Retreats & Trainings

Never too Early:
Winter Wellness Retreat 2013 – Tulum, Mexico
with Sarah S. and Ruth

February 16-23, 2013

We’re just back from our sold out 2012 Wellness adventure and have already started plans for next year. Stay tuned for details; we’ll be holding a hammock for you!

Celebrating the Call: Healer & Yoga Teacher Training

Upcoming schedule for 2012:
Two spots remain
Module I: July 5-15 (Puerto Rico)
Module II: October 6-8 (Brooklyn, NY)
Module III: January 10-20 (Puerto Rico)

2013 Schedule:
Module I: February 21-March 3 (Puerto Rico)
Module II: April 19-21 (Brooklyn, NY)
Module III: May 30-July 9 (Puerto Rico)
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A Deep Immersion
Healer & Yoga Teacher Training for Women
Our world is crying out for a return of the women healers. There was a time when it was every woman’s birthright – and responsibility – to nurture and express her own deep wisdom and intuitive powers to love, nourish and heal. The feminine ways of healing are rooted deep in the great Mystery of birth and death, and often cannot be brought to full fruition within the more rigid confines of organized systems. Masculine power is a strong and expansive energy that thrives within structures, goals and linear patterns. Feminine power, in harmonious contrast, expresses itself in spherical, cyclical patterns, and flourishes in the rich soil of the unknown and unknowable. It does not fear unanswerable questions, but rather welcomes and embraces them, choosing to live within their fluidity rather than striving for absolute answers.

In this training we will explore and cultivate these powerful ways of feminine healing, diving deep into the vast waters of our own unique spirits, hearts and psyches, as well as the communal wellspring of wisdom, love and courage of thousands of generations of healers that have paved the way before us.

The Journey Into Our Source

We will call on the ancestral guides of many spiritual and healing traditions, including Tantra yoga, the West African Yoruba Orisha tradition – particularly the Orishas Yemaya and Oshun, Vajrayana Buddhism, Taoist energy balancing techniques, Reiki, the Enneagram, spirit channeling and shamanic practices. In a deeply immersive setting we will have the opportunity to face our most pressing questions and challenge old assumptions and core beliefs about who we are, why we are here, and what our ultimate purpose is.

Each participant will be mentored and guided to the threshhold of the fufillment of their highest calling here in this life. Through intensive training in the foundational and advanced pratices of yoga, meditation, intuitive healing, energy work, ceremony, chant, dance & ecstatic movement, deep internal reflection and group insight sharing, you will come to tap into your own center of limitless wisdom, through a partnership with the universal flow of Divine Love. From this place of partnership with the Source, you will learn how to facilitate and guide others through sometimes gentle and peaceful, sometimes powerful and paradigm-shifting cathartic experiences of confrontation with their deepest fears and self-limiting beliefs that have led to the blockages in energy that are at the root of mental, emotional, spiritual and physical disease.

Whether you are already working as a healer or yoga teacher, or dream of moving onto this path, or are just interested in learning how to deepen your own yoga and spiritual practices and bring more healing into your life and the lives of those around you in more informal ways, this training will support you in finding your unique style of expression.

The Healing and Rebirth of the World

It is the growing belief of many evolutionary thinkers that the time has come to create a new paradigm of spiritual healing and transformation – one that draws on the best aspects of all of the world’s spirit and wisdom traditions, while having the courage and vision to let go of those aspects that are no longer serving humanity. Our world has moved into a period of unprecedented and previously unimaginable expansion and accelerated evolution of our species. It is now time to move past rigid boundaries of “this system versus that” and build a new world based on the combined forces of thriving community power, and fully realized unique individuals.

For this leap to be successful, the support and guidance of the Feminine as spiritual midwife and mentor is crucial. This is truly a co-creative journey, where women are called to reclaim their role at the center of the heart of creation. It’s time to step fully into your power as a woman who is ready to joyfully participate in the healing and rebirth of our world.

The Immersion Training

The training will consist of three modules: 2 ten-day sessions high in the central mountains of Puerto Rico, at the beautiful secluded Samnyasin La Finca retreat center run by a family of mother and daughters. Here, in the embrace of the great voluptuous Feminine in her physical manifestations of mountains, rivers and forests, we will have the opportunity to retreat from the incessant demands of our daily lives in order to surrender fully to the call of the spirits of healing.

Three modules will comprise the training, taking place alternately in the mountains of Puerto Rico and Brooklyn. Our experience together will culminate in a beautiful rite-of-passage sunset ceremony on a secluded beach on the mystical island of Culebra, off the southern coast of Puerto Rico, where we will spend the final four days of our closing session.

When all sessions plus the additional requirements listed below are fulfilled, you will be eligible for 200-hour yoga teacher certification through Yoga Alliance, as well as a certificate of completion of the multi-traditional energy healing training course.

Additional requirements: homework assignments to be completed between sessions; teach six public yoga classes and facilitate one healing circle or group ceremony; a final project which will include an in-depth essay or research paper on an approved chosen topic plus and a personal vision statement; and attendance at a final graduation ceremony. (The yoga teaching may be completed as a Blossoming teacher at Shambhala Yoga & Dance Center in Brooklyn, or at another venue that is approved. If you will not be applying for yoga teacher certification, or have already completed another 200-hour yoga teacher training and have since been teaching regularly, the six yoga class teaching requirement will be waived.)

Pre-Requisites

• A longing to live a life of deep meaning and authenticity
• Willingness to surrender to the process of powerful self-transformation as the training ground for the path of healing and ecstatic rebirth
• A pre-registration interview, to explore whether this is the training best suited for you
• A consistent yoga practice of at least 2 years, for those interested in receiving the 200-hour yoga teacher certificate for Yoga Alliance registration (“consistent yoga practice” is open to interpretation, and will be discussed in the interview); for those who are interested in the yoga as an additional part of a larger training as a healer, but are not planning to apply for certification as a yoga teacher, this requirement may be modified.
• There will be required reading of several books to be completed before the training begins, as well as additional reading throughout the year of the program.

Fees

Tution for full training course (two 10-day modules, one 3-day module): $ 2,350
Room & board for two modules in Puerto Rico: 20 days @ $65-80 per day (includes lodging & three delicious vegetarian meals a day; rates are for shared occupancy – a limited number of private rooms are available for additional fee; camping is an option for $45 per day)

Your Facilitator

Catherine Calderon has over 35 years experience in yoga and spiritual practices, and is a life-long dancer. She has studied extensively in various traditions, including Tantra Yoga, Taoist Healing Love practices, Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana, is a registered yoga teacher (trained with Todd Norian, a certified Anusara Yoga teacher), a Reiki and Shiatsu practitioner, and an initiate in the Afro-Cuban Orisha tradition, in the service of Yemaya. She leads retreats, workshops and healing ceremonies at centers around the country and in the Caribbean, including Kripalu Center in Massachusetts, Esalen Institute in California, and Samnyasin Center in Puerto Rico, and is the founder of Shambhala Yoga & Dance Center in Brooklyn NY. As a salsa dancer and one of the original “Eddie Torres Dancers”, she performed at the Apollo Theatre with Tito Puente, at the Palladium with Hector Lavoe, and many other venues. She is also a filmmaker (“A Bailar – The Journey of a Latin Dance Company” & “Dancing with the Spirits”, among other films.) One of her greatest joys is to share her passion for music, dance and Spirit, and serve as a doorway for others to connect with their own unique expression of Life.