New Year’s: Open Heart, Peaceful Mind

This program has reached capacity. Please join the waitlist to be contacted if space becomes available, and check out our other New Year’s retreats happening on campus at the same time!

If you are seeking funds or alternate payment options to participate in this program, please wait to register and first complete our Financial Assistance Application.

This New Year’s retreat is designed to cultivate rest, reflection, renewal, and restoration. At these times of uncertainty, change, high stress and high anxiety, we need now, more than ever, to exhale deeply and feel fully nourished through resilience-building, heart-opening, peace-making practices, and a caring community.

Welcoming the New Year is a perfect time to explore issues of transition, vocation, life purpose, passion, meaning, direction and underlying life patterns to live in greater alignment with your core values. Listen to your own inner wisdom, and reconnect who you are with what you do.

Our theme for this retreat is Braving Your Way through Life Transitions.

You will learn how to:

• Navigate life’s uncertain and ambiguous moments.
• Cultivate courage and trust even when you don’t feel it.
• Reflect on what matters most with soul-amplifying questions.
• Align your values with your work for a greater sense of purpose and meaning.
• Cultivate body intelligence and body awareness.
• Show yourself real kindness through self-compassion.

Savor periods of silence, reflection, group discussion, creative arts, walks in nature, deep relaxation, music, laughter, and mindful movement. Surrounded by a supportive and caring community, you’ll return home feeling restored, inspired, balanced and uplifted toward the best version of you.

Download the flyer to share with your community

This retreat culminates in an alcohol-free New Year’s Eve celebration, with hors d’oeuvres and a home-cooked dinner, lively concert in the Barn, desserts, and midnight candlelit Meeting for Worship. This event is already included with your registration to this retreat!

Leader

Valerie Brown is an author, Buddhist-Quaker Dharma teacher, facilitator, and executive coach specializing in leadership development and mindfulness practices with a focus on diversity, social equity, and inclusion. An award-winning author, her latest books include Healing Our Way Home:  Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors, Joy, and Liberation (Parallax Press, 2024) and  Hope Leans Forward: Braving Your Way toward Simplicity, Awakening, and Peace (Broadleaf, 2022). She has written several Pendle Hill pamphlets and is long-time and beloved teacher at Pendle Hill.

Valerie is an ordained Buddhist Dharma teacher in the lineage of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village tradition. She leads an annual pilgrimage to El Camino de Santiago, Spain to celebrate the power of sacred places. She is a certified Kundalini yoga teacher (500 hours), engaging leaders to embody somatic wisdom and creativity.

Learn more at www.valeriebrown.us.