Y’all,

I’m writing to you from Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, the site of our detox retreat next weekend. (Psssst. 🤫 There are still a few rooms available. Reserve your room here.)

Every time I come up here I am both humbled and nourished by my surroundings. Far from being barren, the desert is a diverse and vibrant ecosystem that tells a story of survival, resilience, and beauty borne through perseverance. It is a landscape of change - one of adaptation and possibility which is the perfect container for our upcoming journey of transformation.

Designing a transformative experience (ie: retreat, workshop, training) requires that you consider the landscape and ecosystem that is needed for the kind of change you desire. 

What I’ve learned is that if you want to create the conditions for change, you have to design for it. The word ecosystem literally breaks down to home (eco) + system and speaks to the conditions that we create for healing and transformation. You cannot simply assume that ecosystem exists. You have to actively design and then co-create the conditions that are needed for change to happen.

Here are some principles I’m exploring in my own design process: ✨✨

• Design for change. Create the conditions where change can happen, then let go of how it happens.

• Meet people where they are. Everyone is in a different place on the learning journey. Meet folks where they are and walk along side them.

• Provide many doorways into the work. Different people respond to different invitations and points of entry into the practice.

• Assume there is no one right way to heal. Healing is not one size fits all, therefore, we must allow for diverse expressions of healing.

• Don’t avoid discomfort. As designers and facilitators, we must have a capacity not only for our own discomfort but for the discomfort others will feel in their own transformational process.

• Build in space for integration. Be intentional about creating ample space and time for reflection and absorption.

• Design for grief AND joy. Transformation is often not neat and tidy but evolving and emergent. Make space for people to grieve

• Anticipate change. Allow for emergence in your facilitation so you can respond to the groups needs and to pivot when needed.   

• Model vulnerability. Be willing to model your own vulnerability and humanity in change even as you hold space for others. 

It is this kind of dynamic and emergent space that we will be experiencing in Joshua Tree next week!

There are only a TWO spots left for our retreat to Joshua Tree (Thursday April 20th - Sunday April 23rd). This 4-day detox retreat is a bold exploration of how we’ve been shaped by toxic ideologies (ie: perfectionism, individualism, whiteness, scarcity) and what it’s going to take to heal our cultural wounds and transform into new ways of being. Here's what you can expect.

✨Beautiful accommodations and grounds

✨Plant based meals 

✨Movement to unleash stagnant energy

✨Radical inquiry and courageous conversation

✨Dream design work

✨Space for rest and play (pool, hot tub, cold plunge, sauna, hiking)

✨Community connection and ritual

🌵 If this retreat is calling you, DM us for our “help me get there” discount :) 

Hope to practice with you somewhere soon.

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