Health to wellness: 5 retreats that promote healing and transformation

Written by Monica Krake, breathwork facilitator and founder of Head + Heart – Sign up for her weekly email guide to living aligned.

In our culture, there’s a lot of stimulation but not a lot of time to process all that arises in our everyday lives. We aren’t really taught to express our emotions or even to release pent up energy in healthy ways.

The result? Many repressed, frustrated adults out there, who need to learn to feel their feelings and fully express themselves.  You’ve gotta feel it to heal it, they say (these empath quotes will remind you how to embrace being sensitive!). If you’re feeling the desire to connect with your true self, do some inner healing, and maybe even express your wild side, here are five amazing retreats coming up that will empower and liberate you:

Feminine Embodiment Retreat to Bowen Island, BC

Feminine Embodiment Retreat with Shae Savage

An invitation to connect with your inner wild child, this four day retreat for women is an invitation to slow down and rest, connect with your body and feminine energy, tap into creative expression for your life (and your business!), and connect into a community of like minded women. Led by the very energizing and super fun Shae Savage, you’ll leave this weekend recharged, empowered, and connected with a new network of soul friends.

Dates: May 19-22, 2022
Location: Bowen Island, BC
Register here

Return to Centre Ceremonial Weekend at the Xenia Retreat Centre

Angela Prider, Animistic Heale

This weekend retreat with Vancouver-based Animistic teacher Angela Prider, offers 3 days and 2 nights to return to your centre, with deeply nourishing animistic soul-care, transformational plant medicine circles, and earth honouring ritual. For those new to Animism as a spiritual practice, Angela offers a program called Doorways to Animism, teaching people ancient wisdom practices including shamanic journeying to the Otherworld to connect with animal allies, loving ancestors, and nature spirits; earth medicine and plant spirit medicine, and how to truly live in alignment with Nature.

Dates: May 21-23, 2022
Location: Bowen Island, BC
Register here.

Pheonix Immersion Retreat to Mount Shasta, California

Andrea Firpo Mount Shasta

An invitation to elevate your healing, release past trauma, and connect deeply with your inner child, this three day transformational retreat is led by embodiment guide, Andrea Firpo, hypnotherapist/medicine woman, Olga Lavr, and clairvoyant Odile Dell’Aquila. This intimate retreat promises to give you an immersion into practices that will help you connect to your highest self, heal past wounds, and emerge with the confidence to live fully empowered. Happening at Mount Shasta, aka the root chakra of our world, this women-only retreat also includes sound healing and sacred rituals and ceremonies.

Dates: June 2-5, 2022
Location: Mount Shasta, California
Register here

Ayurvedic Yoga Retreat to Salt Spring Island

Salt Spring Island Centre of Yoga

Ready to press the reset button by deeply restoring your nervous system and releasing accumulated stress and pressure? This weekend retreat with Vancouver Ayurveda healer + teacher, Melanie Phillips is dedicated entirely to your well-being and rejuvenation. You’ll enjoy daily nourishing Ayurvedic yoga, delicious homemade vegetarian meals, energy healing, and time to rest and explore the sacred grounds of the Salt Spring Yoga Centre. Phillips, who also specializes in quantum manifestation, says you can expect to leave feeling soothed and nourished on every level of your being.

Dates: June 3-5, 2022
Location: Salt Spring Island, BC
Register here.

Yoga, Meditation + Ritual Retreat with Mara Branscome on Cortes Island

Mara Branscome

Perfectly timed with the peak of summer, this annual retreat is led by beloved Author and yoga teacher, Mara Branscome. Come exactly as you are – this retreat is open to anyone who wishes to connect with their true self – no experience with yoga, meditation or ritual is required! Located at the iconic Hollyhock retreat centre on beautiful Cortes Island, you’ll enjoy daily guided meditation, vinyasa and restorative yoga, movement practices to increase inner radiance, guided pranayama (breath work), outdoor shamanic practices, guided journal sessions, chanting and spirit circles. Expect lots of sharing, visioning, fire ceremonies, and quite possibly a moon ritual!

Dates: July 8-13, 2022
Location: Cortes Island
Register here

You might also like:
• Concord Pacific and Lululemon are hosting a free weekly run meet-up in Vancouver
• 4 unique Nordic spas and saunas to visit around Vancouver

And if you don’t want to travel but do desire to access and release emotions, frustrations, sexuality or desire, we’d highly recommend exploring embodiment practices like taking a jungle dance or kundalini dance class, doing a breathwork session to release stuck energy or screaming into your pillow! For those who want to explore the link between stuck energy, physical symptoms, and their emotional roots, here’s a great article on the ways stuck energy shows up in the body and how to unblock chakras. Not sure what you need right now? This Intuition Test is a helpful place to begin.