The Story of my JFK Camping Orientation Retreat
This is the letter I wrote Kent and Amber about my JFK retreat in the woods.
The first night we all gathered, ate together (all fresh, vegetarian fare, super tasty) and chatted with each other. Everyone has such an interesting story in terms of how they found this program. Haha, we’re all such a buncha weirdos who have had to search hard to find a place like this, so there was a large feeling of gratitude and love among everyone.
After that we all split into our respective programs, so I met with the other “Consciousness and Transformative Studies” people. We didn’t do any get-to-know-ya typical stuff - instead one of the women had a basket of little cards from Mexico, each with a different picture on it. She scattered them on the ground and we all chose three that resonated with us in some way. That way, we’d go around the circle and tell the story of what each picture represented for us. The first one I chose was a decorated skull, because lately I’ve been feeling this deep craving to get back to understanding the wisdom of my ancestors (I’m fairly purebred from the Poland-Ukraine borderlands, so I feel like there’s some really strong energy or wisdom that must have come down to me, so I want to understand it). I’d been talking to Marilyn, the director of my program and my adviser, about this ancestral type wisdom and how to access it. The second image I chose was this glowing image of the Virgin Mary, which always resonates with me whenever I see it because when I was 4 or 5 I had this experience where I woke up in the middle of the night terrified, and I looked toward the edge of my bed and saw this beautiful glowing woman, and then immediately felt calm and returned to sleep. Nothing like that has ever happened since, but I’m always drawn in when I see that image, which is often portrayed as the Virgin Mary. Anyway, the third image was a shrimp, and I was just drawn to the aesthetic complexity of the creature. It just looked really cool!
Other people had other stories. Lots of metaphor, lots of memories, lots of attempts to reclaim something in the past. So through this discussion we got to know one another a bit.
The next morning we did an opening ritual out in “the meadow” which was the only open area in the woods. We all joined together and did an earth prayer, focusing on all the different directions and giving thanks. Then we did a silent meditation by creating a beautiful mandala on the ground using natural materials like sticks, flowers, etc. It was gorgeous! Lastly, all the core faculty were officially introduced to us, so we knew who was who.
Then came lunch and some chillaxin.’ My cabin roommate was really cool. She was a middle aged bay area native named Wilene, in the Transpersonal Psychology program, and we took a lot of walks together.
After the chillaxin’ were some workshops. I did the first one, which was called “Prayers to the Earth.” It was a walking meditation followed by creating found art with natural materials in the woods. We did the walking meditation so that each footstep was a giving of thanks, and sending grateful energy into the earth. This was different for me because usually when I do energy exercises, I use my hands. So it was a really satisfying feeling to send it in different places, like through my feet into the earth for instance. When we reached a clearing, we stopped, and then each of us wandered off to gather some materials and create something. I made a little pinecone sculpture tied together with freshly dropped pine branches.
I chose not to participate in a 2nd workshop, because I wanted time to myself to do some hiking. I got a water bottle and notebook in my backpack and set out on a trail that was totally deserted, so I could be totally left to my own devices. It was such a healing experience being in the woods by myself. I put my backpack down and just let my intuition pull me to different areas. Out here, the trees grow in “fairy rings,” which means that you will see a cluster of trees together, and they look like individual trees, but under the soil they share a root system, so really they’re like this incredible inter-dependent creature. Furthermore, they often grow from one original ancient ancestor that still exists as a decomposing stump in the middle of this ring of trees. With these thoughts of connecting to the ancestors in my mind, I was suddenly drawn to going off and standing in the middle of these rings, either standing on the stump, aka the original ancestor, or just standing over it, with my hands spread on the surrounding trees. Man, I could stand in midst of those rings all day. There was so much going on there, you could feel it. It was pretty awesome.
Then, some more wandering, dinner, and another meeting with our respective programs. The theme of this retreat was sustainability, so we got into a discussion about sustainability, not just in terms of an ecosystem, but also in terms of our own body-mind-spirit sustainability. This discussion was where I really got a much better feel for the other people in the group - we were all totally comfortable sharing our opinions and feelings with one another, and so we connected really well.
Then that night, we had an earth dance, in the open meadow, under the bright moonlight! I brought my little djembe, and there were some other drummers there too, so we played some beats and people were dancing, and it was awesome! It was hard to drum and dance at the same time, but I managed! My roommate Wilene brought some homemade rattles so we’d trade off, too.
The next morning we had the closing ritual. First we took apart the mandala, returning all the pieces back in the woods. Then we joined hands and did a spiral-dance I think it’s called, where everyone joins hands and dances in a circle but spiraling around so you end up facing each person, saying goodbye just with a silent smile.
~Jess
The first night we all gathered, ate together (all fresh, vegetarian fare, super tasty) and chatted with each other. Everyone has such an interesting story in terms of how they found this program. Haha, we’re all such a buncha weirdos who have had to search hard to find a place like this, so there was a large feeling of gratitude and love among everyone.
After that we all split into our respective programs, so I met with the other “Consciousness and Transformative Studies” people. We didn’t do any get-to-know-ya typical stuff - instead one of the women had a basket of little cards from Mexico, each with a different picture on it. She scattered them on the ground and we all chose three that resonated with us in some way. That way, we’d go around the circle and tell the story of what each picture represented for us. The first one I chose was a decorated skull, because lately I’ve been feeling this deep craving to get back to understanding the wisdom of my ancestors (I’m fairly purebred from the Poland-Ukraine borderlands, so I feel like there’s some really strong energy or wisdom that must have come down to me, so I want to understand it). I’d been talking to Marilyn, the director of my program and my adviser, about this ancestral type wisdom and how to access it. The second image I chose was this glowing image of the Virgin Mary, which always resonates with me whenever I see it because when I was 4 or 5 I had this experience where I woke up in the middle of the night terrified, and I looked toward the edge of my bed and saw this beautiful glowing woman, and then immediately felt calm and returned to sleep. Nothing like that has ever happened since, but I’m always drawn in when I see that image, which is often portrayed as the Virgin Mary. Anyway, the third image was a shrimp, and I was just drawn to the aesthetic complexity of the creature. It just looked really cool!
Other people had other stories. Lots of metaphor, lots of memories, lots of attempts to reclaim something in the past. So through this discussion we got to know one another a bit.
The next morning we did an opening ritual out in “the meadow” which was the only open area in the woods. We all joined together and did an earth prayer, focusing on all the different directions and giving thanks. Then we did a silent meditation by creating a beautiful mandala on the ground using natural materials like sticks, flowers, etc. It was gorgeous! Lastly, all the core faculty were officially introduced to us, so we knew who was who.
Then came lunch and some chillaxin.’ My cabin roommate was really cool. She was a middle aged bay area native named Wilene, in the Transpersonal Psychology program, and we took a lot of walks together.
After the chillaxin’ were some workshops. I did the first one, which was called “Prayers to the Earth.” It was a walking meditation followed by creating found art with natural materials in the woods. We did the walking meditation so that each footstep was a giving of thanks, and sending grateful energy into the earth. This was different for me because usually when I do energy exercises, I use my hands. So it was a really satisfying feeling to send it in different places, like through my feet into the earth for instance. When we reached a clearing, we stopped, and then each of us wandered off to gather some materials and create something. I made a little pinecone sculpture tied together with freshly dropped pine branches.
I chose not to participate in a 2nd workshop, because I wanted time to myself to do some hiking. I got a water bottle and notebook in my backpack and set out on a trail that was totally deserted, so I could be totally left to my own devices. It was such a healing experience being in the woods by myself. I put my backpack down and just let my intuition pull me to different areas. Out here, the trees grow in “fairy rings,” which means that you will see a cluster of trees together, and they look like individual trees, but under the soil they share a root system, so really they’re like this incredible inter-dependent creature. Furthermore, they often grow from one original ancient ancestor that still exists as a decomposing stump in the middle of this ring of trees. With these thoughts of connecting to the ancestors in my mind, I was suddenly drawn to going off and standing in the middle of these rings, either standing on the stump, aka the original ancestor, or just standing over it, with my hands spread on the surrounding trees. Man, I could stand in midst of those rings all day. There was so much going on there, you could feel it. It was pretty awesome.
Then, some more wandering, dinner, and another meeting with our respective programs. The theme of this retreat was sustainability, so we got into a discussion about sustainability, not just in terms of an ecosystem, but also in terms of our own body-mind-spirit sustainability. This discussion was where I really got a much better feel for the other people in the group - we were all totally comfortable sharing our opinions and feelings with one another, and so we connected really well.
Then that night, we had an earth dance, in the open meadow, under the bright moonlight! I brought my little djembe, and there were some other drummers there too, so we played some beats and people were dancing, and it was awesome! It was hard to drum and dance at the same time, but I managed! My roommate Wilene brought some homemade rattles so we’d trade off, too.
The next morning we had the closing ritual. First we took apart the mandala, returning all the pieces back in the woods. Then we joined hands and did a spiral-dance I think it’s called, where everyone joins hands and dances in a circle but spiraling around so you end up facing each person, saying goodbye just with a silent smile.
~Jess