We will have exclusive use of Stump Sprouts, a rustic, multi-season resort and retreat center situated in rural northwest Massachusetts. The center of the resort is a hand-crafted guest lodge, converted dairy barn, and 200 year old farmhouse.
Stump Sprouts offers many spring, summer, and fall activities on 450 acres of meadows and woods, including hiking and biking. There are also whitewater rafting, country villages, golf courses, and many other recreational facilities within a few minutes of driving.
Writing
& Yoga Retreat at Stump Sprouts
Patricia Lee Lewis and
Charles Macinerney
with Diana Gordon, Karen Bump & Charlie
Braun
Schedule:
The retreat starts with dinner at 6:00 p.m.
Thursday, September 30th, and runs through
2:00 p.m. Sunday, October 3rd. You may check
in beginning at 3:00 p.m.on Thursday. We will
offer two to three writing and yoga sessions
a day. All yoga, writing workshops, and meals
are optional. Remember, your time is your
own.
Cost: $625
before August 1, $685 after. Alums of retreats
that Charles and Patricia have led together
may deduct an additional $30. Cost includes
9 meals, shared accommodations for 3 nights,
all materials and instruction. Full payment
is due by September 1st, 2010.
Registration:
Please Request
Registration Form and send it with payment
in full or your deposit check for $200 (made
out to Patchwork Farm Retreat), to Patchwork
Farm Retreat, P.O. Box 60066, Florence, MA
01062
About
Our Retreats
At the heart of this retreat is the joining
of Creative Writing, Hatha Yoga, and Meditation.
Patricia Lee Lewis & Charles MacInerney
have combined their energies for 14 years
to offer this powerful path to the creative
self.
The Yoga, led by Charles,
creates in you a sense of physical well-being,
while bringing you back to your body
and your senses. Each Yoga class ends
with a deep guided relaxation which
calms your mind and helps it to relax
into a creative Alpha brainwave pattern.
Patricia leads the writing circles in a
way designed to help you bypass your inner
critic and go directly to images, feelings
or memories--to the places steeped in story
and natural language. Because this is the
time to generate new writing, rather than
to critique what you have already prepared,
you will be encouraged to write freely to
the extent possible, without editing.
Gathering in small, intimate groups, you
will be invited to read what you have written.
Group members respond only with what is strong
in the piece, what they remember, what is
vivid. The process is highly encouraging and
supportive to the natural voice and to you
as a writer, whether you are beginning again
after years away; an experienced writer in
need of a jump start; or you are in the middle
of a project and are looking for new ideas
and time dedicated to writing.
The Stump Sprouts Chef
prepares sumptuous cuisine using
fresh, local produce whenever possible. Hearty
soups, crisp green salads, home-made breads
and fresh-baked deserts often compliment meals.
Wheat- and dairy-free diets are accommodated.
The
Writing
Patricia Lee Lewis will
lead the writing sessions. Our writing
retreats are designed after the process
developed by Patricia's mentor, Pat
Schneider, founder of Amherst Writers
& Artists, to help us find our truest
voice; to write from the images, memories
and feelings we all carry inside ourselves;
and to write with greater confidence
and skill. The retreats are a wonderful
way to take time out and allow the deeper
levels of your own creative self to
emerge onto the page. Besides all of
this, they are fun.
We will write several times each day in
response to exercises Patricia suggests (which
you are completely free to ignore!). We are
invited to read aloud what we have just written
and to respond to each other's work with what
is working (what we like, what we remember,
what moves us) and not, at this stage of vulnerability,
with what will make it stronger. We will work
together to create and maintain a safe, confidential
space in which to write whatever comes by
following certain practices in responding
to new writing:
We honor the writer by listening carefully;
We treat everything as fiction;
We refer to the narrator/speaker, not to the
author, as the voice of the piece;
We remember that while healing often occurs
through our writing, this is not a therapy
group, and we maintain our focus on the writing;
We concentrate on the writing at hand, not
on anecdotes of our similar experiences;
We are free to write what we want; exercises
are offered;
We are invited to read;
We respond only with what we like, what stays
with us, what moves us-and not, at this stage
of vulnerability, with what will make it stronger.
Writers of all levels of experience and
of all genres are invited. There are no criteria
for acceptance other than a sincere desire
and willingness to write. You need bring no
manuscripts with you; all writing is done
during the retreat.
The
Yoga
Hatha Yoga classes will be taught
by Charles MacInerney. We will learn
a variety of techniques to engage
and deepen awareness of the most
subtle sensations and movements
of mind and body - first in stillness,
then through subtle movement, and
finally in more challenging and
active asanas.
You will be encouraged to pay more attention
to the sensations and signals of your own
body than to any external authority figures,
including the teachers. One of the effects
of this style of class is that you will become
more self-aware, self-confident, and independent.
Charles encourages his students to learn from
their own experience, from their own sensations,
from their own deep awareness of mind and
body, and to trust that awareness over any
external authority figures.
The overall atmosphere will be relaxed,
with the emphasis on enjoyment rather than
effort. This does not mean that we will not
work hard at times. You will find that you
can engage in difficult and even strenuous
poses joyfully, without experiencing the physical
and psychological stresses associated with
joyless striving.
About
the Staff
Patricia Lee Lewis
lives and works at Patchwork Farm Retreat
in western Massachusetts. She shares the world
with trees and stones, chickadees, writers
and bears, and leads weekend writing retreats
and weekly workshops in her mountain cottage
at Patchwork Farm, throughout the United States,
and yoga and writing retreats at sacred sites
around the world - Guatemala, Mexico, Scotland,
Ireland, Wales and Costa Rica.
Patricia holds an MFA degree
in Creative Writing from Vermont College,
and completed her undergraduate degree at
Smith College, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1970.
She is affiliated with Amherst Writers &
Artists, and leads national training workshops
in the AWA method for workshop leaders on
the east and west coasts. Patricia's poetry,
fiction and feature articles have appeared
in journals & anthologies, The Los Angeles
Times, Hampshire Life, and The Boston Sunday
Globe. Her poems have most recently appeared
in The Berkshire Review, Vol. 11,
and Crossing Paths: An Anthology of
Poems by Women, Mad River Press. She
was supported by a grant from the Chester
Cultural Council under the auspices of the
Massachusetts Cultural Council to perform
her poems to a full house to benefit the
Miniature Theatre of Chester. Her poem "Two
Hundred Wings" was nominated for a
Pushcart Prize in Poetry, and her book of
poems, A Kind of Yellow, won first
prize in Writer's Digest's International
Self-Published Book Competition in 2005.
Copies of the book are available at the
shop.
Patricia has spent much of her
life as an advocate: for women, for civil
rights, for peace, for a healthy environment,
for small farms and rural communities, for
the arts. Born and raised in Texas, she moved
north years ago with her children. She has
been a business owner, tree farmer, director
of several organizations, including women's
centers, community economic development corporations,
district congressional offices, and served
as an elected county commissioner for four
years. In 1985, when she joined Pat Schneider's
Amherst Writers & Artists writing workshop,
she finally found the courage to write for
others to read
Patricia is responsible for
the writing program at all retreats and serves
as retreat coordinator.
Charles MacInerney is registered
with the Yoga Alliance at the 500 hour level
(the highest registration currently available),
and is the co-founder and serves on the faculty
of the Living Yoga Teacher Training Program.
He is also the co-founder of Texas Yoga, and
helps organize and presents at the Annual
Texas Yoga Retreat.
Charles is a guest writer for
Yoga Journal's "Ask Our Expert" column, and
has been interviewed for articles in
Yoga Journal four times, on yoga
retreats, creativity, heart disease, and Yoga
for overweight students. One of Charles' essays
(written on retreat with Patricia) appeared
as the lead essay in a National Chess magazine
in India. He has numerous essays published
in regional publications through out the US,
and on the internet.
Charles has studied Yoga and Meditation since
1971. He teaches classes on Yoga, Meditation,
Posture, Visualization, Breathing, Balance,
Creativity, Concentration and biofeedback
for a variety of businesses, corporations
and institutions. He has worked with over
12,000 students in Austin, where he lives.
Charles has led over 50 retreats since 1992,
including 15 international retreats. For more
information please visit his web-sites at
www.yogateacher.com
and www.expandingparadigms.com.
D M Gordon, Phi Beta Kappa,
M.M. from Boston University, started the Writer-In-Residence
Program at Forbes Library in Northampton, MA,
establishing and leading writing programs and
a weekly forum on contemporary poetry. She is
a freelance editor, the author of Fourth
World (Adastra Press, 2010), and is
looking forward to an upcoming book of poems
to be published by Levellers Press in 2011.
Diana’s poetry and short stories have
appeared widely in literary journals, most recently
winning first prize from Glimmer Train for a
short story to be published in 2011. She was
awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council 2008
Fellowship and grant in fiction, and was a finalist
in poetry in 2004. She is a long time friend
of Patchwork Farm. For more information, visit:www.dmgordon.com:
www.dmgordon.com
Karen Bump is a nationally
Registered Yoga Teacher with the Yoga Alliance
at the 200 hour level. She received her teacher
certification through the Living Yoga Program
with Charles MacInerney in 2003 and subsequently
completed two years of teacher training in the
Iyengar method with Patricia Walden and Peentz
Dubble. Karen began studying Iyengar yoga and
Siddha Yoga Meditation in 1993, the same year
she received her Master’s degree in Expressive
Therapies from Lesley University. She has taught
yoga in a corporate setting, yoga studios and
in her home studio.
Karen continues her study of
yoga alongside her current occupation as a contract
software and business skills trainer. Having
recovered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in the
early 90s, she is also passionate about complementary
medicine and a tireless advocate for whole,
organic foods, animal welfare, and environmental
causes.
CHARLIE BRAUN is a singer/songwriter,
producer and teacher. From a home-base in New
England, Charlie has traveled and performed
both solo and with great musicians up, down,
and around the east coast, across the country,
and beyond. Music has taken him to the White
House, Fenway Park, the Caribbean, New York
City, Martha's Vineyard, and Brazil. He has
opened for, and performed with national acts
such as Livingston Taylor, Roger McGuinn, and
Carly Simon.
Charlie has recently recorded
his 6th CD of original music, "Theory Of
Time": folk-rock, blues, and world music.
His “Yoga” CD, recorded last year,
received praise from many students and teachers
alike. He has also been offering his music in
multiple Kirtan (yoga chanting) communities
throughout New England, accompanying kirtan
groups and leading his own enlivening chants.
His strong rhythm-based connection
and approach to music is the core of Charlie's
teaching. With both guitar and singing, his
intention is to keep students mindful of the
delivery of the song. Charlie also works with
groups of musicians to develop and enhance their
professional/performance intentions. You can
reach him at: www.charliebraun.com.
Testimonials
Talk about a recharge for the body,
mind & soul! The combination of writing
and yoga is brilliant, keeping us refreshed
& open for the flow that invariably comes.
Anne G., Northampton, MA
Another wonderful opportunity to write
in community. How we do summon the spirit!
Carolyn B., Goshen, MA
It was my first Patchwork Farm retreat
and it won’t be my last. I gained so
much insight into myself, the writing process
and gentle pacing- a very peaceful retreat.
Rick C., Hollywood, FL
I felt renewed and invigorated. So many
wonderful, very real people. Valerie
F., Wellesley, MA
I learned more at this retreat about
the surrendering nature of yoga than I had
in three years of practice....I never knew
I had so much quality writing inside me....I
loved the Amherst Writers method of feedback.
It makes you want to write! April W.,
Collingswood, NJ
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