New Year’s: Open Heart, Peaceful Mind

NB: This workshop is AT CAPACITY. To be added to the waitlist for this program, please complete this form. Thank you.

For nearly two decades, hundreds of people have welcomed the New Year at Pendle Hill with the gift of this retreat designed to rest, reflect, renew, and restore. At these times of high stress and high anxiety, we need now, more than ever, to exhale deeply and feel fully nourished through resilience-building, heart-opening, and peace-making practices. We can’t do this alone. We need a caring and supportive community and space and time to be nurtured and supported.

Many of us live with anxiety, worry, and stress about relationships: caring for aging parents, worry about our children, seeking connection and belonging in an all-too disconnected world. Some of us feel frustrated about social justice issues like climate crisis, gun violence, and social equity that are beyond our capacity to influence.  We can get caught in self-limiting beliefs, cynicism, and perfectionism that sabotage us on the way to real change. This year’s retreat theme is Becoming Your  Own True Love. We focus on truly loving and accepting ourselves as we are as the foundation for creating meaningful relationships with ourselves, with others, with our communities, and our society.

This retreat includes periods of silence, reflection, group discussion, creative arts, walks in nature, deep relaxation, and mindful movement. Savor guided meditation and extended periods of silence to deepen discernment about how to live your best self as you close the year and enter the New Year.

You will learn how to:

• Choose love when conditions are uncertain and ambiguous.
• 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.

Surrounded by a supportive and caring community, you will restore balance and calm, and feel uplifted toward the best version of you, and return home with a Becoming Your Own True Love Plan of Action and other tools to create greater peace and belonging in your life.

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 candlelight Meeting for Worship. This event is already included with your registration to this retreat!

Valerie invites you to join this retreat!

Download the flyer to share with your community

Leader

Valerie Brown is an author, ordained Buddhist-Quaker Dharma teacher in the lineage of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village tradition, a Courage & Renewal Facilitator, and executive coach specializing in leadership development and mindfulness practices with a focus on diversity, social equity, and inclusion. A former lawyer and lobbyist, Valerie transformed her high-pressure, twenty-year career into serving leaders and nonprofits to create trustworthy, authentic, compassionate, and connected workspaces.

Her latest book, Hope Leans Forward: Braving Your Way toward Simplicity, Awakening, and Peace (Broadleaf, 2022), received the Nautilus Gold Award for Eastern Spirituality in 2023. Valerie has authored several popular Pendle Hill pamphlets, including Coming to Light: Cultivating Spiritual Discernment through the Quaker Clearness Committee (PHP #446). She is a member of Solebury Monthly Meeting (PA) and leads an annual pilgrimage to El Camino de Santiago, Spain.

Learn more at www.valeriebrown.us.

Financial aid may be available. If you are seeking funds to participate in this program, click to review and complete our Financial Assistance Application and a Pendle Hill staff member will follow-up with you shortly (please do NOT register online). Thank you for your interest.

Travel directions to Pendle Hill. Please make sure to review our health and safety expectations at https://pendlehill.org/stay/covid-19-information/.