Event Details
When: Saturday April 15th, 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Where: Patch of Heaven Sanctuary
The Experience
Mindfulness in Nature has been shown to reduce anxiety and increase calm. Maybe you’re like so many today who feel burned out and seek some relief to rest and replenish from the daily grind. To continue growing into creating a practice that sustains you, we’re offering a daylong retreat to support your contemplative insight.
Patch of Heaven Sanctuary’s Chief Experience Officer, Suzanne Jewell, will be hosting this daylong nature-based mindfulness retreat alongside meditation, mindfulness, healing, and resilience teachers.
We will take you on a guided walking experience immersed beneath the old-growth canopy of our 20-acre forest and nature preserve, lead you through dharma talks and practices, and help you reset through sound healing therapy.
Whether you’re a beginner or longtime practitioner, taking time apart to gather in community, pause your digital devices and reconnect in Nature will offer you space to pause, as well as P.A.W.S. (Pay Attention With Your Senses) within our new Mindful Pocket Park.
You will experience first-hand the benefits of increased awareness, concentration, meditation and contemplation. From mindful movement to sweet sound healing, you will soothe your soul in our sacred space.
Breakfast and a silent mindful lunch will be provided.
The Teacher
Suzanne Jewell - Chief Experience Officer/Patch of Heaven Sanctuary, Founder of the Mindful Pocket Park & The Mindful Entrepreneur
Suzanne Jewell is a certified Mindfulness Mediation Teacher through the two-year UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center program, led by Buddhist Psychologists Jack Kornfield, PhD and Tara Brach, PhD. During Covid, she took residency and vows of refuge and renunciation at the Open Awareness Buddhist Center for 18 months, having emerged in January 2022. Mindful awareness literally saved her life during a 3-day migraine, sending her to the ER where a 2mm unruptured aneurysm and two rare diseases were discovered.
Living with impermanence and gratitude for each breath became both a lived experience and part of her daily practice of presence. Additionally, Suzanne is trained in trauma-sensitive meditation, HeartMath heart rate variability training, forest therapy, MBSR, somatic experiencing, and is developing a Mindful Nature Guide training program where she’s spearheading the creation of the world’s 1st Mindful Pocket Park.
Based on University of Michigan research that 20 minutes in Nature reduces the stress hormone of cortisol, the 25 minute immersion shares “How to P.A.W.S.” or Pay Attention With Your Senses, combined with walking and sitting meditation. A former global TV executive who is now committed to reconnect humans to Nature at the 20 acre Patch of Heaven Sanctuary where she is the Chief Experience Officer, she’s hopeful that one mindful walk, one tree and one breath at a time is the path to creating greater inner connection and calm in order to address the outer challenges of today’s climate crisis.