Retreats

Unfoldment Lab

A Daylong Retreat

Our world is in a metacrisis as we’re facing multiple overlapping crises around climate change, rising social inequality and political polarization, the erosion of trust in government and institutions, the threats of nuclear weapons and exponential technologies like AI, … the list goes on. Individually and collectively, these times ask us to evolve and transform to respond wisely to the challenges and open to emergent, life-affirming possibilities. 

In this daylong lab, we’ll explore a simple and radical question: what if nothing is missing? What’s here if there’s no problem to solve? What if you are already a whole human being and have exactly what it takes?

This is the premise of Unfoldment, a powerful alternative to the self-improvement / self-help industrial complex where we’re never good enough and constantly trying to fix and optimize ourselves (and when our efforts seem to fail we often conclude we don’t have what it takes).

Unfoldment is the natural process that enables us to grow and thrive as all living organisms do when we create the right conditions. It’s a practice of learning to trust life and letting life teach us how to live it. To deepen self-contact and meet all parts of our present-moment experience with compassion and curiosity. To embrace our tenderness as well as our fierceness.

As we turn toward rather than resist what’s happening, we naturally unfold and unlock inner resources to meet the complexity and challenges we face with exactly what’s needed.

This lab will help you see how to create the conditions in your life for your innate wholeness to unfold so you can:

• Show up in a more centered, compassionate, and generative way for yourself and everyone around you.

• Witness and respond to world events, fast-paced change, and complexity with more clarity, creativity, and resilience.

• Carry out your work, and share your gifts, with more skillfulness, confidence, and ease.

What You’ll Learn

We’ll practice how to attune to ourselves, others, and the world in a way that connects us with the beauty, truth, and goodness that’s already here and promotes connection, purpose, and deepening unfoldment. You’ll leave with a new framework and practical tools and techniques that you can use again and again for relating to yourself and others with curiosity and compassion so that you (and they) can show up more fully for your work, your friends, your family, and a world that needs your gifts.

The Retreat Experience - Being Held and Holding Space

During our time together, we’ll be held in a beautiful home and in community with a small, intimate group of other beautiful humans who care deeply about our world. We will draw upon evidence-based practices and wisdom teachings, engage in self-inquiry and group discussion, share poetry and movement, and engage in guided meditations and dyad/small group practices. 

What Past Participants Are Saying:

“The Unfoldment Workshop was a powerful day of connecting with the nature within myself through self-inquiry. I walked away with a heightened attunement to nature’s impulse within me that I hope to practice more deeply moving forward.”

- Sami, San Francisco, CA 

“It is incredible what just a few minutes of unfolding can do! Sarah-Marie is skillful in creating a safe space and relating this new concept in a short amount of time. The exercises were powerful as was walking out with a new community of like minded individuals, each of us wanting to deepen our trust in the universe and ourselves in order to live with more joy and ease.”

- Brinda Ghiya, inclusion advocate and edupreneur, Los Angeles, CA

“I feel calmer, more grounded, and more JOY after doing this retreat. I accessed the strong, wise, and centered part of myself that serves me in my life more than the stress & anxiety voices. I also made some new friends and had a lot of fun. I just love Sarah-Marie’s facilitation style. She is patient and supportive, and she leaves a lot of space for answers… I'm just very impressed overall -- and I facilitate a lot of groups, so I know quality when I see it. Highly recommended -- especially for perfectionists and other high-achievers who are growth-minded.”

- Mel C., Los Angeles, CA