1. What is my why?
Your "why" serves as both your anchor and your compass — the reason you show up, and a source of self-understanding that runs deeper than intention alone.
Are you ready to step into a real desire for your own healing or are you simply seeking out another "experience,"? If you are only looking for a light show or a way to further detach from yourself or your life, you are in the wrong place. Thoroughly investigating why you are being called to do this work is of utmost importance. Your why will be your anchor. It holds you and keeps you grounded through the deeper levels of the work that, I'll be honest, don't always feel so good.
Finding a clear why invites you into a thorough examination of yourself. The clearer your why, the more strength and focus you bring to your weekend — strength and focus that will carry you through the peaks and valleys that your work may bring. Your why is the greater intention that supports each and every individual intention. Take your time with it, and keep peeling back the layers before you arrive. It will be the foundation you can come back to at any point in your process.
2. Who am I doing this for?
The decision to enter this space can only come from you.
The only person you should ever be doing this work for is you. It's not uncommon, that once someone begins this work, they want everyone in their life to as well. Though that desire comes from a good place, if you are on the receiving end of it, you should never feel convinced or talked into participating for someone else's sake. It is incredibly important that the choice is an autonomous one — a call from your own heart and your own desire for healing — and not done on behalf of a friend, partner, family member, or anyone else. This work can ask everything of you. Your choice to step into the container has to come from within.
3. Am I willing to prepare?
There is no single right way to prepare for a retreat weekend, but there are some wrong ways. Of course you want to honor the dietary aspect as much as possible (read more about the dietary preparation) but also consider what you are doing with your mind. Where are you giving your attention and energy? The people and places you engage with matter. Are they nourishing or depleting you? This is a great opportunity to bring a preparation diet not just into the physical body, but into the mind as well.
Everything is “food”. You have to process what you take in through your eyes and ears is just as you digest what goes into your belly. Long hours on Instagram, incessant focus on the news cycle, violent or gory movies and TV — all of this should be cut out completely. It affects us far more deeply than we are aware of.
When you think of preparation, think creating as much space within your entire system as possible. How much are you willing to create space and time for quiet, curiosity, and contemplation?
4. Am I willing to let go of expectations?
"Expectation is the mother of all frustration." — Antonio Banderas
This is a big one. I can guarantee you that there is no scenario you can create in your mind that will match your actual experience. The more you can release your ideas of what you think it will be, what you want it to be, or what you've been told it will be — the more available you will be for what actually is which will inevitably serve you best.
Creating expectations is almost always a letdown. The moment you feel like your experience isn't living up to the scenario you’ve created in your mind, you start to judge everything against that soundboard, effectively taking yourself out of the experience as a whole and robbing you of the medicine that would otherwise be available to you. So much can unfold over a weekend, and often sitting in the unknown for a portion of it is necessary. The more you open yourself to the unknown and trust your own process as it unfolds— however it looks — the more it will serve you.
5. Am I willing to show up for myself after the weekend?
There is no medicine without ceremony, and no ceremony without integration.
The transformation you seek lives within your everyday habits and conscious pattern making. Everything you work through along with all the information you receive on a retreat weekend must be integrated into your daily thereafter. This is the most important part. How do you turn the information you receive into the felt, experienced, lasting change you want in your life?
There are many ways to approach integration and every process is different — what matters most is asking yourself if you are truly willing to show up for it consistently. The medicine is not a panacea; more than anything, it calls you into accountability. Integrating lasting change takes time, patience, acceptance, and forgiveness. A willingness to show up for it — and to keep showing up — is key to your healing journey.
