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The true quest of enlightenment is to expand beyond the self and the transcendent experience, to live an awakened life by fully integrating the spiritual and the physical worlds for the next level of human evolution and environmental well-being.

Awakening the “self” is not enough. 

There are two traps committed spiritual seekers can fall into. 

The first is “spiritual escapism:" to focus only on the transcendent experience; believing that this will take you all the way. The second is “spiritual self centeredness:” to focus only on ‘self’ and forgetting that your awakening is intrinsically connected to everything around you.

In this 3 day retreat Isira will share what it takes to not just be spiritual but to live spiritual ~ to integrate and fully live a sustainable and an awakened life.

Isira (pronounced "I-sai-ra") is a wisdom keeper and spiritual leader of mixed European and Australian Indigenous heritage who has been ordained by His Holiness Dalai Lama. Embodying wisdom from the teachings from her ancestors, eastern initiations, and the many challenges of her rather remarkable life experience; Isira brings rare clarity and unconditional love, to the challenges we face.

In this three day retreat we will explore our direct experience and let it reveal its essential reality of Awareness. Our particular focus is the body, allowing it to be our mirror and our pathway, our prayer and our altar, and ultimately the shining expression of this shared identity.

In our daily lives, the body is seldom tasted as it is. We rarely listen to its tactile and energetic language or allow it to simply unfold and blossom in its natural original intelligence.

With silence as our main shrine, we will share gradually deepening guided tactile meditations along with simple postures, free movements, breathing, and visualizations. In this contemplation, resistances and chains of bodily contractions, the habits that create the illusion that our identity is limited, located and separate are revealed and free to unfold as they are: feelings and sensations that come and go in Awareness. We come to feel that our true identity is an open field of vibrating openness,limitless and ever-present.

>Ellen’s deepest intuition was confirmed when she met her teacher, Francis Lucille. In his presence, she recognized the eternal, limitless and universal nature of our shared reality. Over many years, her understanding deepened to touch all levels of experience. The process of aligning and stabilizing all aspects of her life to this understanding has continued to unfold since then.. Ellen lives in Oxford, England with her husband, Rupert Spira.

The Embodied Awakening Intensive offers a deep dive into the practicalities of awakened living. Your everyday human life will be the laboratory as we explore the myth of the separate self and how to live the deepest nondual teachings of infinite oneness.

How do you handle a frustrating encounter with someone? How do you navigate your relationships? What about money, sexuality, work, and life purpose? What do you do with feeling disappointed or hurt or bored? What about needs, desires, and stressful times? We’ll carefully shed the light of awareness on your personal attachments, bringing a loving perspective and clarity to these common life situations.

Together, we’ll create a safe and supportive community of pure intention for peace and freedom.

Gail Brenner, Ph.D. is your guide on this journey. She is a clinical psychologist and lover of truth with a fire that burns brightly. She brings to this work years of experience with individuals and groups and is known for creating the sense of safety and trust needed for this deeper exploration.

When we gather together and explore the felt sense of sovereignty within, it strengthens us, lending deep rootedness to our being and body. The Heart can rest and be guided by resonance and the support of ancient still wisdom. We can stand tall in our being, letting swirling phenomena dance around and within, knowing ourself as the unmoving, constant love everything is seeking. Feeling the rooted relaxation of life down to our toes, even feeling the certainty of the eternal in our body. Join with Pamela and your fellow sages in being curious and listening within! Pamela evokes through dialogue, inquiry and her very presence the qualities of unconditional love and radical acceptance. She is celebrated for her ability to open the heart and create a space in which long-cherished struggles and notions about one’s identity relax.

Welcome to The Holding Space.

ALL is welcome here.

It's in this gentle embrace that everything can start to unravel. It's in this open space that we can begin to unwind the strategies that no longer serve us. This is the space that early mis-attunement failed to foster, the space where love blooms and new life can emerge. This is the space where all that quivers and shakes can come to rest, and where all that contorts can untwist into greater alignment.

You can expect a deeply held space where you’ll be invited to slow down, tune in, and track your present-moment experience. As you awaken and refine a more subtle way of Being and Being With, you can slowly but surely become the space – the container and the field – where healing takes place.

Georgia Simone’s path exposed her to the teachings of Advaita Vedanta, which provided her with the foundation she needed to dis-identify from pain and suffering. However, despite a growing freedom, a significant bypass took place. Upon seeing this, her focus became addressing the unresolved trauma that had woven its way into every fiber of her being.

After many years of wading through this marshland of conditioning, she now shares her discoveries with others. How can we die to the absolute, while deeply embracing our relative human experience? This Living inquiry is her Life’s prayer.

The Embodied Awakening Intensive offers a deep dive into the practicalities of awakened living. During our weekend together, your everyday human life will be the laboratory as we explore the myth of the separate self and how to live the deepest nondual teachings of infinite oneness. 

We’ll carefully shed the light of awareness on your personal attachments, bringing a loving perspective and clarity to these common life situations.

Through our time together in safe and supportive community, you’ll practice staying deeply grounded in your present moment experience. From this grounded awareness, you’ll learn to meet your programmed patterns and early trauma—the inner critic, long-standing shame, feelings of fear and insecurity—with intelligence and loving acceptance. This is how you begin to shed the feeling of separation so you are free to be fully alive in your life as it is right now.
You’ll discover the brilliance of embodying love, awareness, understanding, compassion, and deep connection with all…available in every moment.

Gail Brenner, Ph.D. is your guide on this journey. She is a clinical psychologist and lover of truth with a fire that burns brightly. She brings to this work years of experience with individuals and groups and is known for creating the sense of safety and trust needed for this deeper exploration.

Although our true nature is not affected by all that we experience, our human body and mind are impacted by experiences that result in trauma. Any experience, especially early in life, that is outside our window of tolerance, can overwhelm our nervous system and create chronic stress patterns in the body/mind. These stuck patterns can affect our spiritual awakening process by making it more difficult to relax, trust, be in the moment, and allow everything to be as it is—all of which are necessary for awakening and embodiment.

This intensive will explore how to meet trauma on all levels: body, mind, spirit and relational.

Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT is a nondual psychotherapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and author. She offers knowledge and wisdom gained from over 30 years of experience both as a therapist and with nondual spiritual teachings. She is the author of Awakened Relating:
A Guide to Embodying Undivided Love in Intimate Relationships and The Awakening West: Evidence of a Spreading Enlightenment.