze myself in a vice grip while chanting in a foreign tongue. Loving this!”

“A wonder-filled event… I LOVED every minute of it!!! Your talks resonated deep within me, and I bow with sincere respect to your ability to hold this practice while listening to people’s stories..”

“Sitting in the many sessions, meeting people I might not normally meet, but hearing their archetypal struggles…. having the time and space to connect to an understanding that goes beyond … and coming away with a resonance from all this that has me gently smiling as I type you this message…”

“The experience was such a beautiful death for me. A death to my identity, as a concrete thing, a death to the old idea of relationship & attachment, a death to my idea of the world as it is/was. What I created was a place of EVER fluxing, riding the wave of the flow, finding my balance in the flux. Letting life breath me. This portal of healing was ignited, again, by attending your retreat. The brain detoxing retreat!”

PRESENTER BIOS

Jeff Foster studied Astrophysics at Cambridge University. In his mid-twenties, after a long period of depression and illness, he became addicted to the idea of ‘spiritual enlightenment’ and embarked on an intensive spiritual quest for the ultimate truth of existence.

The spiritual search came crashing down with the clear recognition of the non-dual nature of everything, and the discovery of the extraordinary in the ordinary. In the clarity of this seeing, life became what it always was: intimate, open, loving and spontaneous, and Jeff was left with a deep understanding of the root illusion behind all human suffering, and a love of the present moment.

Jeff was voted #59 on Watkins Review’s 2014 list of the world’s 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. Jeff has published five books in over ten languages. His latest book “The Way of Rest: Finding the Courage to Hold Everything in Love” was published by Sounds True in 2016. 

Jeff’s website can be found at: http://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/

Matt Licata, PhD is a psychotherapist, writer, and teacher based out of Boulder, Colorado, with students, clients, and patients worldwide. He is author of The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You.

Matt has spent the last 25 years on the forefront of the integration of Western, developmental and depth-psychology with mindfulness-based, contemplative, meditative approaches to psychological growth, emotional healing, and spiritual transformation. Trained in the US, Canada, and Asia, Matt teaches from an integral perspective, with careful attention to the full-spectrum of human experience, incorporating the latest research in somatic psychology, interpersonal neurobiology, and developmental analytic theory.

In addition to training in developmental, analytic, and depth-psychology, Matt has been deeply influenced over the last nearly three decades by the world’s wisdom traditions, especially Vajrayana Buddhism, Sufism, and the religions of India, where he spent more than two years in focused study and practice. Matt’s doctoral dissertation involved an in-depth study of the ways spiritual belief and practice can serve a defensive function, in the avoidance of unresolved somatic, emotional, and developmental wounding.

Most recently, in addition to his teaching and clinical practice, Matt served as Director of Professional Studies for Sounds True, where he designed in-depth training materials for practicing clinicans alongside some of the country’s most respected psychologists, psychotherapists, neuroscientists, and healers.

To learn more about Matt and his work, please see http://www.mattlicataphd.com.

Kelly Boys is a certified iRest® Yoga Nidra and mindfulness trainer, and has taught meditation to engineers at Google, UN humanitarian workers in the Middle East, veterans with PTSD, and in San Quentin State Prison. She is the host of the Sounds True program A Year of Mindfulness. Kelly is the author of the forthcoming book The Blind Spot Effect: How to Stop Missing What’s Right in Front of You. Her teaching is rooted in a nondual understanding and her approach is somatically based, trauma-sensitive and informed by neuroscience.

Yoga nidra is a lying-down guided meditation that supports the integration of the psyche and the restoration of our natural state of well-being. Through practices that calm the nervous system and create a sense of inner resource, we meet what is challenging with a welcoming, gentle, inquiry-based practice. Through practices such as mindful walking and authentic movement with music, we are invited to meet the ground of our experience while exploring our innate and authentic expression moment-to-moment.

To learn more about Kelly and her work, please see http://www.kellyboys.org