Finally Friday Week 7: Retreating from the World

I feel most at home in silence.—Katherine Jenkins

I'm gearing up to head off on a writing retreat. I took a walk and ate lunch with a good friend today, changed the wiper blades on my car, bought groceries and now I'm slowly packing.

I'm heading off on a week-long writing retreat to my family's lake cabin. My goal is to work on my next book without any distractions. No wifi, Facebook, traffic, crowds and the fast pace of city life.

I am looking forward to getting into a slow rhythm again. I look forward to walks, cooking and of course WRITING. My next book has been neglected and put aside in the corner of my office and every time I walk in there it seems to scream for my attention.

Well, it will finally get my attention.

Finally.....

As much as my life is surrounded by people, I am wondering if, in fact, I'm an introvert. I crave long stretches of writing in silence and love to go on meditation retreats where I'm silent for 10 or more days. I feel most at home in silence. I can feel myself there and I'm able to tune into deeper callings within me. Without the silence, I could not navigate my way through this world. I look to nature, dreams and meditations for direction. In fact, I depend on them.

Retreat, according to the dictionary, means:

1. the act of moving back or withdrawing from the world.
2. a secluded place where one can rest or relax

Life seems to move at such a pace these days, especially in the city. It's good to go on a retreat and rejuvenate the body, mind and soul and tune into those inner impulses that are hard to hear with all the commotion that we are faced with on a day to day basis.

Do you ever go on retreats? What is your experience on retreats?

365 Inspirations—122: Yoga and Writing Retreat Offerings

Bell Rock Vortex, Sedona, AZ, Yoga Retreat

"One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure."—William Feather

I've been working on getting a flyer together for a big book event we are headed to on the Olympic Peninsula tomorrow. Forty people are expected to attend the event and I have about EIGHT books left on hand. Hopefully people will bring their own copies.

My inspirations today are these retreat offerings and this flyer I created. Space is already filling up FAST. I'm looking forward to meeting some lovely people at our retreats again this summer and early fall. While I love the people I've met online, it's such a different feeling when we meet together in person on retreat. Please share this page with anyone who might be interested! Here's the flyer:

Questions for you: Have you ever gone on a retreat? Do you think it added a new and meaningful perspective to your life? In what ways?

365 Inspirations—19: Planning a Trip

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I always get inspired when I plan a trip! Maybe I should have been a travel agent. I love traveling, but I also love planning trips. I'm usually the one who organizes the travel arrangements in the family. My husband and I have spent a great deal of our 17 or so years together traveling. We've been to India, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Tibet, Hong Kong, Nepal and Canada together and to many other countries on our own. In the USA, we've traveled to Hawaii, Arizona, New York, Maryland, Nevada,  Utah, Washington D.C., Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maine, Florida, Oregon, California and to many other states that I can't think of right now. He's seen much of the USA, but his first trip to America was in 2000.

We got married in Korea and had a traditional Korean wedding and went to a Japanese hot spring resort for our honeymoon and then we had another wedding ceremony in Washington State at a friends house on the water. We took a boat across Lake Washington to a friend's condo and left the next morning for a second honeymoon in Kauai, Hawaii. My aunt and uncle offered their place to us as a wedding gift. I felt lucky to have both eastern and western weddings and honeymoons. I loved planning those trips.

For my husband's 40th birthday in December, we went to Las Vegas and met two friends from California there. We also took a side trip to Zion National Park. Our friends planned most of the trip. It was actually nice to have someone else do the planning for once, even though I love it. I finally got to just go along for the ride!

In March, my husband is leading a yoga retreat in Hilo, Hawaii. We have done many yoga retreats together and even combined our talents at yoga and writing retreats at various locations in both the USA and abroad. We hope to do more of those! I'm probably going to add an extra page to this blog with information about our retreats. They are usually very well attended.

We just booked our flight for Kona today. The yoga retreat is for seven days in Hilo and I will also do a book reading/signing at a bookstore in Kona for my book Lessons from the Monk I Married that came out in April last year. From April to June, 2012 my husband and I went on both an east and west coast tour for my book and had a great time!

Do you like planning trips? Do you have plans to go anywhere soon?

ON TOUR: Book Review in Shambhala Sun and a Yoga/Writing Retreat in Sedona

So I'm not technically ON TOUR anymore, but there are some tour stops coming up on the horizon. I think the next one may be Phoenix, Arizona in October, but I'll keep you posted on that. It's been a busy week, but somehow I got through it. I've got so many projects and ideas on all burners. I can't share yet, because they are sort of half-baked, but I will soon. I can share some other news though.

Yesterday I was feeling a bit tired after work and my husband suggested that we go take a 3-mile walk around Greenlake. When the weather is nice in Seattle, you really don't want to miss out. So after our walk, I wanted to stop by PCC, our local grocery store, to get a Kombucha, some red grapes and check if the latest issue of Shambhala Sun was on the magazine stand yet. Lo and behold, it was. I picked it up and began flipping through it. Mind Waves on Page 39 caught my eye. How curious that Shambhala had decided to reprint an excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki's book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. It was one of the first books I read about meditation and I mentioned it in my book, Lessons from the Monk I Married. I continued flipping through the pages and there is was!

A review of my book was on page 83 of the September 2012 issue of Shambhala Sun and it was a good one! Here's a little taste of the review:

"Lessons from the Monk I Married is travel writing at its best. It takes us deep into another culture while documenting a profound inner journey."

Well, I have to say, it was the perfect ending to my day!

In other news, we are gearing up for another yoga/writing retreat October 25-28 in Sedona, Arizona!

We had twenty participants on our last yoga/writing retreat at The Yoga Lodge on Whidbey Island, WA and excellent feedback, so we've decided to carry on with these. If you are interested in joining us on this retreat, please contact my husband Yoon at info@yoonsyogabliss.com. The retreat is filling up and we are offering 20% off if you register before August 15th (The poster says July 30th, but we've extended it). That date is fast approaching, so don't miss out on this great deal.

Yoga and writing are the perfect combination, in my opinion. Yoga helps one to go inward and often that is where we find our best writing.

Best writing has nothing to do with being perfect, it has to do with uncovering and discovering what we are meant to do and/or meant to write and share. On our last retreat, not everyone who attended was a yogi or a writer. That was not so important. But by the end of the retreat it was clear that everyone had gotten in touch with a deeper part of themselves. They had new clarity on the direction they wanted to take and yoga, writing and collaging were tools we used to get us there.

On this retreat coming up, we get the added beauty of Sedona, Arizona—red rocks, a labyrinth, a sky full of more stars than you knew existed, a full moon, beautiful fall weather, hikes to several vortexes, river wading, organic vegetarian meals, meditation....and of course yoga and writing! I can't wait and I hope to see you there!

I'm going to really try and post once a week! Read here for all my posts on yoga and here for posts on writing.