2026 Winter Self Care Retreat on Lopez Island: Tending the Seeds of the Emergent Self

What seeds are you nurturing for your emergent self in 2026?

Give yourself the gift of time and a well facilitated container to be with this exploration in embodiment, mindfulness, art making, and community for this Winter Self Care Retreat: Tending the Seeds of the Emerging Self. 

As the deep winter takes root after the holidays where the dark, fertile time of turning inward arrives in full, we finally have time to tend the dreaming seeds of our future self as they gestate underground at the beginning of the New Year. Come join me as we spend a full cozy day in the straw bale, solar powered chapel of Downdog Studio on Midnight’s Farm, in a connected pulsation with the wintering land that holds us. 

Begin the day with setting the intentional space in a well held container of community, then head into an all levels yoga flow imbedded in storied mythos focused on seeding our future selves. As always, our yoga will be filled with poetry and metaphor as we physically embody the theme seeded into the asana and meditation. 

Following yoga, we will invite plant allies to be medicine for the body in the form of herbal teas, wildcrafted from the land to support our winter immune systems accompanied by tasty organic treats. After a nourishing break, each person create a literal container for light to illuminate the inner journey in this darkest time of winter. Once we light our intentions, we will head out onto the winter landscapes for a land-based oracular experience to listen and receive messages from the more than human world in its language of symbols and interactions. We will collect these images into our physical and metaphoric baskets, and nestle them into our journals, art making, and sharing.

Then choose to join us for a local, organic foods luncheon, all hand made with love on Lopez Island –or choose to bring your own brown bag lunch. Following lunch, the immersion into artfully facilitated personal art making commences, where you will have ample time to deepen your creativity with delicious art materials invoking the creation of a personal altar to the emergent self you are seeding for 2026. 

The retreat will culminate in illuminating our personal altars, and held within this warm candlelight, we will end with a deep Yoga Nidra & embodied meditation and closing circle. You will then take home your container for light, your personal altar, and a refreshed and inspired body, mind and spirit. 

Cost: $125-195, which includes lunch, all art making materials, yoga, tea and treats. I work on a sliding scale to honor the ecosystem that we co-create that supports diversity and inclusion. Please contribute what you can knowing that your generosity makes it possible for others to benefit and come together in our strengthened circle of community. 

To register for this retreat, please email nikytapalmisani@gmail.com and secure your spot by sending payment via Venmo (Nikyta-Palmisani), PayPal: nikyta4@yahoo.com, or cash or check. 

***This retreat also makes a gorgeous holiday gift for a friend or family member, so feel free to bless your beloveds and I’m happy to send a beautiful gift certificate upon request. *** Additionally, I am also offering one work study role for anyone who wants a deeply discounted rate and would like to assist me in the day.

Past: Climate Fresk for Climate Practitioners, Sunday, February 23, 2025 09:00-12:00 PT, More information and link to register here.

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Past: Climate Compass on Lopez Island, Friday, February 21 , 2025 6-8 pm at the LCCA:
Join fellow Lopezians on Feb. 21 from 6-8 p.m. at the Lopez Center for the Community and Arts for the Comprehensive Plan Outreach for Meaningful Public Action & Sustainable Solutions, or COMPASS. San Juan County is updating its Comprehensive Plan, a long-term vision for the islands’ future, and this time around, a crucial new element is being added: climate resiliency.
* I have helped shape and create this process as part of the forming team and as a Madrona Institute Board Member. I will be helping facilitate this evening event, and I hope you can join us! Learn more about Climate Compass Events here.

Past: Saturday, February 8th, 2025 9:30-3:30 pm: Strongly Rooted In Stormy Times: Regenerative Agriculture and Emotional Resilience & Embodiment

In response to requests to bring this work to our incredible place, I will be doing an in person workshop where I will first lead an agriculture and nature based themed yoga class, followed by a farm tour led by Faith Van De Putte of Midnight’s Farm who has a host of local climate solutions including regenerative agriculture practices, compost operation, biochar, soil science, and a market farm garden. After our tour, I will give an overview of how regenerative agriculture acts as a climate change solutions and some basic science and an overview of the key principles. Then we will use these principles of regenerative agriculture to map emotional resilience strategies in our lives as well as deepening our relationship to our local food production. This workshop has the learning goals of climate solution education, place based connection to land and community, deepening insight and mapping our personal resilience for what keeps us strongly rooted in the face of stormy times.

Please join us by emailing nikytapalmisani@gmail.com. Space is limited for the full day which includes yoga in the straw bale and solar powered Downdog studio, so please register soon to reserve your space. No one turned away for lack of funds, please inquire for scholarships. We look forward to building our resilience with you and our human and more than human communities!

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