COVID-19 Update Temporary suspension of all on-site programming and operations As of March 17, the Christine Center is temporarily suspending all on-site programming and private retreats through April 6, 2020. We will update you as we near April 5 should the suspension need to be extended. We are working to bring you deepening opportunities online. Already we have programs ready for which can be viewed by clicking the button below:
Unless otherwise noted, programs begin at 7 pm and end at noon. Sign up for our newsletter here. View registration, pricing, and cancellation policy Please note that the Christine Center does not offer either health care or psychotherapy. We offer opportunities for spiritual deepening and exploration, as well as personal restoration and peace.
with Liz Rog & Tracy Chipman April 17-19 Tuition: Sliding scale of $150 – $350, plus meals and lodging Please join community song leader Liz Rog and storyteller Tracy Chipman for this women’s* weekend retreat soaking in the soul tending experiences of singing and storytelling. Solace means to offer comfort and consolation in a time of distress and sadness. Together, giving and receiving, we’ll build community through song and story. Liz’s Bio Tracy’s bio: Tracy stepped onto the path of storyteller 25 years ago under an Oregon hazelnut tree and has never looked back. She believes story and storytelling are deeply in our human bones and more than ever we need the evocative richness of old myth & folk-lore to weave with the fabric and the narrative of our precious lives and communities. * open to those identifying as women
April 20-22 (Monday to Wednesday) with Wendy Mitch Tuition: $150, plus meals and lodging When we shift our mindset from inward to outward, profound change can happen! In this retreat we will take a deep dive into the concepts of self-deception (having a problem, not knowing I have a problem and resisting the possibility that I might even be part of the problem), collusion (provoking the very behaviors I say I hate in others) and ego (repetitive thought patterns that are mostly unhelpful) but also how our spiritual practice can move us from inward to outward, problem focused to solution focused, ego to ego less.
April 23-24 (11am Thursday-11am Friday) with Tracy Chipman – MA, CYT, AYS Tuition: $95, plus lodging and meals Yoga Nidra, also known as “yogic sleep” is an ancient practice that offers very deep rest. It is a systematic method, creating an experience of restful alertness allowing the physiology, the neurology and subconscious mind to sink into a deep wellspring of relaxation and rest. Please join Tracy in the sanctuary of the Christine Center for this delicious gift given to and received by your sweet self.
with Kathy Roberg, RN, MS and Nancy Hemesath, MA April 26-28 (Sunday to Tuesday) Tuition: $150, plus meals and lodging This workshop targets the essential final chapter of our lives. Distilling lessons from our ancestors, articulating the meaning of our lives, and chronicaling stories and blessings for those who live beyond us. Navigating these final years in a conscious and thoughtful process, we embrace the opportunity to fully honor our lives through death. Participants will identify and Embrace the influence of the heritage from our ancestral stories; review life events, persons and circumstances that shaped our lives; gain an understanding of the values and significance that we have to contribute to others; design a life completion that celebrates our legacy. Major Topics: Presentation Methods: Content presentation; Individual time for reflection and journaling; Video; Poetry; Small group sharing
With Tracy Hart, CYT May 11-13 (Monday to Wednesday) Tuition $150, plus meals and lodging “Sadhana” is a daily spiritual practice; an effort to communicate with the divine inside you and all around you! Enjoy a variety of yoga and meditation practices designed to cleanse and rejuvenate the mind, body and spirit. All are welcome! Sessions will include: May 14-17, 2020 (Thursday-Sunday) Daily 10:00 am – 5:00 pm (Commuters welcome!) With S. Gabriele Uhlein, OSF, PhD Tuition: $60 a day / $30 for half days (all materials included), plus meals and lodging. Commuters: bring a bag lunch or purchase a delicious vegetarian meal for $16. Brush, paper! GO! Large sheets of vellum paper and 24 open paint pots of gorgeous colors await! Experience a fun and supportive community of happy painters. (Come with friend!) No previous art skill is required; bring a sense of play, adventure and openness. Each day includes two studio sessions with S. Gabe and an evening optional conversation circle. If you have ever felt blocked and uninspired, these days are the perfect remedy! Painting from intuition brings freedom and restores creative zest. Dare to enter a marvelous “judgement-free zone” for discovering possibilities and breaking through limiting blocks old patterns that can invigorate all aspects of life. Just wait till you see the studio walls!
May 15-17 (Friday to Sunday) Tuition: $150, plus meals and lodging Join Iris Mickey, Certified Yoga Therapist for a weekend of discovering the Fascial Web of your bodies inner landscape. This weekend will be a combination of movement and stretching to identify and move through the different planes of our bodies inner fascial network. In addition, we will use Yoga Nidra meditation to explore the different facets of our minds inner landscape. Come prepared for movement and times of stillness. Curious about Fascia? Look up Anatomy Trains to get a glimpse this fascinating fascia that holds us all together!
May 15-17 (Friday to Sunday) with Tom Roberts Tuition: $150, plus meals and lodging “The art of living… is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.” Alan Watts This retreat will provide us with the opportunity to cultivate the innate sense of returning to our spiritual home. We often feel that fundamental plea from within, inviting us to take stock of how far we might have wandered from our deeper wisdom, our deeper sensing true self. Thus, creating a life that is chaotic and out of balance. Zen and The Art of Coming Home will invite us to calm the frenetic looking and searching, born out our fear that we somehow are deficient and not good enough, and to return to our longed-for spiritual home. To re-mind ourselves that in order to be spiritually “at home” we must remember to secure our place in the world, to be at ease with ourselves. We will explore the elegant Zen methods of re-minding ourselves of “coming home.” These methods will help us with re-aligning and to live from that place of spiritual depth and wisdom. Embracing each moment with great patience, openness and compassion. The beauty of Zen methods is in the fact that Zen is a method. A method that can be easily integrated into any spiritual tradition.
May 22-24 (Friday to Sunday) with Adina Joy Levitt Tuition: $150, plus meals and lodging Adina has woven her shamanic training with her love of Free Form Dance & Movement to create this ceremonial form of reconnecting with the body as a sacred tool to dive into the mystery of our very beings. In a world where so many of us feel stressed in our bodies, we can learn to stop and listen to the wisdom that our bodies hold by carefully exploring both our bodies’ biology and simultaneously entering the unseen realms. With eyes half closed in the candle-lit meditation hall we will use dance as a means to tap into this exploratory journey to receive guidance from our bodies, ancestors, healing guides, and Future Selves. Instead of learning steps to a specific dance routine, Free Form Dance gives us unlimited access to interact with our unique life stories. Our stressful situations become places for us to learn from, moving away from a survival mentality, unraveling myths from our ancestry, and learning to dance in the flow that resides in and around us all. Adina completed a 3 1⁄2 year Shamanic Apprenticeship and has participated in medicine dances in forests, outdoor arbors, and parks in order to connect in a conscious way with the Earth, her body, and the larger interconnection of the Universe. No previous dance experience needed. Participants will have time to journal and process their work with the group during the retreat. You find out more about her here: www.adinajoy.com
May 22-24 (Friday to Sunday) with Rahjta Ren Tuition: $150, plus meals and lodging My approach on almost all topics is what I have come to describe as “The Harmonic Gateway.” This is the implementation of frequency/vibration/sound and music as a pathway to quieting one’s mind. When “sound invokes silence” – this is not silence as aural/auditory silence, but the ineffable silence within all existence. From this inner stillness, I interactively and collectively guide our men’s group through the Harmonic Gateway into heart-space/center. Throughout the day(s’) retreat, we practice living as an expression of this selfrealizing boundlessness, aspiring for an integration into everyday life. The methods offered within this retreat for men seeking to enrich understanding, insights and wisdom emanating as resonant field of heart, are purely experiential cultivated from my own practices. This immersion holds a concentration focusing on nurturing the balancing of intellect/information-processing and heart-based intelligence/
May 29-31 (Friday to Sunday) with Andrew Harvey Tuition: Sliding scale of $150 to $250, plus meals and lodging Andrew Harvey has spent 40 years devoting himself to the Rumi Renaissance and to Rumi as the prophet of love of the new universal mysticism. Nothing could ever express what he has been graced through him. And now, his work is focused on the other great universal mystical poet, Kabir the great poet of India, loved by Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs but whose vision of the One transcends all religion. It is as if Rumi flooded us with tender fire to prepare us to be burnt alive in the astringent flames of Kabir. Rumi is the great prophet of love, Kabir is the fierce and sublime prophet of truth. Rumi can be fierce, but leads with refined ecstatic tenderness; Kabir can be tender, but leads with a breath-taking ferocity that aims to murder the ego and incinerate injustice and illusion. Rumi is the supreme aristocrat of poetry; Kabir speaks in the raw stark realism of a peasant who knows the horror of poverty. Now is the time inspired by Rumi to meet Kabir and experience the extreme and gorgeous dialog in the heart between these two amazing universal masters. Our time requires a simple, naked, absolutely truthful, unflinchingly fierce and exalted voice, that voice is Kabir. Rumi made us vulnerable to love and now Kabir kills us into the eternal life of truth of embodied Divine humanity. Even more than Rumi, Kabir is the voice of the embodied Divine human and, in his amazing celebration of living God in a body, all of us can glimpse our next stage of evolution when we will live as Kabir did… as the Beloveds fierce, clear, passionate, compassionate, humble, grounded beloved. Join Andrew as he guides us to be burnt alive in love and resurrected in our essential divine nature.
“The staff has been incredibly kind. Everyone has gone out of their way to be of service. I could not ask for a more loving environment.” David B. “The staff were so warm and welcoming. I felt completely comfortable right away.” Judy M. “The energy at the Center is so calm, soothing, and peaceful. Everyone is so kind and helpful. I felt safe and cared for by ALL the staff.” Laurie R. “The staff was so helpful and friendly. They took care of my special diet with excellence.” Spruce K. The center is a holy place of light…beautiful, powerful, healing, sacred…intentional guiding toward wholeness…wholesome and healing. –Guest in May 2018
Soul + Solace – Singing & Storytelling; A Women’s* Retreat
Liz Rog is a songleader in the global Ubuntu tradition which welcomes all voices to weave
everyday song into community. Liz delights in helping people rediscover their ancestral birthright of
group singing. She lives in the Driftless of Northeast Iowa and enjoys traveling to other
towns and regions to help in the re-seeding of the earth with songs for renewal.
Shifting Perspectives: A Transformative Approach to Life and Love
Participants will be guided to unpack many of the obstacles, which lead to conflict, division and unhappiness in relationships.
The writings of Arbinger, Carl Jung, Eckhart Tolle, Mark Nepo, and Richard Rohr, will provide the framework for this transformative retreat.
Participants can also expect spiritual deepening practices of guided meditation, breath work, journaling and contemplative practices.”
Yoga Nidra
The Tapestry of Lives: Linking Ancestors and Legacy
Evening : Ancestral work – and outline work for life review
Day work: Life Review; Shaping a spiritual Ethical Will; Designing the perfect ending consistent with our legacy
Spring Renewal: Yoga Sadhana
Intuitive Painting
The Web of Your Inner Landscape: Myofascial release through Yoga
Zen and the Art of Coming Home
Exploring Stress in Our Sacred Bodies through Free Form Dance & Movement
Please contact Adina with any questions: adinajoylevitt@gmail.com
An Immersion into Heart and Sound: A Program for Men
feeling-sensing/insight.
Divine Love: Rumi and Kabir
We would love for you to experience what so many here have shared…
Call (715) 267-7507 or email christinecenter@tds.net to sign up for programs
