NIGHT OF THE HEART

an deep dive into the sweet darkness within with Emilia Cianci & Elena Valverde Mora

19-25th of March

Providencia de Dota, San José, Costa Rica

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When your eyes are tired

the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone,

no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark

where the night has eyes

to recognize its own.

There you can be sure

you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home

tonight.

- David Whyte

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Night of the Heart retreat is a deep exploration of the sweet darkness that infuses all of our lives and that can be, if we welcome it, a source of great inspiration and creativity. 

We live in a society that is so obsessed with the light, with achievement, with doing, with producing, with being strong and we often lack spaces to meet the shadowy places within us, to encounter our grief, our sadness, our sorrow, to tend to those spaces inside that are hurting and are not so “shiny”; we lack the rituals and ceremonies that can hold us in times of change and transformation and we can often feel ashamed of our darkness which leads us to hide it or suppress it. This way of approaching life, however, does not honour the wholeness of what it means to be a human being, promoting a sense of separation and division.

Despite the fact that we might have lived our lives escaping from these shadowy landscapes within, somewhere deep inside, however, we all know that darkness is the fertile ground from which life emerges. Roots grow in the dark, we spend 9 months in the dim lighted wombs of our mothers, how can we find ourselves at home in this darkness? How can we make darkness a close companion and re-learn how to hold ourselves and one another in this rich time? How can we accept darkness as an integral and essential part of our lives?

During our retreat we will create a safe container to explore this inner darkness, to return to its sacred song and remember how to trust in the shadowy, to let ourselves be distilled and alchemized by the thresholds of our lives. We will explore rituals and practices that can help us ground and transmute, find rest and stillness, allow and welcome. We will remember how to sit in the darkness together, as a community, to be there with and for one another, to re-learn how to hold each other in our vulnerability and not be afraid to reveal it. 

There is something so poetic, inspiring and beautiful about the nights of our hearts, those times where, if we let ourselves truly feel, we can return to feeling the gratitude for being alive, to discover a deeper sense of meaning, compost, what no longer serves us and, ultimately, create beauty out of our sorrows. 

The retreat will combine creative practices such as dance, movement, painting, clay, basket weaving, poetry, with ancient rituals and ceremonies to hold our tender hearts, with meditation and subtle body practices and with earth reconnection practices to remember our deep belonging to the land, to be held by the earth, the plants, the rivers and trees. 

We will weave ancient ways of knowing with modern practices, invoking the well of wisdom that lives within each one of us, that part of us that knows how to navigate this time of shedding, of composting, of transmuting to be re-born from the ashes of ourselves.

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WHY IS THIS RETREAT UNIQUE?

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In a hyper individualistic society we have lost our sense of “village”, a sense of being part of a community that can hold us in our vulnerabilities and be witness of our growth. We tend to hide our darkness (even from ourselves at times) and this is very alienating. Our hope is to create a safe container for some masks to drop and let the beautiful light of our hearts shine through as well as reveal those parts of us that we keep hiding thinking they aren’t acceptable enough. 

Moreover, the retreat will be held on an enchanted land nestled in the mountains of Providencia de Dota which is a place of beauty, mystery and strong traditional Costa Rican wisdom. The mountains with their high peaks, waterfalls and virgin forests are charged with magic. This is going to be the landscape that will hold us in our deep dive and we will offer a lot of space to remember how to be held by the land, how to commune with its plants and spirits and how to return into a balanced relationship with Nature. 

We will weave different traditions together as Emilia & Elena - the two facilitators - come from years of deep personal journeys of inquiry around connection to land, reclamation of indigenous ways of knowing tied to our ancestral lands, movement, embodiment and creative processes as a way into our own awakening as well as mystical and contemplative practices. 

Last but not least, the owners of the project Armonia Ambiental are deeply rooted in the traditional campesino culture of rural Costa Rica and serve the land with deep care, living in profound harmony with the spirits of the land and its ecosystem. They will be offering some of their precious knowledge to us and we will, in turn, serve their community to give back to this sacred land. 

The retreat will bring together ancient ways with modern technologies, there will be times for simple hikes on the land, with deep rituals, moments of hands-on work such as medicine making with local herbs or basket weaving taught by the project owners.

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