Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Ramona Retreat for Vision Collages



This weekend some friends and I rented this guest house in Ramona, Kansas to have a retreat. We spent our time working on the process described in "Visioning" by Lucia Capacchione.

Teresa, Peggy and I heard her speak at a "Food for Thought" event four years ago this month, and have wanted to do this since. It's hard to believe it took four years. There's a lesson in that, alone.



There were six of us. Starting in the back, that's Andrea, me, Cynthia and Susan. In front are Peggy and Teresa.

This is a multi-stage process. The heart of it is journaling and collaging.

You start with a "focus statement" that is the guiding part of your collage - what you want. Then you hunt for pictures from magazines...








We organized them and glued them...





Then we journalled about our finished projects...



Central to this process is the focus statement on which you base your collage. Each of our finished projects were distinctly different. I asked the group and everyone agreed that I could share them with you.

Susan's focus was, "Leading a life with more energy."





Cynthia's was, "Living a passionate life."





Andrea's was, "What financial security looks like?"





Patsy's focus was, "Freedom and inspiration to create and appreciate beauty."





Peggy's focus was, "Experiences I'd like to have" and morphed into "Seek knowledge"





Teresa's focus was, "Live life in movement and quiet contemplation."



It was an inspirational weekend. We brought food to share and just munched as we worked. Saturday evening some were done before the others and so they cooked our spaghetti dinner. It worked out perfectly.

This was a great spot for it. The house has five bedrooms, one with two beds in it, so we were able to spread out a bit and then come together to work on our projects. The kitchen has everything you need - from a microwave to a full sized fridge and stove.



I definitely recommend Cousin's Corner, the guest house. It's run by two sisters from California, who have roots in Ramona, and ended up coming to Kansas through a visioning process of their own.

It was a great way to spend time with friends. I can't wait to do something like this again. Not sure what we should do next, but I know there's something just waiting to be discovered.

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Check www.patsyterrell.com for the blog, art, and more.

2 comments:

Vivian Love said...

This sounds awesome! I wish I had a group of friends like that. Wonderful! How lucky you are!

Patsy Terrell said...

I'll bet you do have friends like that! Sometimes people just need someone to take the initiative and suggest it. I just emailed some people I knew with a rough idea of the weekend and a rough idea of what it would cost to rent the place. I had takers almost immediately. You probably have friends who would do it too - they just need you to organize and plan it. :)