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Experience living in a supportive community, embedded in a stunning natural setting whilst learning relational and transformative skills.

Held in the beautiful Hidden Paradise retreat centre, outside the thriving alternative town of Orgiva, in the foothills of the Alpujarra mountain range.

Starting Wednesday, 11th March until 31st March, we will offer 3 standalone week-long ‘Community Immersion Retreats’. Each starts on a Wednesday afternoon and finishes the following Tuesday with lunch.
You are invited to attend as many weeks as you wish.
A time to reconnect with yourself, with nature and reawaken your innate state of being in community.

We live, play, learn and work together.
We will co-create a nurturing and heart warming environment to support each of us on our personal journey.

The main facilitation and hosting team will gather from various parts of Europe, to offer you a diverse and comprehensive experience of living in community, deepening connection and holistic wellness. We are Jocelyn Ames (UK), Donal Gannon (Ireland), Christine Lutz (Germany) and Jewels Toro (Spain), and we will be joined by various local and international facilitators. More about our team below.

We will invite the group to choose from our menu of fun, experiential and transformative workshops, including

You can choose either the ‘Deep Immersion’ or the ‘Deep Retreat’

The ‘Deep Immersion’ costs less, and includes around 2 hours of Karma Yoga per day and a single or double bed in a 4 or 5 person dorm.

Proposed Program

We expect each week to flow like a wave: starting slow before the energy and intensity rise to the weekend, then shifting into integration and resolution as we move to transition on Tuesday. We will encourage this peak on Saturday by opening up our space to the public (our centre is surrounded by a uniquely alternative, international and conscious community). We’ll invite them to join us for our afternoon workshop and evening program, which could be a pot luck dinner or Cacao ceremony, followed by ecstatic dance party, connection activities, games, singing, sauna, cuddles and whatever magic blossoms from the merging of our smaller circle with the wider community.

All activities are optional - do as much or as little as feels good for you.
You will have the option to join a session in which we learn Open Space Technology and a simple but effective group decision making process. We then use these to either co-create a new schedule or adjust this one to better serve the group.

Your Facilitation and Hosting team and what we offer

Donal Gannon

Donal is a nomadic catalyst for personal, social and cultural transformation. He is dedicated to authentic relating and community co-creation. For 15 years, using his extensive tool kit, he has been supporting individuals and groups in all corners of the world. He does this through private and public trainings, facilitation and system building with various communities and organizations, weekly practice groups, one-on-one and group coaching and mediation, and daily sessions at festivals, retreats, and camps. He collaborates continuously, as a Certified Trainer with the Centre for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC) and a member of the Cultural Catalyst Network (USA), HeartSpace Collective and Arise to Succeed (Ireland).

At these retreats, he will offer a variety of connecting, playful, enlivening and transformative workshops (some listed above), as well as sessions from his most popular trainings, including:

• • Communicate to Connect
• • Conflict Transformation (Restorative Systems and Circles)
• • Empathy Magic – the Art of Effective Listening
• • Emotional Healing and Transformation
• • Yes ~ No ~ Please ~ Thank you
  An embodied explorationof the interpersonal dynamics of  giving and receiving, making requests, choice and boundaries using NVC and the Wheel of Consent
• • Come Alive and Thrive
  Self-Inquiry and Reflection, Eliciting Life Purpose, Cultivating Self-Care and Connection

More about Donal, the sessions listed and his work at www.donalgannon.com

Space

Jewels Toro

Jewels walked away from the rat race 26 years ago, in search of a 'green dream'. Her passion for Earth consciousness and living in a sustainable community led her to the foothills of the Alpujarra mountains. Here she learnt self sufficiency skills, whilst living in a close knit community focussing on healing through women's circles, rituals, sweat lodges and medicine ceremonies.
She gained many skills to support personal and spiritual growth, how to celebrate the good times and grieve together in the tough times.
Jewels is the co-founder of Hidden Paradise Retreat Centre which specialises solely in mindfulness retreats.
She is passionate about balancing the mind through mindfulness practices and high vibe diet, supported by probiotic foods and home or locally grown vegetables. She practices many enlivening rituals to balance such as daily yoga, meditation, breathing techniques and cold water immersion. She's enthusiastic to share these with you..

Christine Lutz

Christine has a big dream for a healed earth, where we can be alive, free, peaceful and loving with each other and our planet.
She is a whole-hearted co-creator, caretaker and spaceholder. As a curious researcher, she loves to explore – and also to inspire.
The last years she spent working as a freelance Designer and co-created an NGO doing educational projects about food waste in Berlin. She is a Reiki-Master, a soon-to-be certified Art Therapist, educated in NVC and is into dreamwork, meditation & mindfulness, veganism, topics around consciousness, cultural transformation and sustainability (like zero waste).
She will offer workshops on these topics, as well as women’s and dream circle, spaces for art and creativity (writing, collage, drawing) and 1:1 Reiki sessions.

Space

Jocelyn Ames

Jocelyn has a pioneering spirit for a world that works for all Life, and devotes much of her life energy to exploring the Story of Interbeing. She is passionate about the transformational potential of relationships and communities based on a culture of trust, compassion and connection, the kind of culture that allows us to be safely transparent and delightfully honest about who we are – even the parts we fear are unacceptable or unwelcome. She finds great joy and liberation in reclaiming, welcoming and witnessing the wholeness of who we are - it’s a lot more fun than pretending to be what we’re not!

She offers workshops, courses, 1-on-1 sessions and mediations based on Nonviolent Communication. She is also a certified yoga teacher offering Yin and Hatha Yoga classes, and you might find her sharing devotional music and song, sharing about permaculture, or geeking out about alternative economics. You can read more about Jocelyn at www.becomingtogether.net

Here's some clips from two of our singing sessions. this will be one of the community building activities we'll have on offer during these retreats.

Space

Financial Contribution

The prices listed cover
• All group activities and workshops
• Accommodation and living expenses
• 3 home-cooked meals each day and refreshments in between
• Use of sauna, hot tub, swimming pools, and ‘the Sanctuary’ for massages and treatments

We recognise that what is affordable for some can be a financial stretch for others and we want to make these programs available to everyone who would benefit from them, regardless of income. We balance this with the need to support ourselves financially. So the requested fees are on a sliding scale, within which, we request you to contribute as generously as you are able.

To help you decide, here are some considerations 
Prices below are for the ‘Deep Immersion’. For the ‘Deep Retreat’, add €150 to each

Space

We’d love to have more locals at these retreats, so are offering half price to anyone living in Spain or Portugal. Just mention it in registration form.

If you can afford and choose to pay at the upper end of the scale (or above), it makes participation possible for people who otherwise would not be able to join these life changing retreats.

We do our best to practice what we preach in all aspects of this transformational work, thus these are requests and not demands and we are open to dialogue. So, If you can’t afford to pay within the scale, please contact us and we will try to work something out.

Limited number of places on each retreat, so a deposit of €100 is required to reserve yours.
Limited number of single rooms available for an extra €150 per week.

Additional one-on-one sessions, treatments, massages
For your first week with us, the price listed does not include these. The prices depend on the therapist / practitioner and duration of session.
For subsequent weeks, we offer you one free session or treatment as a gift.

Registration

Please complete form here

If you register, we will write to you before the retreat with details about venue, directions, timings and other practical information you’ll need.
If you have any other questions, contact us at hiddenparadisespain@gmail.com

We can't wait to meet you soon!
Christine, Donal, Jocelyn, Jewels