Sovereign: Reclaiming the Truth and Nobility of Your Body and Soul
w/ Renee Jennings (MA, MSW, LISW-S)
This is a multi-day women’s retreat at Sneha
Day 1: Saturday, March 29, 10a-7p
Day 2: Sunday, March 30, 10a-4p
In the supportive wake of the vernal equinox and within the creative energies of the new moon, you’re invited to journey into the terra firma of your soul and the celestial heights of your spirit.
The words of two Sufi mystics speak to the integrative approach of this women’s retreat: I was born when all I once feared I could love (Rabia); and, Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it (Rumi).
In the mystical sense, the word sovereign reflects the profound understanding that our essence is inherently free, whole, and one with the divine source of all existence. As physical beings, we must include the body in any approach to liberation. It is through our embodiment that we experience Divine Love.
When we allow this Love to touch the so-called barriers (including our limiting beliefs) we have built against It, we in turn call forth our intrinsic power. This power, as a state of being, is rooted in our ability to consciously shape our lives, take full responsibility for our choices, live in alignment with our highest truth, and honor the sovereignty of others.
True to the process of alchemy, we will compassionately encounter what might be considered the ‘shadow,’ as we identify and liberate the cultural, ancestral, and collective programming that has caused us - particularly as women - to live out of alignment with our Divine Essence. This shadow material becomes the kindling that fuels the fires of transformation.
This retreat will draw upon modified therapeutic modalities such as:
Gestalt therapy
Somatics
Hypnotherapy
EMDR
Journaling
Group dialogue
Energy psychology
The all-encompassing approach, however, will be an immersion into mysticism, meditation, and the animating, clarifying impulse of the Divine Feminine. Participants will join in sacred circle and ceremony throughout the retreat.
About Renee
Renee Jennings, MA, MSW, LISW-S is a Transpersonal Life Coach, integrative somatic gestalt therapist, and facilitator based in Pittsburgh, PA.
She is faculty in the Gestalt Training Program and Working with Physical Process at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, an EMDRIA-approved EMDR consultant, meditation teacher, certified hypnotherapist, and energy psychology/medicine practitioner.
Renee provides an embodied, integrative approach to individual and collective transformation, offering groups, consultation, retreats and trainings designed to liberate the ‘inner gold’ that resides in the heart. She regards trauma and the challenging experiences of our lives as opportunities for our evolution, and holds that the body is the locus of alchemy -- the innate, mystical process of transformation.
As Jung aptly states, “Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.”
Renee’s life and work are guided and informed by embodied mysticism and her spiritual practices of 30+ years that began formally while in graduate seminary after an awakening visionary experience with the Great Mother. Renee is an ordained Sufi Cherag and Healing Conductor in the lineage of the Sufi Master Hazrat Inayat Khan, and studies with the Inayatiyya and with Murshida Sarah Weiss.
She has taught and facilitated at the Esalen Institute, the Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy, The Ohio State University, the National Association of Social Workers, and Antioch University. Renee is a perpetual student who appreciates deep conversation, the arts, being in nature with her dog, the gifts of friendship, and well-timed irreverence.
Website: ReneeJennings.com.