Why?

A message from Elsah on why come to the burnout retreat?
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You don’t have to be clear about why you might want to come to this retreat.  Take a few moments to notice how you are feeling (not thinking) right now. How is this for you to tune into the emotional side of your life? How is burnout manifesting in your work, your life? Are you feeling as if you are just treading water, trying to stay afloat every day? Do you wish someone would arrive in a life saving raft for you? Is time for a break way over due?

Burnout is a widespread phenomenon, but each of us has our own deeper story about it.  Each of us has a unique experience with burnout, just as we are unique individuals. This is why standard advice about healing burnout does not always apply. The information we need is already inside us, the answer always right next to the question.

This retreat supports you in listening to your inner voice. The “secret” about how to deal with burnout is in the burnout itself. As the poet Rumi says, “The cure for the pain is in the pain.”  Don’t try to apply your burnout to a description provided by someone else.

This retreat in the mountains will help you tap into the energy to transform burnout. I call this composting the burnout itself. It is the temperature that is generated, and so necessary in a compost pile, that changes the weeds or leaves or grass clippings into the black moist humus enriching the garden for new plants.

I  provide the sensitively designed container for gathering this compost. You bring the most important content to it–your perspective and experience. I give you a supportive and creative framework to see it and feel it, first as an observer, then evolving into a transformative participant. I  respond to you by listening, both from the perspective of inside my own burnout and from outside of it, simultaneously. This is how the burnout retreat works. I never know exactly how it will unfold. The experience is always rich and surprising.

Transformational “assignments” will have you contemplatively working alone part of the time and also in pairs, then coming back together to share with the group. You will be reading, journaling, taking a gentle walk in the forests and meadows of the Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park. These big trees are wonderful companions for widening your perspective.

You will be creating mandalas, which are meditative circles (you don’t have to see yourself as an artist to make these.) Using innovative exercises you will begin to metabolize your burnout, creating a framework, for welcoming your authentic work, that is organic, fluid, and alive with beauty.

The retreat is intentionally offered as a “retreat” so that you are removed from the stressful rat race you are living daily, always trying to balance work, home and family obligations and finding precious little time left for you. The most potent healing or transformational aspect of this presentation is in your showing up. The natural landscape surroundings in the location of the retreat support you as you begin to experience your process working outside the proverbial box.

I deeply understand burnout, from both a personal and professional perspective. My life experience, along with years of study and contemplation, has given birth to this retreat.  After more than 40 years of caring for patients, I now find myself assigned to care for anyone who finds themselves in a “burnout” place. I heartfully welcome this new healing assignment. I look forward to sharing renewal and respite with you.