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 & Jane Mortifee
Schedule:
The retreat starts with dinner at 6:00 p.m.
Thursday, September 27th, and runs through
2:00 p.m. Sunday, September 30th. You may
check in beginning at 4:00 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 15th, $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, 2012.
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 17 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 has led 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, Spain, Puerto Rico, and Costa
Rica.
Patricia
holds an MFA degree in Creative Writing
from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and completed
her undergraduate degree at Smith College,
Phi Beta Kappa, in 1970. She is a member
of the Texas Writers League, Straw Dog Writers
Guild, the Berkshire Writers Room, the American
Poetry Society, and is an affiliate of Amherst
Writers & Artists. A grant in 2011,
from the Massachusetts Arts Council, enabled
her to help establish a writing program
at her local library. Trained to
teach English to speakers of other languages
(TESOL), Patricia and friends volunteer
in the Maya village of Santa Cruz la Laguna
on Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, where Patricia
also leads retreats at Villa Sumaya Retreat
Center.
Her
poetry, fiction and feature articles have
appeared in a variety of journals &
anthologies, The Los Angeles Times, Hampshire
Life, and The Boston Sunday Globe. Her poems
have most recently appeared in The Berkshire
Review, Upstreet, Sanctuary: Magazine
of the Massachusetts Audubon Society,
and Crossing Paths: An Anthology of
Poems by Women, Mad River Press. Her
work has been featured in the Berkshire
Review, which nominated her poem,
"Two Hundred Wings" for a Pushcart
Prize." She was supported by a grant
from the Massachusetts Cultural Council
to perform her work as a benefit for the
Miniature Theatre of Chester. Her book of
poems, A Kind of Yellow, won Writer's
Digest's International competition for self-published
books of poetry andis available
at the Patchwork
Press Shop.High Lonesome,
her latest collection of poems, was published
in 2011 by Hedgerow Books of Levellers Press
and is available from their Store.
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 Austin, Texas, she moved
north years ago with her children. She is
a business owner and trail walker, and has
been 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’s poems and
stories have been published widely in such journals
as The Massachusetts Review, Nimrod and The
Northwest Review. Prizes include The Betsy Colquitt
Award from descant, The Editor’s
Choice Award from the Beacon Street Review,
and First Prize for a short story in Glimmer
Train. Phi Beta Kappa, Masters in Music from
Boston University, she’s the recipient
of a 2008 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist
Fellowship in fiction, having been a finalist
in poetry in 2004.
She’s been an equestrian and chamber
musician, and currently works as a free-lance
editor in both poetry and prose. She facilitates
weekly public discussion of contemporary poetry
for Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts,
and is the author of Fourth World (Adastra
Press, 2010) and Nightly, at the Institute
of the Possible (Hedgerow Books, 2011).
She’s currently at work on a novel set
in the islands of British Columbia.
Jane Mortifee has twice completed
the 200 hour RYT certification. Her approach
to teaching is to make yoga safe and accessible
for practitioners of all levels. She has studied
various forms of meditation, focusing on Tibetan
Buddhism for the last 17 years. Yoga is a constant
companion.
At various times over the last
35 years Jane has been active in theatre, film,
television, club-work, studio voice-overs, animation
and jingles. Her first love is singing and she
has released three CDs, the most recent being
an R&B CD, Get Ready. Jane was
inducted into the B.C. Entertainment Hall of
Fame in 2002. A few years ago Jane took a creative
writing course and found the process of writing
brings her the same kind of joy that she experiences
when singing. Jane has also taken Pat Schneider’s
AWA training. She is delighted to be participating
with Patricia in this retreat.
She is currently working on her first novel
and greatly appreciates the safe and supportive
environment of the creative writing/yoga retreats
that provide the opportunity for the muse
to come forward. Her dream is to continue
to travel the world going from one such retreat
to another, as when she is at home her level
of procrastination when it comes to writing
is impressive!
This was my first writing retreat and
it was very challenging and scary for me.
I can’t imagine having done this with
anyone but Patricia, et al., nor can I imagine
a more talented, fun, supportive and interesting
group of people to do it with. Lisa F.,
Salem, MA
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
Thank You for an unimaginable
four days of serenity and pleasure. Meeting
you feels like a gift from above. In magical
ways you allowed my deepest thoughts and buried
ideas to spout and "sprout." Here,
at home, the after of my four days lingers
and I am grateful. I've been rereading and
revising and feeling poetic with my prose.
It was a bountiful time, this fall retreat.
Jane K., Wayland, MA
Stump Sprouts was a coming-out event
for me. I stopped writing for years, and I
really thought it was gone. The safety of
the retreat, and Patricia's inspired coaching
enabled me to find the courage to put pen
to paper. Judith H., Hainesport, NJ
I felt renewed and invigorated. So many
wonderful, very real people. Valerie
F., Wellesley, MA
This retreat was for me
a perfect combination of healthy living and
community. I learned so much about writing
just by listening to the work and the wise,
inspiring teaching and leadership. I love
the method and the results and Patricia and
Diana, Charles, et al. Meg H., Andover,
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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