Take this short quiz to assess your mental and spiritual readiness for a psychedelic retreat.
Health and healing isn’t just physical; it’s mental, emotional and – most importantly, it’s relational. Did you know the no.1 creator of problems in our life is unresolved trauma and relational injury? According to the United Nations, 75% of trauma doesn’t come from a battlefield, refugee camp, or an earthquake, it’s interpersonal — inflicted by one person on another, often purposefully.
Wait what? Yes, you read that right – 75% of traumas are those we purposefully inflict upon each other. Including on those we love. It’s the living embodiment of the phrase “hurt people, hurt people”.
The pain of these unheard and unseen hurts keeps us tied in knots. It keeps us…
• Running into the wrong relationships.
• Caught in drama or disharmony.
• Unable to identify, speak our true needs, or get completely heard.
• Triggered into our wounded child, when we need to be in adult.
• People pleasing our way through life with academy award-winning placating or pretence.
• Stuck with the people we’d rather escape.
• Keeping people at a distance to play it safe.
• Terrified we’ll get left, or behave in a way that f*cks things up again.
• Horrified we’re living out family patterns we thought we would never embody, with no idea how to escape them (or terrified we will)
We don’t have to remain stuck here.
We can Evolve.
EVOLVE is a carefully curated, deeply transformative, life-changing, retreat experience. It’s the equivalent of 60 hours work in one-to-one psychotherapy sessions, gained in a single week.
It’s designed by a world-class team to initiate a profound healing and rewiring of your mind, body, emotional regulation, and behaviour, to result in powerfully positive shifts in your nervous system, communication capacity, and relational ability.
Ok, so what does that mean?
EVOLVE will allow you to…
• Gain a new perspective of yourself and the way you relate.
• Learn practical somatic skills to bio-hack your body, brain and behaviour, especially when you feel triggered or flooded inside - which is what leads us into unhealthy coping mechanisms.
• Become part of a community of like-minded souls, who believe in ‘being the change’ and co-creating a world where humans can relate through harmony and wholeness, rather than from trauma and survival responses.
• Be better able to reach your human potential, optimal wellness, and have satisfying and rich relationships, rooted in authenticity, honesty and intimacy, helping to create a harmonious world both at home and wherever you go.
• Transform the relationship to yourself, your family, and the environment — cultivating a new way of living, from authentic, healthy adult self. One based on self-respect, integrity, and the capacity to be an inspiration.
Become the change you seek.
{{btn-begin-your-journey-retreat="/utility/components"}}
Unwind with us at the absolute sanctuary that is Vikasa; a world-class wellness and yoga retreat centre. Watch the stunning sunset views, walk to the private beach, have a massage, swim in the tropical warm, turquoise waters and eat the delicious food supplied by their flagship restaurant Life Café. Each day you will turn up to sessions in a gorgeous space with an expansive view over the ocean, where you can hear the waves in moments of quiet, perfect to foster mindfulness and inner peace.
Give yourself the gift of this deeply held retreat container, without the distractions of daily life, held in a beautiful location where everything is designed to help you let go. To release control, let your mind go, put down the masks and just breathe. To make the shifts that otherwise wouldn’t be possible while consumed by everyday life.
{{btn-begin-your-journey-retreat="/utility/components"}}
But wait… isn’t Behold Retreats all about plant medicine? Will that be part of the experience?
Yes and no.
During the week-long EVOLVE experience, we explore life and wellness through the lens of the medicine wheel — used by indigenous peoples, such as the Q’ero tribe, for thousands of years — to transcend trauma and resolve unhealthy behaviours by returning tribe-members to ‘right relationship’ with themselves, their communities, and the world.
In the medicine wheel we meet:
THE SERPENT - who teaches us to shed the skins of our past, and the unhealthy relating patterns that no longer serve us or those we love.
THE JAGUAR - who teaches us about primal protection, particularly for the parts of us that have lacked boundaries, had them violated, or abused, in the past.
THE HUMMING BIRD - who teaches us that joy is our birth right - yet it may have been subdued or stolen from us, through events that have overwhelmed, or traumatised.
THE EAGLE - who teaches us about our natural connection to the Earth and the Cosmos, so we can access the potent power of Spirit that exists outside of ourselves.
We will also honour and invite our ancestors into the circle, to acknowledge that much of our personal suffering, particularly from dysfunctional family dynamics, originates in the generations prior. And, when we call them into the space - energetically - we can begin to resolve painful patterns that have been passed down from parent to child, and beyond.
EVOLVE retreat is the ideal accompaniment to work you may have done, or be seeking to do, with plant medicine, or psychedelics.
Our team, who have spent decades working in this space, personally and professionally, have found that an integrative therapeutic process is vital to optimising work with indigenous psychedelic plants.
That’s because the ceremonies frequently show us our ‘shadows’ and the traumas we’ve experienced — that we’ve dismissed, normalised, or forgotten — but, what they fail to do is help us put in place the new software we need, the tools for healthy relating, that we didn’t get from our parents.
Whether that’s learning how to listen to our needs, to develop healthy boundaries, or learning how to self-soothe our wounded child when he/she gets triggered.
Your health, wellness and spiritual growth need additional foundations.
{{btn-begin-your-journey-retreat="/utility/components"}}
The Retreat
• Private consultation so you know it’s the right fit for you and can get your questions answered
• Guidance for retreat preparation, including a pre-retreat group call with your facilitator
• 7 days with a world-class, trauma-trained team, including a facilitator, guest teachers and supporting coaches
• Class sessions, the equivalent of 50 hours of therapy
• Sharing circles and integration support
• Daily yoga class and meditations
• Welcome evening to ground your vision and connect with your retreat peers
• Closure and celebration evening to recap your wins and new connections
The Stay
• 7 nights at a beach-front private wellness and yoga resort
• Airconditioning, free wifi and bathrobe in all rooms
• 2 delicious, healthy meals a day
• Private on-site beach
• Access to meditation and yoga retreat spaces for use during breaks
• Opportunity for on-site and in-room massage
If that wasn't enough, we also have a few special bonuses for you.
Firstly, to support your integration when you leave:
• Audio recordings of select classes to support integration and at-home practice
• A post-retreat integration group call
Secondly, to add rest, rejuvenation and a little extra culture to your stay:
• Surprise “connect to the spirit of Thailand” experiences
• Option for a half day visit to world-class spa with sauna, pools, spa treatment and massage set directly amongst Koh Samui’s lush nature
You have two options:
• Retreat package: $4,800 USD
• Retreat package + luxury accommodation upgrade: $5,500 USD
Your Thailand retreat is set on Koh Samui and is inclusive of: 7 days of retreat, 7 night’s accommodation and 2 meals
It’s not inclusive of: flights, transit to/from retreat centre, other wellness sessions
• Sept 2022
Attendance is by application and invitation only. To discover if this transformative, healing experience is the right one for you…
{{btn-begin-your-journey-retreat="/utility/components"}}
Our hand-picked team of experienced and caring facilitators and healers are always on hand to guide you through your journey.
Hear first hand what a life-changing experience a Behold retreat can be from our past participants.
The depth of this type of transformational work is based on the quality of your facilitation team. What skills and tools do they bring? What is their capacity to hold safe space so that you can let go, face your demons, leap into the unknown, heal and Evolve?
Evolve is led by Trauma Recovery Specialist, Gemini Adams, CF, C-TREP, STR, and an expert guest teaching team, who all have decades of experience contributing to the fields of wellness, mental health, social change, healing and facilitating in the world’s leading retreat centres.
Gemini is an award-winning author, educator, and Winston Churchill Fellow, with 25 years of experience who is passionate about resolving the painful legacy of childhood trauma. She has worked, volunteered, and collaborated with high-impact organisations and joyfully transformed countless lives, both in a clinical setting within her own private practice, and in the100’s of programs she’s led around the globe.
Her co-facilitator, Simone MacKay, BSW, E- RYT 500, is a former Social Worker who spent many years working in crisis centers, supporting women in recovery and healing from domestic violence and abuse, Simone combines this with her 18+ years as a 500 E-RYT yoga teacher and retreat leader.
Together with the guest teachers they will combine cutting edge somatic therapies, body-based psychotherapy, family constellation, and embodiment practices — such as trauma-informed yoga and T.R.E — with psychoeducation around boundaries, co-dependency, abuse dynamics, and hands-on learning with takeaway tools for healthy relating and authentic communication. Along with these healing therapies will be mindfulness, embodiment and wellness practices such as yoga and meditation.
For those who know Vikasa, you will get all the benefits you love, while going far beyond “another yoga retreat”, meditation retreat or wellness retreat. Leave behind your daily life for a transformation retreat with elements of a yoga retreat and luxury wellness retreat, including daily morning yoga, meditation, a focus on healthy but delicious food, the opportunity for a Thai massage or two, plus so much more…
{{btn-begin-your-journey-retreat="/utility/components"}}
