Expansion Retreat with Yoga and Healing Practices

This 5-day retreat guides you to cultivate a deeper connection with yourself, physically, emotionally and mentally, aids you to gain a better understanding of your nervous system, your trauma responses and coping mechanisms, equips you in the ways to release the stuck stress energy from your body, and, from this realization and transformation, allows you to tap into your potential, on and off the mat, and removes what is blocking you to show up in the world more authentically and intentionally and to experience life with joy.

Basically, this retreat unlocks your potential.

Our nervous system develops when we’re a child, and it still sees the world through that child’s lens and reacts to the world from that place. In order to transform the way you experience life, you need to come back to your body, connect with your body and re-regulate your nervous system.

The Expansion retreat offers you precisely the experience that guides you to that basic life feeling: EXPANSION.

All the practices you do in this retreat guide you in connecting with your body and essence, building a strong connection with your centre and self, equipping you with the tools to navigate and release stress, bringing you to Expansion and reminding you to find expansion in your being in daily life.

What prevents us from feeling expansion in our being?

Stress is a part of daily life, but if you don’t have the tools to regulate this stress and bring yourself out of the stressed state, you start living from this place thinking this is what living is. This turns into a chronic state, and you are living in it without even realising it. Without realising this is a state you are supposed to move out of as easily as you moved into it.

Anxiety crowds your mind. It feels busy inside, and you feel occupied with many thoughts. That’s what anxiety does. It takes you away from what is in the moment, and prevents you from seeing what you already have in that moment, what is offered in the moment, and prevents you from making the most out of it.

When you release the stress, space opens up, in your mind and body. You can think more clearly, see more clearly what is there in the now, and you can use what you have towards what you choose to do. You can access what is within and channel it towards your choice of direction, instead of trying to manage all your thoughts based on assumptions.

Anxiety also prevents you from opening yourself up to somethinge new or different, or to have more intimacy in your current relationships. It tells you that it wants to keep you safe, and you fall for that promise because you are not sure either. When you know how to provide that feeling of safety to yourself, then you don’t need anxiety to make these choices for you. You choose to open yourself to the experiences in the moment.

This retreat removes what is blocking you from seeing your own potential. It removes what is blocking you to have more meaningful relationships with others. It removes what is blocking you from being in the moment and openning yourself up to the experiences in the moment. It removes what is keeping you behind walls that keep you isolated with the false promise of safety. It redefines your relationship with yourself, with your body, with life and with others. It connects you to what is within, to your truth, and with the trust you build within yourself, your perception of yourself and the world around you changes.

This retreat opens you to experience life with joy.

You will leave this retreat with the feeling of spaciousness, lightness and expansion. This retreat will not only help you to have a more honest, sincere, compassionate and loving relationship with yourself, but also to see your relationship with life and the world around you from a new perspective, to approach yourself and the universe from a safer place, thus realizing your own potential and living more authentically and intentionally.

In this retreat, you do all this through the practice of yoga, meditation, somatic practices and experiencing and sound healing sessions with Alchemy Crystal Singing Bowls.

Here is a brief information about the Somatic Approach and healing sound bath sessions with Alchemy Crystal Singing bowls.

What is the Somatic Approach?

The somatic approach is a natural approach to trauma and stress-related disorders. It operates off the idea that what happens to you in your life is stored not only in your mind but also in your body.

In the somatic approach, unlike many other therapy methods, the person's body and the projections of stress on the body are studied. Somatic approaches are used to engage the relationship between mind, body, and behavior. This approach aims to raise the individual's self-awareness, and to help release how a physical body holds on to stress, tension, and trauma.

Why do I want to share the Somatic approach with you?

As I learned about this approach, I realized that there were actually great parallels to a yoga practice. Whether we are aware of it or not, in our yoga practice, we naturally practice what this approach speaks of.

When stress is experienced for a long time and the body goes out of its own rhythm or the traces of stress cannot be removed from the body, stress-related physical disorders begin to appear.

By gaining information about the somatic approach and practicing a few different techniques throughout the retreat, you develop awareness about mind-body practices in order to cope with the stresses of your daily life and the accumulated stresses in the body.

The practices we do at the retreat will help you release the stored and stuck stress energy in your body, and it will also help your yoga practice to be done with more awareness and turn it into a healing practice that is more than physical.

What is a sound bath session with Alchemy Crystal Singing Bowls?

The Alchemy Crystal Singing Bowls are all made with quartz with a combination of gemstones, precious metals, minerals, and they are purely designed for healing and wellbeing, having a transformational effect on any presenting imbalances within the mind, emotions, physical body and biofield.

The Alchemy Crystal Singing Bowls' tones and vibrations fill the space to create a deeply sensory experience. Their velvety, ethereal sounds are welcomed by the body, mind, and the spirit, allowing each moment to take us into a deeper peaceful state, which is our natural state. They are here to sing us back to alignment with our true nature.

The aim of sound healing is to align our brain waves with the theta state where healing can take place, and the result is a deep sense of wellbeing and calm.

In this retreat you will:

- connect with your physical body through yoga asana practices,

- experience the connection between the mind, emotional and physcial body,

- gain more clarity about your inner world and how your nervous system governs your reactions,

- will learn about somatic experiencing, how the body stores the stress energy, and learn to implement some basic somatic practices into your daily life,

- learn how to recognize the stress and the trauma stored in the body, and learn to release them with the techniques you learn

-And the daily sound baths with Alchemy Crystal Singing bowls at the end of each day will support your intentional work of releasing the accumulated stress energy from your system as well.

At the end of each day you will be left feeling the natural life feeling: expansion, joy and creativity.

The schedule of the program is as follows:

22nd of May, Wednesday

2pm Check in to the hotel

3:30 – 4:30 pm Opening Circle

4:30 - 5:30pm Sound bath with Alchemy Crystal Singing Bowls

6:30pm Dinner

23rd, 24th and 25 of May, Thur, Fri, Sat

7:00 – 10:00 am

· Walking meditation;

· Sharing the theme of the day

· Yoga asana practice

· Seated Guided Meditation

2:00 - 4:00 pm

· Introduction to Somatic Approach and Experiencing

· Mindfulness exercises

4:30 - 6:30 pm

· Yin yoga

· Sound bath with Alchemy Crystal Singing bowls

26th of May, Sunday

7:00 – 9:00 am Yoga practice and seated guided meditation

9:00 – 10:30 am Closing Circle

12:00 pm Check out from the hotel

As you can see it is a full on program and I am excited to facilitate this retreat at The Land, in Geyikbayırı.

The Land is near Antalya, which is in the south of Turkey. It is nestled in a 7,000 m² pomegranate orchard surrounded by forests and nature on the slopes of the Geyikbayiri valley with a majestic view of the Geyik Sivrisi mountain, only 20 minutes from Antalya's city centre. The nature here quietly affects everyone, expands the breadth and imagination, and most importantly it allows you to relax safely by leaning on the mountains.

The Land's restaurant is not just any restaurant. There are some who come here just for their kitchen. They make international fusion vegetarian dishes which give you a different but satisfying experience every day.

Each guest has their own private bungalow, which are all well spaced apart, with their own terrace and outdoor couch, offering excellent privacy. Each of the rooms has its own private bathroom, indoor and outdoor sitting area and unique design, and all bungalows have a unique view of the mountains and the valley as well.

There are also natural spring pools in the area where you can take cold plunges that will vitalize you and also reset your nervous system.

You can learn more about this venue via this link: https://en.thelandgeyikbayiri.com

Included in the accommodation:

- The accommodation includes 4 night accommodation, 4 vegetarian open buffet breakfasts, and 4 dinners (If you have any food allergies, please inform us in advance).

- Lunch is not included in this price. For snacks and food and beverage alternatives during the day the cafe, where you can find many snacks and drinks, will be open.

If you have any specific questions about this retreat, please feel free to contact me at healandrise@soundofseda.com