What if you didn’t have to move through life quite so fast?

What if you could create a little more space between what happens around you and how you respond?

What if life could flow a little more easily, instead of feeling like you’re constantly pushing against the current, draining your energy, and still not getting where you want to be?

What if you could meet yourself and your life with a little more ease, curiosity, grace, and openness to possibility?

And what might become possible if you gave yourself permission to simply be?

This half day retreat offers an opportunity to step out of the constant momentum of everyday life and explore practical, embodied practices for greater presence and physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

Through various practices carefully weaved together, we’ll work with ceremony, movement, breath, energy, awareness, and stillness. You’ll experience simple practices that can help quiet your mind, support nervous system regulation and the vagus nerve, restore energy, and bring you back to the present still point within. The still point when worked with daily, will help you access your own truth with ease and clarity and move about your day with grace.

We aren’t adding more to your day. We are helping you discover ways to meet the life you’re already living with greater presence. We are presenting various tools and practices (see our bios) that have worked for us, in the physical reality of our own lives and that we continuously return to ourselves.

During our time together, you’ll experience practices you can return to in your everyday life to:

Quiet the Mind wherever you are
Support Nervous System Regulation
Restore and replenish your Energy
Encourage greater Mental Clarity
Create space for Emotional Balance
Deepen your connection with your body and its signals so you can be more mindful in tending to it in times of stress.
Strengthen connection with yourself and your intuition
Bring greater Intention, Presence, and Meaning to ordinary moments through simple ceremony and everyday ritual

Some practices may take only a few minutes, others may be a longer experience. You can personalize them in your own life so they become a part of a personal practice that you can do daily, weekly, or monthly based on your own needs and time. You’ll be encouraged to discover what resonates with you rather than being given another routine you feel you have to follow exactly.

Much of modern life teaches us to keep moving, producing, accomplishing, planning, and responding.

But there is another way of experiencing our lives.

One with a little more space. A little more grace. A little less force and a little more flow.

What to Expect

Throughout the afternoon, we’ll explore what can happen when we soften our attachment to constant doing and practice simply being present. We’ll return to the moment we’re actually living, through our breath, body, energy, and ourselves.

We’ll explore the role of ceremony and simple everyday ritual. Not as something formal or complicated, but as a way of bringing intention, presence, and meaning to ordinary moments. Ritual doesn’t have to be elaborate or reserved for special occasions. Sometimes it is simply the way we pause, mark a moment, create meaning, or make an ordinary day feel a little more special.

You may leave feeling rested and nourished. You may discover a new perspective. You may find a practice that becomes part of your daily life. Or you may simply experience what it feels like to give yourself four hours without needing to accomplish anything at all.

Everyone will have their own unique experience.

The half-day retreat includes:

Learning to create ceremonies in your everyday life (making the ordinary extraordinary),

Embodiment practices inspired by Qigong, Kundalini Yoga, Reiki, and other energy-awareness practices.

Time for reflection, conversation, and journaling/integration.

Refreshments and welcome gifts will be provided.

*Please note: No previous experience with any modality, practice, or spiritual tool required.

All practices will be introduced and guided.

What to Bring

Bring a yoga mat and wear comfortable clothing that allows you to move easily.
Dressing in layers is recommended so you can adjust throughout the afternoon.
Please bring socks, house slippahs, or whatever makes your feet comfortable as no shoes are permitted in the studio classroom.
And most importantly- bring your authentic self! Remember, you don’t need to arrive calm, centered, put together, having all the answers, spiritual, or good at slowing down. That’s what this time is for.

We want the authentic you as you are right now showing up for yourself and open to what the experience may offer. Knowing on some level that your soul needs this dedicated time, support, and wherewithal to continue showing up in the world.

We invite you to set aside the question, “What will I get out of this?” and instead become curious about what might unfold for you, uniquely, in the here and now that your heart is longing to bring to you.

Total Investment $85

Early bird rate just $70 ends September 13th.

Commit to YOURSELF and sign up

About Us

Amanda Todd, Ph.D., brings more than two decades of exploring relationships among people, places, and experiences of the sacred together. A geographer, university educator, interfaith minister, and longtime practitioner and teacher of Reiki and other embodied, contemplative, and energetic practices, she brings together academic knowledge, extensive training, and experiential ways of knowing.

Amanda is devoted to creating experiences that feel both grounded and meaningful. Her approach blends reverence, intuition, ritual, and sensory-based practices, inviting participants into deeper self-understanding.

The practices she shares today are also practices she has learned, lived, and relied upon throughout her own life. They helped her navigate the demands of doctoral study, professional life, relationships, transitions, losses, and everyday challenges with greater ease, grace, presence, and calmness. Through workshops, retreats, ceremonies, and teaching, Amanda invites people to reconnect with themselves and discover practices they can carry into their own everyday life. Sacred Way Ceremonies

Dr. Julie Hutsell‑Starling, DACM, transformed her own experience with burnout into a powerful mission to help others reclaim their vitality, and remembrance of their innate self-healing abilities. For more than two decades, she has guided hundreds of patients and clients through deep healing, via retreats, in-person acupuncture sessions, embodiment workshops, and soul coaching offerings. Passionate about getting to the root of the problem, Julie helps individuals reconnect with the wholeness of who they are at soul level. Her work integrates 5‑Element acupuncture, Qigong, Kundalini Yoga, breathwork, meditation, sound healing, and her signature embodiment workshops infused with sound current.

As a Spiritual Mentor, Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, Kundalini Yoga and Qigong Teacher, Akashic Records practitioner, and Embodiment Workshop Facilitator, Julie is devoted to guiding others through profound, soul‑level transformation.