Wakeful Body, Awakening Mind

"Relying upon the boat of a human body,

free yourself from the great river of suffering."

~ Shantideva ~

 

About the Retreat

The last year has left many of us feeling disconnected and disembodied, as we face impermanence head-on. For this retreat, you are invited to return to the wisdom of the body, which holds us steady in the present moment. This is the domain of wakefulness and ease. Through embodiment, we can experience wholeness and when we touch into our felt sense of the world within and around us, we naturally find connection and care. Perhaps, this is what the world needs right now.

Framed around the Four Immeasurables, we will journey through equanimity, love, compassion and joy. Our bodies are treasure troves for self-reflection, insight, and freedom. Utilizing breath, movement, and our direct sensory experience of the embodied mind, we learn to regulate emotion, and become a safe haven for ourselves, for others and for the earth itself. By working with embodied contemplative practices, including gentle yoga, qi gong, dance and sitting practice, we will return to this miraculous home of ours. We may even find that our body is flawlessly reliable, filled with wisdom and worthy of our deepest devotion and care.

Great wisdom resides in the body,

Precluding all concepts.

It is the pervader of all entities

And (though) residing in the body,

It does not originate there.

Hevajra Tantra

Timing:

Suggested arrival 4pm – 5pm on Tuesday 23rd November. 

Evening soup is at 6pm followed by Introductory Talk at 7pm. 

Retreat ends : 10:30am Sunday 28th November.

 

About the Facilitator: 

Lucy Draper-Clarke has a doctorate in mindfulness and teacher education and loves to run retreats as well as support yoga teacher training schools. She has practised yoga for 20 years and taught yoga and mindfulness in Southern Africa since 2006, while also offering embodied practices at Wits. While doing so, she has been lucky enough to study with inspiring Buddhist mindfulness, and Vinyasa yoga teachers, and offers both yin and yang styles of yoga. Her light-hearted and compassionate approach to teaching allows participants to explore their inner worlds through a joyful, yet transformative practice. 

Bookings and Payments

You are welcome to RSVP here to receive an email, where you will be asked to complete all your details on the Susurumba booking form.

The retreat will be run on a dana/donation basis for the facilitation/teachings. The booking cost will cover food and accommodation for 5-nights:

Shared: US$200 per person

Single: US$275

Camping: US$125 per person

Currently land borders are not open to non-residents, so for those attending from outside Zimbabwe, you will need to fly to Harare on Monday evening or early Tuesday morning. From there, the organizers will help you find transport to the retreat centre (a +/- 4 hour drive).

​Background Info

Retreats offer us ‘time out’ from our busy, often stressful lives, to ground ourselves in our meditation/mindfulness practice. The peaceful seclusion and mountainous setting of Susurumba, Nyanga, assists in the process of allowing our busy, distracted minds to settle, allowing our deeper energies of kindness, compassion, wisdom and clarity to reveal themselves. Retreatants can find solace and a deeper inner peace through meditation, taking breathtaking walks, and swimming in the clear mountain dams.

While there is now limited cell phone reception at Susurumba, we recommend that you keep your cell phones turned off. If you need to contact family members, we request that you do so in the privacy of your room/tent and not in the public spaces. While in the shrine room or dining room, they must be switched off.