Finding Inner Peace in an Unpeaceful World
August 21-24 |
What to ExpectThis long-weekend retreat explores how we can, through meditation, contemplation and intentional action, expand into an experience of greater peace in our lives, as guided by the wisdom of the Tao te Ching. Together we will practice turning our attention away from the turbulence in the outside world, and instead focus on how to compassionately bring more peace and spaciousness to our own, often turbulent, inner world.
The weekend will include daily gentle Chi gung practice (easy and available regardless of physical abilities), study and teachings on the Tao te Ching, guided meditations, and free time for personal integration and opportunities to engage with the natural surroundings of the property. Communal meals will be provided, and while silence is not required, for those who prefer to remain in silence, this will be respected.
There are opportunities for private sessions with Susan on the Thursday and Friday morning before the retreat begins, as well as Monday afternoon.
All vegetarian meals included and prepared onsite by a chef.
Susan Drury
At thirty, I was diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia — a condition so painful it is sometimes called the suicide disease. Conventional medicine offered no relief. And so I accepted, slowly and not without resistance, that this was a mystery only I could solve.
That acceptance became my apprenticeship. Over the years that followed, I trained in craniosacral therapy, shamanic healing, classical homeopathy, and the Present Child Method. I sat with teachers and with silence. I read neuroscience and the Tao te Ching. I learned, above all, to listen — to the body, to the soul, to the intelligence that moves through everything.
What I discovered — and what I have spent the last thirty-plus years helping others discover — is that nothing is beyond healing. Not the old grief. Not the inherited wound. Not the belief you have carried since childhood that something in you is fundamentally wrong.
Nothing is beyond healing.
This is not naive optimism. It is a conviction forged through decades of my own painful, messy, triumphant inner work — and through witnessing what becomes possible when someone truly commits to their own transformation.
Healing the self heals the lineage.
In healing yourself, you are also healing patterns that may have existed for generations. Your ancestors who wanted to heal but didn't know how — they are supporting you now.
Your body is a sacred messenger.
Symptoms are not enemies. Pain is information. Chronic conditions are persistent teachers. When we learn to listen with curiosity instead of fear, the body becomes one of our greatest allies on the healing path.
We are energy in matter.
Thoughts carry energy. Beliefs shape biology. What we think affects what we feel, physically and emotionally, which then affects what we experience. This is not metaphor — it is the foundation of how I work.
You are not broken.
You have never been broken. You are a magnificent being having a human experience, and every part of that experience — including the hardest parts — is shaping you, teaching you, and ultimately leading you home to yourself.
Love is the most intelligent force there is.
Not sentimental love — but the kind that sees clearly, holds firmly, and refuses to abandon. This is the love I try to bring into every session. It is the love I believe we are all, ultimately, made of.
The one who is centered in the Tao,
Can go where they please without danger.
They perceive the Universal Harmony,
Even in the midst of great pain
Because they have found peace in their heart.
(Tao te Ching Verse 35
Stephen Mitchell translation)