Anti-Fragile Heart Retreat
July 7 - 12, 2024
This week-long journey into the heart of being fully alive weaves together emotional sovereignty, mindfulness, and relational dynamics for collective transformation.
The Offering
July 7 - 12, 2024: Anti-Fragile Heart Retreat
Discover the transformative power of collective practice. Join us for an intimate retreat nestled in the mountains of Asheville, NC. Limited to 12 participants, this immersive experience offers a unique opportunity to explore the depths of your inner landscape and your relationship with the world, cultivating an Antifragile Heart.
An Antifragile Heart is in touch with truth, beauty, and goodness in each moment, inviting you to meet yourself and others in the fullness of life and shared humanity.Beyond Self-Improvement, Return to Wholeness.
This retreat transcends self-improvement models. Instead, we embrace the Unfoldment Paradigm, recognizing the inherent wholeness and the potential waiting to be revealed. Like a seed blossoming into a flower, you rediscover your own beauty, wisdom, and resilience.
Why This? Why Now?
On this journey, you are called to what matters most - the depth of your heart, the clarity of your vision, and the embodiment of your most meaningful life. This is what enables you, and the world, to thrive. Embracing the pain and pleasure of your own patterns leads you to a path that is vividly, achingly alive.
You may have the sense that something in your life is ready to shift. You may crave a deeper sense of okayness, or for your relationships to thrive in new ways. You may be facing continuing roadblocks that you haven't been able to surmount. You may be tired of your own patterns. You may be ready for something new; you may simply be saying yes to the momentum of your own transformation.
We will tenderly and fiercely explore what gets in the way of saying yes to the lives we wish to lead. We will midwife each other into greater alignment with our own clarity and depth of desire, because this is how we become capable of creating a more beautiful world.
History
The Anti-Fragile Heart was designed and developed at the Monastic Academy in Lowell, VT with several facilitators including Daniel, Mitra, and Sofia-Jeanne, amongst others. The first two iterations were run there in 2022 & 2023. In 2024, the Monastic Academy gave ownership of the program over to us with well wishes to continue offering this program to the world.
Core Practices
Mindfulness & Presence
Cultivate present-moment awareness and inner peace through guided meditation practices.
Traditionally, meditation was considered an extremely advanced skill taught as the highest yoga. It's unusual for beginners to begin with silent meditation practice. We have found that this combination of practices allows one to surrender more readily into presence and silent practice without so much fighting and effort. This is a practice towards waking up to the fundamental awareness that can hold pleasant, painful, and all life conditions with a basic okayness.
Relational Work & Play
Deepen your capacity for connection and understanding through powerful interpersonal practices.
Often, our interactions with others follow ingrained patterns that undermine our happiness and intimacy. The practices we share develop authenticity and radical aliveness, reshaping our social patterns to foster relationships that truly nurture our lives. Becoming aware of our own and others’ present-moment experience, and the depth of our own longing and desire, we can form relationships that are beautiful, nourishing, and profound.
Unfoldment
Learn about and practice Unfoldment, a powerful alternative to constant self-improvement and self-optimization.
What if nothing is missing? What if you are already whole and have exactly what it takes to meet life’s challenges? Unfoldment is the natural process that enables us to grow and flourish as all living organisms do when the right conditions are met. Rather than resisting what's happening, Unfoldment is about turning toward your present moment experience with curiosity and kindness. As you open to what arises, you naturally unfold and unlock inner resources to meet life’s beauty and challenges with what’s needed.
Embodiment
It's easy to think transformation is occurring without truly reaching the depth of experience where transformational change can happen. Embodiment is crucial for deep change, and including it in the curriculum allows us to harness the power of psychological and interpersonal practices within the physical realm, where profound shifts become possible. While talking can lead us to profound realizations, our bodies communicate volumes – often conveying truths we may not consciously be aware of. By tuning into our bodies, we can learn about ourselves. Allowing ourselves to express freely through the body loosens the mind's grip on patterns..
Talks & Discussion
Change requires a new perspective. We need an orientation that frees our minds to embrace a new reality. Sharing our view of the world helps us share a cosmology through which we can engage in collective sensemaking. Understanding how these practices fit together, fit into our lives, and fit into the world allows us to navigate our engagement with discernment.
This Retreat is For:
- Change-makers seeing the importance of their inner landscape to enable greater outer impact.
- Individuals in life transitions wanting to develop the tools for a more meaningful, honest, and good life.
- Professionals in high-impact areas (AI, government, startups, etc.) facing the challenges of high intensity/ high stress and need better strategies to lean into the discomfort.
- Those ready to be challenged and supported in your Unfolding journey, willing to let go and surrender your old ways of being.
- Individuals seeking support in navigating personal and global crises, aiming to cultivate a post-tragic life amidst this fragile world.
- Sovereign selves capable of self-assessment, taking responsiblity for their choices and maintaining personal boundaries.
- Those seeking a fun and transformative experience that goes beyond safe, talk-based workshops, ready to face themselves and engage in deeper contact.
This Retreat is Not For:
- Those primarily seeking comfort, safety, and leisure, who want to steer clear of intensity and discomfort.
- Those resistant to feedback, reflection, and change.
- Individuals easily triggered by external circumstances and unwilling to self-examine their own participation.
- Those seeking a silent retreat.
- Those seeking a play or sex party (this event does not involve sexual contact).
- Individuals looking for someone to "fix" or heal them, or those seeking to heal or fix others. (Our model is educational, focused on learning through relating, experimentation, and presence).
100% Guarantee:
If you’re dissastisifed at the completion of the program, you may ask for a full program-fee refund up to a week after the program ends. We don’t want your money if you aren’t satisfied. However, you must have completed the full program. In addition, we have to cover the costs of lodging and food, so the refund will only cover the program workshop fee, not including lodging and food.
What are we going to do at this retreat, even? Facilitators Sofia-Jeanne Caring and Sarah-Marie Hopf discuss the practices and the inspiration for the retreat.
Facilitators Sofia-Jeanne Caring and Sarah-Marie Hopf touch base on how the retreat went. Themes include the field of love, group capacity, letting go of patterns, and holding the role of facilitator in a group practice.
Join the waitlist for Anti-Fragile Heart 2025 here:
https://tinyurl.com/2025afhTestimonials
Jared: I can say confidently that the Anti-fragile Heart Retreat was the most transformative experience that I have had to date in my life. Finding out about all these modalities of circling, authentic relating, and biomotive feedback, and all these different things I had no idea about before, and actually practicing them in a container with people who were loving, supportive, well versed in this whole thing.
It was truly magnificent. And I've fully, completely changed the way I was living before, and it's brought so much more aliveness to my life. So much more purpose, meaning depth of connection with others. So I would say if you're looking for more meaning and connection and depth in your life and you aren't afraid to make some changes, come to the Antifragile Heart Retreat.
It's going to really blow your heart wide open.
Before my life was like eating ice cream every day for every meal. It was very much about chasing eyes and when I got a taste of what a real meal was I couldn't go back. The depth of connection that was able to be accessed in that container was a blueprint showing me what the rest of my life could be like. And I wanted that and I found that and I've created that for myself....
I couldn't unsee that. It was like seeing light for the first time, like Plato's cave...and I encourage you to do that because life gets really beautiful and really good. So if you're thinking about it, if you're on the fence, it's worth it.
"The Anti-Fragile Heart Retreat is a deep reset in releasing subtle emotional weights while also learning how to abide in the enormous freedom of the present moment. Highly recommended for anyone looking to contact their fullest self." -Mariah Rose McKay, Spokane, WA
“This retreat feels made by, and made for, people who really care. The facilitators are all extremely experienced, and it's clear that they embody their practice. Within the environment they created, I was able to reach a level of vulnerability in a group setting that I normally can't even reach on my own. It was also really lovely to just spend time with everyone. All of the attendees were curious about bettering themselves and the world, and the discussions and dynamics which arose out of that were fascinating. As far as retreats go, this one felt very "human-centric". The priority of the retreat was the people, rather than a set of teachings or a certain mind state. I left the retreat feeling a much deeper love for myself and my desires, as well as the capacity to hold those in relation to other people. Overall, this retreat was absolutely invaluable — I want more.” - Adam Luck
"This retreat was wonderful. The relational skill of the facilitator team was extremely high, I felt very held and empowered by them. This retreat was both crunchy and incredibly gentle. It was crunchy in all the right ways -- being challenged at my edges, being humbled, being asked to reveal more and more of my experience. But it was all contained within a field of remarkable love and care. You should come to this retreat, you won't regret it." - BHH
“The retreat has infinite potential for awareness and wisdom to unfold. The facilitators are sincere, warm, open and intentional in their life missions. Part of what makes the retreat is the vulnerability that we each brought.”
Meet Your Facilitators
Our experienced facilitators will lead you through a unique retreat experience unlike any other encompassing a variety of modalities. Our team spans decades of experience and training.
Xuramitra Peter Park
Xūramitra Peter Park is a Relateful facilitator, mindfulness teacher, and Unfolding coach. He was the Executive Director and spiritual teacher at the Monastic Academy where he trained and taught for seven years. He began teaching relational practices in 2015. He has completed several rounds of Circling Europe’s 6-month SAS facilitator program and also was a TA for Relateful’s LevelUP immersion programs. He has completed Aletheia Level 1 training and is currently training in Level 2. His superpower is helping people feel safe and included.
Sofia-Jeanne Caring
Sofia-Jeanne Caring has trained in three core spiritual practices: meditation, circling, and embodied relational cultivation. She began training in meditation with Keith Porteous in 2011, continuing with Soryu Forall in 2017, which was foundational for her orientation to relational practice. While it was challenging, but not impossible, to find peace on a cushion, the way people related to each seemed hopelessly entangled with messy dynamics and a lack of meaningful connection. Fueled by this motivation, she began practicing Circling in 2016, certified through Circling Europe’s SAS, and has facilitated hundreds of individual sessions as well as numerous week-long retreats. In 2018 she met her primary teacher Kraye Grymonnt, with whom she has trained extensively in embodied relational cultivation ever since.
Sofia-Jeanne currently teaches the interweaving of these practices, and she is passionate about transforming our social fabric into collective liberatory praxis. Alongside her spiritual and psychological development work, she holds an MA in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University and is a doctoral student in Organizational Behavior at UNC Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.
Daniel Thorson
Daniel splits his time between making a living as a coach, hosting a podcast, and working on a social art project called the Church of the Intimate Web. In his spare time he enjoys hiking, network building, reading obscure philosophical texts, and falling in love with birds. Sometimes he posts on Twitter.
Sarah-Marie Hopf
Sarah-Marie Hopf is a developmental executive and leadership coach, Aletheia Unfoldment practitioner, and mindfulness teacher. She enjoys coaching values-aligned founders, leaders, changemakers, and spiritual practitioners and designing and facilitating workshops and experiences/retreats for individuals, teams, and communities. A German/American, she’s been grateful for the opportunity to work with individuals and organizations globally. To her work, she brings experience at the intersections of leadership and personal development, entrepreneurship and startups, organizational and systems change, and research and design thinking.
Sarah-Marie has completed Aletheia’s Advanced Coaching Program Levels 1-3 and is currently completing Level 4 and Aletheia’s group unfoldment program. She’s an ICF-certified integral coach through New Ventures West and a certified mindfulness meditation teacher through Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield’s MMTCP program. A long-time meditation practitioner, she’s spent 150+ days on intensive silent retreat.
Process to Join
1Application
Apply for a spot in the retreat.
2Clarification
We will meet with you to clarify your desire, providing a touchpoint before committing.
3Pay
After clarification, we'll send you payment information to secure your spot.
4Retreat
Join us July 7, 2024 in beautiful Asheville, NC for the retreat!
Growing Trust
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Now, since I’ve tasted trust in life,
why would I ever
slip again into armor?
The armor of an insincere smile
sometimes as dangerous
as the armor of a sword.
Why would I ever try to know
what to say, how to act,
how to plan, when,
with zero effort of my own,
life itself will move through me,
will rise up in me to meet itself?
Of course, like the child I am,
I forget this trust.
I slip back into habit,
believe I need protection,
fear I am isolated.
But I have fallen in love with life
at a time when that might seem impossible,
and this strange fact alone
seems enough to remind me
to ditch the armor,
to cast wide my arms,
to unsheath my heart
and say yes, life, I serve you.
Why would I not trust life?
It's like a seed
evading the rain,
like a sunflower, just unfurling,
trying to avoid the sun.
Reserve Your Spot
You'll be joining an intimate cohort of up to 12 people. Please fill out the application to express your interest and find alignment with what we are offering.
Pricing
Scholarship Program
$1,600
Room & Board Included
Full Program Workshops
Recommended
Standard Program
$2,000
Room & Board Included
Full Program Workshops
Premium Program
$4,000
Room & Board Included
Full Program Workshops
Eight 1on1s with Facilitators
- After the intensive, we'll schedule up to eight calls with a facilitator to help integrate and take forward the insights and changes from the retreat into your everyday life.
Contact Us
Feel free to reach out with any questions.
Are you unable to join the retreat at this time but interested in joining a future one? Join the waitlist to stay in the loop around upcoming opportunities.
FAQ
Cancellation Policy?
Until June 7, 2024: Full refunds offered.
Until June 30, 2024: 50% Refunds offered.
After June 30th: No refunds offered.
Our 100% guarantee means if you do attend the full program and are still unhappy with the experience afterwards then you can ask for a full program refund (not including the cost of food and lodging).
Travel?
The venue is located in Candler, NC, 9 miles outside of Asheville, NC. You will be responsible for figuring out your own ride situation. We'll make a ride-share spreadsheet for all the program participants to hopefully carpool together.
There ought to be ample parking if enough people carpool together.
Start & End Date-Time?
We begin Sunday, July 7, 2024. Please arrive in the 4-6pm range.
We will end Friday, July 12, 2024 departing before 10am.
Each day, we will have breakfast, lunch, and dinner available. There will be different workshops guided by the facilitators. You are welcome to choose your own adventure, everything is optional.
Accommodations & Food?
We want everyone to stay together for this week. We've found that a lot of the transformations and momentum comes from being together outside of the workshop times. We ask you set aside your regular busy lives during this time. However, if you have to take a call or deal with work, please take care of yourself.
Everyone will likely share a room with at least one or two others.
We will do our best to accommodate your dietary restrictions to the best of our ability including gluten-free, vegetarianism, and veganism. Please let us know in the application form.
© 2024