Creating A Space For Healing
Share in the lessons learned from our first retreat -a magical experience and a special, sacred space for healing created with love and intention.
I’ve been a part of producing many impressive events, sometimes with thousands of attendees, but hosting an ayahuasca retreat for a small handful of people was still one of the most exciting and fulfilling experiences of my life.
There’s something really profound about being trusted by other people to facilitate a deeply emotional and transformational experience. When I was producing festivals, people mostly trusted that we could show them a good time; but this, this was something else entirely.
People attend retreats because regular life feels so draining and spiritually empty that they struggle to refill themselves with that essential, divine quality that makes life feel special and worthwhile.
Moving out of their normal contexts into the altered reality of the retreat, nestled intimately in a natural setting, where they’re free of the swirl and chaos of modern life, people are capable of much greater healing, transformation, and clarity than in their typical day-to-day lives.
Having benefited ourselves from the healing qualities of this quiet community of Puerto Morelos, and the jungle that surrounds it, we wanted to give people an opportunity to experience something completely different from their normal life -something healing and wholesome and natural.
Of course, we were new to the retreat game and learning along the way; but we had the benefit of a very clear vision of what we were trying to create (what we were tasked by spirits to create) that guided us to create a truly magical and meaningful experience.
And we have the benefit of being a part of an incredible community of plant medicine guides and healers who brought enormous value to our event, and credibility to our offering. So even though this was our first, it was already guaranteed to be something special.
And it was…
Even a full month after the retreat, the attendees continue to be active in the WhatsApp group that we created, sharing their experiences as they integrate their recent medicine journey. And each time I see these folks leaning on each other, and supporting one another, it feels like an extension the sacred space that Sarah and I created for our event.
Lessons From The Center Of The Circle
Of course I want to recap the event, day by day, telling you about all of the amazing, magic-in-action that I witnessed but I know that I could never do it justice and, more importantly, that it would be disrespectful to the intimate nature of the experience. So you’ll just have to look at the photos below and enjoy your FOMO.
Instead, I’m going to share my takeaways from behind-the scenes; what I learned about creating, and maintaining, sacred space as the host of a spiritual retreat.
Show Up, Do The Thing
A few days before the event I was not in a good place. I was dealing with a fairly serious health situation and the financials for the event were looking pretty rough because of a few cancellations.
The space weather was bad, and my experience of it was awful, so I was not in the greatest place, entering into the event. But Sarah, my amazing wife and partner in this adventure, was an immense help and supported me through this not-minor crisis of faith.
In the end, a variety of factors conspired to make the event not only a pleasure to produce but also break even (we’ll take it!). Thanks to the generosity of one of the attendees who was not able to make it, but did not request a refund, we survived to tell the story.
As I mentioned in a prior post, I’ve moved back into the world of marketing (somewhat reluctantly, but successfully) and have spent a lot of the past few months spinning that up, with great effort.
A few days before the retreat began though, I shut the laptop, stopped farming for engagement on marketing X (formerly Twitter). And I began meditating and praying in earnest to shift myself out of the grindset-mindset I’d been in for months into a state of healing (first myself, and then others).
By the time we were picking up our guests from the Cancun airport, Sarah and I had transformed into possibly the best versions of ourselves. We absorbed the frenetic energy of setting up for the event, gathering all the attendees and collaborators, and launching into our itinerary with what felt like grace and ease (hopefully the attendees would agree).
Throttling down and tapping into inner tranquility felt like an impossible demand coming from my previous state of anxiety and dysregulation but (incredibly) I not only put on a good show, but I actually embodied this energy by the time I was opening ceremony on the first night.
So my first takeaway is that when you earnestly put yourself forward as an instrument of spirit and do everything in your power to embody the energy you’re attempting to channel, you can “just show up and do the thing” and it will work, if you have a little faith.
Everyone Gets Healing, Especially The Host
Despite our best attempts to prevent our own bullshit from coming along with us into the healing space of the retreat; as a host you are also an attendee as well.
You are going through whatever you’re going through at the time and you will be forced to deal with it -and heal from it- during your event. I don’t make the rules…
Particularly when it comes to sacred medicine journeys, whatever is most present for you in the weeks leading up to your experience is going to be a big part of that experience. This is true for the host as well as the guests.
Knowing that’s coming and being prepared to deal with that, while still being in service to everyone else, adds a whole different level of responsibility to the role of the host.
As host, you’re not necessarily anyone’s spiritual guide. The spirits do that well enough on their own and we puny humans can only observe and wonder at how it all works together. But you do take on the responsibility of helping your guests carry the heavy emotional and psychological load of their experience when it becomes overwhelming or confusing.
And this sacred responsibility requires a level of mental clarity and detachment from your own situation that allows you to be fully of service to others.
However, this doesn’t mean that you, the host, are actually free from your personal experience and any discomfort that goes along with it. It just means that you have to be able to compartmentalize your experience from your responsibilities and save some quiet time for yourself to process when you don’t owe anyone else your focus and attention.
So my second takeaway is to have more open time in the event itinerary; not only for your guests’ benefit but for your own. To be able to continue to carry the emotional load, you have to have periods within the experience where you can attend to your own healing -which is not optional.
The Place Is A Big Part Of The Magic
If an event truly feels magical, it is almost certainly because of the setting, rather than the content. All the good ritual you can muster will fall flat if its not supported by the appropriate set and setting. And no sacred medicine will work properly if it’s taken in the wrong context. Place is the essential ingredient which converts “something that happened” into an “experience”.
To see the truth in this, let’s consider some examples:
For Americans, there is something about Thanksgiving dinner, and for citizens of other countries perhaps Christmas dinner might be the same, where the entire joy of the experience comes from the setting of the extended family gathering at someone’s house. When this is replaced by eating out at a restaurant it loses 99% of this quality because the home is not there to contribute its energy. And in an animist understanding, this is because the house is also a member of the family and the restaurant is not.
Biophilic design advocates create spaces within their architecture that use organic elements like living walls, and so forth, to create emotional responses akin to what we feel in natural settings. This implies there’s more than “meets the eye” to setting, and particularly natural settings.
A retreat that took place in a city park obviously wouldn’t be as good -or as effective- as one that takes place in a naturally magical setting, cut off from the modern world. Just imagine those two scenarios for a moment yourself and assess your own internal reaction…clearly they are not the same.
This was perhaps my most profound takeaway from the experience -the importance of place to the magic of creating an experience for people. A tremendous amount of healing can occur when people return to a natural pace, in a very natural place, eating natural foods, and taking some of Mother Earth’s most sacred medicine.
And it was probably the one thing absolutely everyone commented on the most -location, location, location.
A special thanks to Lunita Jungle Hotel for being our venue partner for this really incredible experience.
Returning To The Circle
We’re still finding balance in our increasingly new world, between my new “day job” in marketing, and finally having passed the halfway point in the construction of our homestead. And the heat of summer is only a few short months away, so with a crazy year ahead and a lot of unknowns, we’re not yet prepared to say when we’ll announce our next retreat or what kind of retreat it might be.
Our spiritual guides gave us the sacred responsibility of producing this first retreat, Cura El Corazón (Heal The Heart), and I am proud to say that every one of the attendees gave us their assurances that our mission was accomplished.
The idea for our next retreat will come from the same source and you can be sure that, when the time is right, we’ll be excited to take up our places in the circle again once more.