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Show Notes:
How do you create an incredible, deep and effective retreat? How do you bring that magic to an online retreat?
Those are the questions we're tackling today.
Retreats provide a special opportunity for real time transformation. As a participant of a silent retreat at spirit rock a couple of years ago, I had a transformative experience. This retreat was about renewal and rest. Setting aside those days in a sacred space, learning from the teachers, and immersing myself in the process gave me what I needed. On the third day, I felt a shift. I was no longer bored. I started to be able to observe my thoughts in a new way. I got something on a gut level that I hadn't gotten before.
If you're considering creating and running a retreat, it might be partly because you've experienced the magic of a retreat as a participant.
But how do you create that magic for your participants?
And now in 2020, how do you bring that magic online?
I invited a master of retreats, Michelle Boyd, to help us answer these questions.
Michelle is an award-winning writer, a former tenured professor, and the founder of InkWell Academic Writing Retreats. She helps scholars who dread writing free themselves from fear and build a satisfying, sustainable writing practice they can actually be proud of.
Here's some of what we talked about:
Helping scholars with the emotional component of writing
Decreasing terror, overwhelm and fear while increasing pleasure and joy in writing
Why being in a retreat, in community changes your relationship to writing
Discovering that running writing retreats is a big part of her path
The ingredients of a successful retreat: separate space, trust in the facilitator, and trust in each other
Starting her retreats with dinner to set the tone and create the container
Finding and setting up the space to encourage writing and inner transformation
Setting the schedule for the participants and for herself
Changes she's made to her retreats since she started, including leaning into the value of the community
Adjusting her work and her role so she's holding the entire community
Moving her retreat online because of the shit show of the pandemic
Being surprised by the ability of participants to get value from an online retreat and detach from their regular lives
Setting the frame to help people get the most value from the experience
Creating a pilot version of a follow up program
A behind the scenes look at her own writing practices
Why retreats should not be seen as an add on, but rather a place where certain kinds of transformation can happen
