Enchantment Retreat Recap
“ When we look for enchantment to give us direct, concrete revelations, we miss the point. It is too big for us to swallow all at once. It teaches us in constellations, and invites us to undertake the slow, lifelong work of assimilating a moment.”
Our Enchantment Yoga Retreat at the end of May/beginning of June marked a return to a “crowd favorite” venue: Camp Bliss in Walker, MN.
What’s not to like? Private rooms with comfortable beds, views of serene lakes, surrounded by northwoods forest, evening frog chorus with lightning bug shows, daytime birds & wildlife, beautiful history in the venue, and quality local catering. True enchantment right there if ya ask me!!
The weekend features included:
Yoga with Bryana Cook & Theresa Bilben
Fresh juice with The Just Juice Co.
Fresh meals with Sarah Elaine Events
Massages with Exhale Massage & Wellness
We kicked off the retreat with DELICIOUS food with Sarah Elaine Events. Followed by an opening circle + yoga & sound bowls with Theresa and Bryana.
After the class, we settled into our comfortable rooms. At night we were greeted by a joyful frog chorus outside.
Saturday was full-on…
Filled with wonder and enchantment! Yoga, quality meals, hiking, kayaking, more yoga + journaling, and a campfire.
Hiking stories…
Saturday afternoon we took a wonder walk outside. A little bit of hiking, a little bit of journaling, and nature meditation. Ahhhh it was great!
Several retreaters were talented at morel mushroom hunting! I had so much fun watching these women light-up with their nature treasures.
We also found beautiful yellow ladyslippers, white & pink trillium flowers, and wild calla.
“When we know the detail of the places we inhabit - when we tend them with our own hands and walk them with our own feet - we enter into a conversation with our places that is mutually nourishing. We learn to listen to the ways in which they speak to us, and to find a way to reply so that they can understand. This congress is a series of gifts shared, rather than any kind of simple transaction. Behind it all is a sense of enchantment, a belief that sentience flows through all inhabitants of the natural world, both animate and inanimate, and a calling to enter a continuous state of wonder at its functioning and flow.”
At one point, retreaters could choose to end their nature hike or continue with me for a sort of unknown hiking adventure (lol!). Three women joined and it was a vibrant memory in the end that still brings a strong smile to my face.
We trekked through overgrown hiking trails to find giant morel mushrooms that were past their prime, a very large white pine, two swans, and beautiful quiet forest nestled between two little lakes. We picked up a lot of woodticks (mostly me), and helped each other locate and remove them! One of the gals somehow only had 1 tick and I somehow ended up with what had to be 100 (joking). We laughed and enjoyed ourselves!
We returned to the main lodge to rest, shower, and get ready for myofascial release + yoga, followed by restorative yoga, and then a good ol’ MN summer night campfire.
At the campfire we enjoyed the peaceful swimming back and forth from a beaver, the loons calling out on the lake, and the eagles flying overhead. We shared stories, laughed, and enjoyed a picturesque evening.
On our final morning, I woke up, and before I opened my eyes, I thought I was at home. I was startled and so confused because I slept so darn well!! I’m tellin’ ya… the beds and bedrooms at Camp Bliss are very comfortable.
We had a lovely early morning meditation, journaling, and yoga before a final quality breakfast.
It was a weekend that was just right. Even the weather cooperated perfectly!
Thank you all so much for making a weekend yoga retreat truly as enchanting as I’d hoped it would be.
“Enchantment is a small wonder magnified through meaning, fascination caught in the web of fable and memory. It relies on small doses of awe, almost homeopathic: those quiet traces of fascination that are found only when we look for them. It is the sense that we are joined together in one continuous thread of existence with the elements constituting this earth, and that there is a potency trapped in this interconnection, a tingle on the border of our perception. It is the forgotten seam in our geology, the elusive practical that binds our unstable matter: the ability to sense magic in the everyday, to channel it through our minds and bodies, to be sustained by it.”
-Katherine May, author of Enchantment
