Also being held on April 29

This retreat is offered as medicine for what many of us are struggling with right now: loss of connection with others during our daily activities. During this retreat you’ll be invited to choose structured meditation options or contemplative activities at home that nourish you, while connecting online with a group of fellow self-compassion practitioners.

The intention behind this retreat is to help you keep yourself company by bringing your awareness to your experience and your needs on a regular basis. Through reflecting on our experience briefly every 15 minutes for 3 hours, we develop a more intimate understanding of our emotions and our needs than is usually accessible to us in our everyday life. We learn about how our emotions are always changing and that we can support ourselves lovingly through noticing and tending (self-compassion) rather than ignoring (self-avoidance) or criticizing (self-criticism). This structure offers a container of safeness where we are bringing in our ability to give words to our experience regularly to help ground our experience in language and meaning. The retreat will be held mostly in silence to support our connections with ourselves, with opportunities to reflect in a structured and supportive way in the group about our experience at the end of the retreat.

The Three Touchstones

In Somatic Self-Compassion we actively cultivate the three Elements of affectionate awareness (kindly noticing our sensations, imagery, behavior, thoughts and emotions), courageous connection (showing up for ourselves as we learn about, make meaning of, and validate our stress responses in service of our own wellbeing and the health of our relationships with ourselves, our community, nature and spirit) and radical response (parenting ourselves through self-soothing, self-inquiry, permission-giving and finding new behaviors in response to stress)

These Elements invite us to continually check in with the three Somatic Self-Compassion Touchstone questions:

• What do I feel?
• What do I need?
• What can I do?

Every 15 minutes during this retreat we’ll be invited to check in with these three Touchstones.

Who Is This For?

We’d love to see you at this retreat if you have some self-compassion skills in your toolkit already from doing any of the HeartWorks programs or any other self-compassion or mindfulness training.

Structure

You’ll be held within the online container of a supportive community and a supportive structure of:

• The online community in the video conferencing platform, Zoom;
• Written and verbal guidelines for holding your daily activity experiences;
• Meditation offerings by Kristy Arbon at regular intervals through the 3-hour retreat;
• An invitation to record your explorations each 15 minutes; and
• A worksheet to record your responses to the three SSC Touchstones at 15 minute intervals.

Meditations offered will be a selection from the Somatic Self-Compassion Tree of Practices below.

Timing

The retreat will be from 5pm-8pm US Central Time on Monday May 25. You can find a timezone converter with calendar download here. To support yourself through this retreat you might like to give yourself 3 hours of unstructured time and plan some simple activities for the periods of time during the retreat when there isn’t a structured practice offered, like reading, meditating, cleaning, spending time with 4-legged family members, taking a nap, movement activities, preparing food, art, or other creative activities.

If you’re interested in this retreat but are unable to attend at the time it is offered (or you’d like to do it again at your leisure) the retreat video will be recorded and shared with participants.

Investment

The retreat is offered on a sliding scale for you to choose your rate:

• I can support scholarships: $40
• I can be here at the middle rate: $30
• I can be here at the supported rate: $20

Please contact Kristy (kristy@heartworks.training) if you need to discuss a different payment arrangement. I don’t want finances to get in the way of you accessing this course. I will consider any offer to include you in this program.

Registration

If you have any questions, please email kristy@heartworks.training.