Waking Up To Love
Please contact me for more info re my fees and schedules
-I work with couples in person, on the phone and on skype. To book a free 40 minute introductory session, please email me at
I will also be offering retreats and courses for couples. If you register for my Lifeletter, you’ll receive information about upcoming events.
My approach to working with couples is based on many years of watching people fall down and fail in the area of intimate relationships. This includes myself, my friends, my teachers, my clients, and my students. I have seen many brave and intelligent people come to a place of deep and profound disappointment, of heartbreak, of shame, of hopelessness, in this arena of human life.
What a place to meet yourself! On the meditation cushion, at the computer, working hard at my job, I can still look somewhat sane and accountable. But with my intimate partner? Not a chance. Everything I am trying to avoid in myself is what I am confronted with here. The relationship I always wanted is not happening—the one I never wanted to be with is the one I am in bed with.
It’s no secret these days that our intimate relationships are breaking down. The signs are everywhere-you don’t have to be a mind reader. What we have to learn here is something so basic, so elementary, that we can’t learn it until we are really ready. Until we are desperate. Until all of our strategies and techniques have failed. Love is not a technique. I used to teach my couples techniques and strategies, many years ago. I noticed that they seemed like a great idea at the time, but in the heat of the moment, such things are forgotten, instantly.
What to do?
The only thing to do is learn how to really show up, just as we are, in this moment-- without excuses, without strategies, without agendas. To become fully conscious of what is going on, in the middle of all this suffering. To get strong enough, curious enough, fed up enough, to do the work of deep transformation and healing.
Regardless of your genetic inheritance, your mission by birth is to love. That’s why your life will present you with the opportunity to open and love while you repeatedly face your parents’ worst qualities, until your heart can stay relaxed, open as the sky is wide. (David Deida)
This work has to be grounded in what I call our genuine presence, our unconditioned being, the space of awareness that allows everything to be as it is. Then we can be fully present, then we can start to open to the intelligence of the heart. Without this grounding in our true nature, it’s very difficult to open up. Our conditioned personality just wants to defend itself.
So this is ultimately a kind of warrior training—a training in being a warrior of the heart. Someone who knows that when the dust clears, when everything falls apart, love is what matters. Not my job, not my possessions, or my status or my knowledge, but how much love I am able to give and receive. When people are dying, this becomes very clear to them. Let’s not wait until then. Let’s awaken the intelligence of the heart right now, and find out how to move through all this baggage we are still carrying, from generations of our ancestors who did not know how to love either.
We really don’t have to walk around with all this pain, these slivers of sorrow and rage that get lodged deep in the heart. We can unburden ourselves, and look at our lover, our partner with the eyes of love, innocence and passion. Let’s lay down the blame, the regret and the judgment, and bring our relationships right into this living moment.
Whatever your inheritance of personal need, you can commit to doing your best to open, permitting love’s force to freely move your life. (David Deida)
We can wake up right now and learn to embrace this deeply flawed human being who is our partner, and this deeply flawed human being who is ourself. You don’t need to be special to open to love. I have seen perfectly ordinary people sitting in my office, looking at each other with so much love the whole room gets bright.
When we love, when we learn to give and receive kindness, respect and caring, our whole human life starts to flow like a river. We don’t have to hold on to things anymore, we don’t have to prove ourselves, or be right, or punish our partners anymore. We feel love as something vast, not just something that lives inside us. We start to realize that love is what everything is made of.
And this is worth going through some difficult places, some intense thoughts, and some turbulent feelings, to know.
Every human being with whom we seek relatedness is a koan, that is to say, an impossibility. There is no formula for getting along with a human being. No technique will achieve relatedness. I am impossible to get along with; so is each one of you; all our friends are impossible; the members of our families are impossible. How then shall we get along with them? … If you are seeking a real encounter, then you must confront the koan represented by the other person. The koan is an invitation to enter into reality.
Bernard Philips, East/West Psychology
I have not found anyone like you, who offers such practical wisdom, and deep spiritual guidance.
Barbara Dalton, Vancouver BC
Shayla brings warmth, openness and compassion to any relationship, and excels at creating a space in which solutions arise in their own time and way. I am grateful for our relationship. Jeff Munn, Washington DC
You’ve been fabulous for us. Cordell Fulton, Nelson BC
He had such a wonderful session with you. You bring out the beauty in him, but you seem to do that to everyone.We love you Shayla and are so grateful to have you in our lives. Julia Gilmor, Nelson BC
The thing we love about working with Shayla as a coach is that every time we are with her, she is completely present. There is no pre-determined agenda. She creates an open sacred space, that allows for our deepest feelings to come through. She then spontaneously responds to whatever is happening with wisdom and compassion. She works from a higher/deeper place, that calls to our higher/deeper self as well. We feel truly heard and respected. We are blessed to work with Shayla and deeply appreciate the gift of her wisdom and experience. Shayla is a treasured gift in our community. Amy & Marcus Garvey, Nelson BC
For more information on my training and approach to relationship, see the ‘Coaching’ section on my website.
Effortless Presence-90 days of transformation & awakening
- Tuition: $800--$980
Level 1: Three one hour sessions per month--$980 CAD for 9 sessions. Level 2: Three 45 minute sessions per month--$800 CAD for 9 sessions ~Payments plans are available
Effortless Presence
The 90 day one-on-one coaching & mentoring relationship--
Life Coaching with presence or awareness at the centre.
How
Did the rose
Ever open its heart
And give to this world
All its
Beauty?
It felt the encouragement of light
Against its
Being
Otherwise,
We all remain
Too
Frightened
(Hafiz)
This is my job, as your coach, to help you relax into effortless presence and to awaken the flame of inquiry. The more you relax, the more power you will have to keep this flame of inquiry burning, brighter and brighter, illuminating all that has been confused, distorted, and hidden away.
What is Effortless Presence?
If you stop right now, and just open to the whole feeling of your existence, right in this moment, without grasping it, or defining it, or using language to describe it; this is presence or awareness.. It is the openness of being: the alive, awake spaciousness that is not separate from anything. It is your core, the essence of your being.
When you rest in awareness or presence, you cannot find a fixed and solid self. In the natural freedom of presence, you begin to express yourself in a way that is open, alive, and fully engaged with life. You discover a very different sense of your own being. Who you are is fluid, dynamic, no longer fixed or limited by what has happened or not happened in the past. All of this reveals itself, bit by bit, through resting as you are, and through the power of inquiry.
Presence/awareness transmits a well-being that is natural, intrinsic and obvious. Sometimes it feels very ordinary. You realize that it is you who is radically responsible for your own
well being. You no longer need to look to others for happiness and fulfillment.
You can feel the dynamic aspect of awareness as a bold and creative spirit that is waiting to express itself in you, through you, in each moment. The good news is that presence is not something you have to create from scratch. It is already alive in you, as your most natural state. But it has not been recognized, called forth, and encouraged to reveal itself. That’s what we will do in our work together. It’s a bit like fanning a flame, a movement of consciousness, a flow that moves instinctively towards liberation, towards embracing reality as it is.
The more you rest in each moment, the more freely you engage in inquiry, the more you will come to rely on the ease and the clarity of awareness as an ongoing source of integrity, stability and courage.
A client expresses:
“ I feel very fortunate that Shayla agreed to become my coach during the Radiant Mind course. She came to me during a time that was very difficult, and was exactly the person I needed coaching me through that. I do believe that along the spiritual path, when I stop, am still, and listen, the right answer comes to me. Sometimes, that answer is in the form of another person. That form was Shayla and for that I am very grateful. She is very clear, direct, and listens with great compassion.” (L.B. Vancouver BC, March 2011)
What is this coaching & mentoring relationship?
The Evolutionary Conversation
Coaching is a container for a life-changing conversation, a conversation in which you discover renewal and resilience, in which you are deeply nourished and also challenged. Nourished by an unconditional acceptance, that respects you just as you are. Challenged to demonstrate that you can be truly responsible for your life, for what you care for, for being in good relation, and happy to hold yourself accountable for all of this.
This is a conversation is which we participate together. Here is an opportunity to exercise our love, clarity and courage, no matter how dormant, to water it with the light of our awareness, and watch it grow. Happiness lies in the recognition of this possibility, this way of being with ourselves, with each other, and with our planet. In this perilous time, we need to reach out, to offer whatever we have, to receive what is given.
Such conversations dissolve anxiety, doubt, rage, and grief. We do have the power to awaken each other, to call forth a loving, fearless presence, in the midst of all we struggle with daily.
Why hold back? Why sit alone in the night when our challenges are enormous, and the times are full of turbulence?
A client who is engaged in the 90 day program speaks about it:
“I am going to attempt to describe the indescribable.
When we chat, something in me is aware that what is being exchanged is beneath the words.
And in between sessions you are still there. You never go away.
What have been the effects on me and my life?
That’s difficult to isolate really, especially since I sense this is all working at a level which my mind can neither grasp nor describe.
I will say there has been a feeling of becoming “unstuck”; simply that, “unstuck”. And that started happening immediately after our very first conversation.
Unstuck? Hmmm. Able to keep growing, deepening, relaxing, opening, accepting… with a new CONFIDENCE” (Kathy B Vancouver, BC, June 2011).
What will I receive?
90 days of Engagement
Over this 3 month period, the two of us will join together to form an alliance that supports your awakening and evolution. You will discover how to recognize your essential being as indivisible presence, and how to begin living from this presence, as a fully functioning human being.
This is not about traditional or therapeutic ways of ‘working’ on yourself. This is about the power of awareness/presence, of acceptance, of meeting yourself and your own experience exactly as it is. In this embrace, this space of openness where struggles fall away, you discover another way of being, of perceiving, and of relating.
During our sessions we will engage in powerful inquiry into deep structures of belief about yourself, others and your whole relationship to life. Our ongoing dialogue will reveal many things to you about hidden attitudes, and the relationship between thoughts, feelings and actions. As a result, you will find yourself participating in a totally new kind of relationship with the people in your life, learning to say No when you mean No, to ask for what you want-- to communicate with clarity, kindness and deep respect. You will discover for yourself what love is, instead of relying on what society has told you about it.
The truth is that the past does not really limit you, No matter what has happened to you, you are not a victim. You create your own suffering, moment to moment, and so does everyone else. When you finally awaken to this, new possibilities emerge, far beyond the limited visions of your survival mind. You will gain great confidence in your power to deal with your afflictive emotions, because you can see the beliefs and perceptions that create and sustain them. Your need to judge, label and control them will gradually disappear, and you will be able to meet each wave of feeling as your own life energy, a source of power that you can now reclaim.
Transforming the Matrix
The power of inquiry increases exponentially, the more we use it. In the beginning we need help, support and specific structures to awaken inquiry from within us. Even if we know how to rest in the openness of presence, even if we can let go and release the need to know and understand, we still return, again and again, to the basic structure of our conditioned identity. Until we allow inquiry to penetrate our core beliefs about who we are, what life is, and what relationship is. When inquiry reaches this depth, it feels like the matrix of our identity is being transformed. All we need is the willingness to investigate, the humility to see what is going on in our life, and the persistence to keep going, not to give up.
Well I must admit that life with you as my coach is sort of like falling down a mountain. The farther you fall, the faster you roll. I must say I am moving along at lightning speed.”
(Marian Hughes,Toronto, June 2010)
What is the Format?
Full Spectrum Engagement
The nature of our coaching relationship will support you, as you are, in the unique nature of your challenges, gifts, capacities and longings.The work you do in this program emerges from our sessions and from your life.
You will receive:
- Practices that support you in recognizing and abiding in the nature of naked awareness..
- You will discover your own way of engaging in inquiry, learning how to access the depths of your natural wisdom, insight and clarity.
- You’ll learn how to inhabit your body from the core, and listen to its intelligence.
- In our dialogues, you will encounter the healing and liberating power of free expression.
- We will work with simple templates that will help you integrate this process of awakening and transformation.
- You’ll receive information, inspiration and guidance about building a network of support for yourself, a community of friends and allies. Your progress in this area will be mapped out, including whatever structures you need to put in place to nourish and encourage your growth and development.
- Reading material designed to keep you connected to this work and your willingness to transform.
- Your own coaching document, where I keep a log of each session and of all of your inquiry, dialogue, and practices.
I’ll also provide you with:
All sessions are completely confidential. You’ll receive a signed and dated confidentiality agreement from me, at the beginning of our engagement.
All of our coaching sessions can be recorded, if you want. To get a recording, we both use my Instant Teleseminar conference line. You can call in from your landline, or if you don’t want to pay long distance fees, you can call in with skype call phone. Then you’ll receive an MP3 recording after each of our sessions.
Endorsement
“Shayla is a master coach. The breadth of her coaching expertise is outstanding. Shayla guides people through the challenges of being human, creating a career, and living fulfilling relationships in an extremely sensitive, powerful and loving way. She works in many modalities and at every level, including bringing people the “ultimate medicine” of recognizing their true nature. Every meeting with Shayla is informed by her wealth of life experience and her own uncompromising commitment to personal and spiritual growth. Shayla is an inspired and inspiring coach. I recommend her without any reservation.” (Peter Fenner, Phd, teacher and founder of the Radiant Mind Course)
What are the fees?
The 90 day Coaching Plan
Level 1: Three one hour sessions per month, or a schedule of your design, 9 sessions in all, for $980 CAD
(You save $100 in this program, instead of doing the regular one on one sessions with me, which are $120/hour)
Level 2: Three 45 minute sessions per month, or a schedule of your design--9 sessions in all, for $800 CAD
(You save $55 in this program, instead of doing the regular one on one sessions with me, which are $95/45 minutes.
These fees include all taxes and paypal fees.
You can pay me in one payment, or in three smaller ones.
For Level 1: 3 payments of $340 CAD
For Level 2: 3 payments of $280 CAD
How do I schedule an Introductory Session?
You can call me or email me to schedule a free 30 minute. Introductory Session with no commitment.
To get my contact information, click here :Shayla’s phone and email http://www.barefootjourneys.net/index.php/profile
How do I pay?
Once you decide that you want to do the program, you just register on my website. I’ll send you an email invoice. You can send me a check for the sessions, or you can click directly on the invoice, which will take you to my paypal account.
About Shayla
Shayla Wright is a lover of presence, inquiry, evolution, and nondual intimacy. She participates in life as a teacher, a master coach, a writer, and an evolving human being. She has spent a lifetime studying and teaching inquiry, creativity, expression & communication, and the transformation of consciousness. She worked with Mother Teresa in her children’s homes, and in her Home for the Dying in Calcutta. She has studied intensively with Joshu Sazaki Roshi, Osho, and Adya Shanti. She was a senior teacher and coach in her community in the Himalayas, the International Meditation Institute, where she lived for 23 years. She has a doctorate in non-dual philosophy, a teaching degree in Soma Yoga, and is a certified coach.
Her current focus is on supporting the full embodiment of unconditioned presence, in the midst of human life. She offers a radical approach to working with couples, and facilitates small groups who engage in ‘evolutionary conversations.’ She offers her own coaching, courses and workshops in Canada, and is now engaged as a nondual coach and facilitator with Peter Fenner and the Radiant Mind course, with people from all over North America and Europe.
For more information visit the coaching and nondual coaching sections at www.barefootjourneys.net
Discovering Your Authentic Being--5 sessions with Shayla
- Tuition: $ 400.00 CAD
One payment of $400.00 CAD or three payments of $145 CAD
A coach is someone who sees you, who hears you, and who offers you an unconditional space in which to rest, discover, inquire, express and create. There is no way of knowing what this will look like. Sometimes it is inquiry, sometimes it is weeping, sometimes it is dialogue, sometimes it is just sitting in stillness, sometimes it’s celebration, sometimes it is the hard work of bringing things to completion.
Why should we grieve that we’ve been sleeping.
It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been unconscious.
We’re groggy, but let the guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness
around you, the buoyancy.
---Rumi
I remember when I had my first coach. I had worked with teachers before, but never with my own coach, It was amazing.Someone to walk along beside me, someone to have in-depth, radically honest conversations with, someone who speaks to the one in me who is much more than the mind. I encourage you to try it, to call on a coach, a mentor, to help you bring your inner and outer life into alignment with your wide awake being.
I will say there has been a feeling of becoming “unstuck”; simply that, “unstuck”. And that started happening immediately after our very first conversation.
Unstuck? Hmmm. Able to keep growing, deepening, relaxing, opening, accepting… with a new CONFIDENCE. Kathy Berndt, Vancouver, BC
What is your Authentic Being?
If you stop right now, and just open to the whole feeling of your existence, right in this moment, without grasping it, or defining it, or using language to describe it; this is presence or authentic being. It is the openness of who you are: the alive, awake spaciousness that is not separate from anything. It is your core, the essence of your being.
When you rest in this awareness or presence, you cannot find a fixed and solid self. In the natural freedom of awareness, you begin to express yourself in a way that is open, alive, and fully engaged with life. You discover a very different sense of your own being. Who you are is fluid, dynamic, no longer fixed or limited by what has happened or not happened in the past. All of this reveals itself, bit by bit, through resting as you are, and through the power of inquiry.
Presence transmits a well-being that is natural, intrinsic and obvious. Sometimes it feels very ordinary.
The Good News
You can feel the dynamic aspect of this presence as a transparent and creative spirit that is waiting to express itself in you, through you, in each moment. The good news is that presence is not something you have to create from scratch. It is already alive in you, as your most natural state. But it has not been recognized, called forth, and encouraged to reveal itself.
That’s what we will do in our work together. It’s a bit like fanning a flame, a movement of consciousness, a flow that moves instinctively towards liberation, towards embracing reality as it is.
The more you rest in each moment, the more freely you engage in inquiry, the more you will come to rely on the ease and the clarity of presence or awareness as an ongoing source of integrity, stability and courage.
This is one of the greatest gifts I’ve had in a long long time. (Lea D. California, April 2010)
What is this coaching & mentoring relationship?
The Evolutionary Conversation
Coaching is a container for a life-changing conversation, a conversation in which you discover renewal and resilience, in which you are deeply nourished and also challenged. Nourished by an unconditional acceptance, that respects you just as you are. Challenged to demonstrate that you can be truly responsible for your life, for what you care for, for being in good relation, and happy to hold yourself accountable for all of this.
Such conversations dissolve anxiety, doubt, rage, and grief. We do have the power to awaken each other, to call forth a loving, fearless presence, in the midst of all we struggle with daily.
Why hold back? Why sit alone in the night when our challenges are enormous, and the times are full of turbulence?
Shayla came to me during a time that was very difficult, and was exactly the person I needed coaching me through that. I do believe that when I stop, am still, and listen, the right answer comes to me. Sometimes, that answer is in the form of another person. That form was Shayla and for that I am very grateful. She is very clear, direct, and listens with great compassion.
(Lianne B. Vancouver)
A Natural Intimacy with Yourself
This is not about traditional or therapeutic ways of ‘working’ on yourself. This is about the power of awareness/presence, of acceptance, of meeting yourself and your own experience exactly as it is. In this embrace, this space of openness where struggles fall away, you discover another way of being, of perceiving, and of relating.
During our sessions we will engage in penetrating inquiry into deep structures of belief about yourself, others and your whole relationship to life. Our ongoing dialogue will reveal many things to you about hidden attitudes, and the relationship between thoughts, feelings and actions.
As a result, you will find yourself participating in a totally new kind of relationship with the people in your life, learning to say No when you mean No, to ask for what you want-- to communicate with clarity, kindness and deep respect.
A new relationship with difficult feelings
Bit by bit, you will gain great confidence in your power to deal with your afflictive emotions. Now you can see the beliefs and perceptions that create and sustain them. Your need to judge, label and control them will gradually disappear, and you will be able to meet each wave of feeling as your own life energy, a source of power that you can now reclaim.
Transforming the Matrix
The power of inquiry increases exponentially, the more we use it. In the beginning we need help, support and specific structures to awaken inquiry from within us. Even if we know how to rest in the openness of presence, even if we can let go and release the need to know and understand, we still return, again and again, to the basic structure of our conditioned identity. Until we allow inquiry to penetrate our core beliefs about who we are, what life is, and what relationship is.
When inquiry reaches this depth, it feels like the matrix of our identity is being transformed. All we need is the willingness to investigate, the humility to see what is going on in our life, and the persistence to keep going, not to give up.
This is my job, as your coach, to awaken the flame of inquiry, and to help you keep it burning, brighter and brighter, illuminating all that has been confused, distorted, and hidden away.
Well I must admit that life with you as my coach is sort of like falling down a mountain. The farther you fall, the faster you roll. I must say I am moving along at lightning speed.”
(Marian Hughes,Toronto, June 2010)
What is the Format?
Five 45 minute coaching sessions
One session a week,or scheduled at your convenience.
What do I receive?
You will receive practices,support and a connection that supports you in these ways:
-Recognizing and abiding in the openness and freedom of presence
-Discovering the power of inquiry, learning how to access the depths of your natural wisdom, insight and clarity.
-Beginning to inhabit your body from the core, and listen to its intelligence.
-Direct experience of the healing and liberating power of free expression.
-The natural integration of this awakening and transformation with your everyday life.
-You’ll receive information, inspiration and guidance about building a network of support for yourself, an evolutionary community of friends and allies.
I’ll also provide you with:
-Reading material designed to keep you connected to this work and your willingness to transform.
All of our coaching sessions can be recorded, if you want. To get a recording, we both use my Instant Teleseminar conference line. You can call in from your landline, or if you don’t want to pay long distance fees, you can call in with skype call phone. Then you’ll receive an MP3 recording after each of our sessions.
All sessions are completely confidential.
Endorsement
“Shayla is a master coach. The breadth of her coaching expertise is outstanding. Shayla guides people through the challenges of being human, creating a career, and living fulfilling relationships in an extremely sensitive, powerful and loving way. She works in many modalities and at every level, including bringing people the “ultimate medicine” of recognizing their true nature.
Every meeting with Shayla is informed by her wealth of life experience and her own uncompromising commitment to personal and spiritual growth. Shayla is an inspired and inspiring coach. I recommend her without any reservation.” (Peter Fenner, Phd, teacher and founder of the Radiant Mind Course)
What are the fees?
One payment of $400.00 CAD or three payments of $145.00 CAD
These fees do not include HST and paypal fees, which come to $60 total. ($48 HST, $12 paypal)
This is a considerable discount from my normal coaching fees, which are:
For a one hour session: $120
For a 45 min. session: $95
How do I schedule an Introductory Session?
You can call me or email me to schedule a free 30 minute. Introductory Session with no commitment.
To get my contact information, Shayla’s email
How do I pay?
Option 1: When you register for the sessions, I send you an email invoice. You can click directly on the invoice, which will take you to my paypal account.
Option 2: If you prefer to pay by check, your check needs to arrive before our first session, and it needs to be for the full amount.
For more information visit the coaching and nondual coaching sections on this website.
Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together- A 3 to 5 day retreat
- Date: Aug 3 - -Aug 8, 2012
- Location: Johnson’s Landing Retreat Centre, Johnson's Landing, near Argenta
- Tuition:
- Phone: 1(877) 366-4402
Tuition for this retreat is by donation. Minimum donation per day is suggested when you register.
With friends you grow wings.
Alone,
you are a single feather in disgrace.
With them you master the wind,
but alone,
you’re blown in all directions
—Rumi
Mutual Evolution is an opportunity for anyone who is drawn to a way of being that is transparent, open, and authentic. A way of being in relationship, based on non-separation. This is much more than a practice. It is a discovery, an adventure and a love affair. It is also a profound letting go of our need to get somewhere, to know what is going to happen.
It begins with our natural state, our natural state of presence, the openness of our true nature. We learn to recognize presence, to rest in it, to experience for ourselves what happens when we let ourselves be, just as we are. We leave behind, bit by bit, the impulse to control ourselves, to manipulate, to interfere with what is arising.
‘If we could really listen, there would be no suffering in the world.’ Byron Katie
We engage in this practice together, and learn to trust in this presence. We cannot see it or grasp it, but it holds us and nourishes us deeply. There is a radical intimacy here: we do not stand back from others or from ourselves. We enter into each moment from inside, without knowing anything. Untamed feelings may arise, deep wisdom may emerge-we are not in control.
In this new world, we trust in the intelligence of presence, the integrity of the heart, this awakeness that lives in everything.
We are willing to be with the rawness, the tenderness, the anxiety that arises when we are no longer protected or defended. We can say to our most difficult feelings, “Show me how to be with you.” We can listen to everything, without pushing anything away, without needing to defend our self-image.
‘Each friend and lover represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive. It is only in this meeting that a whole new way of being presents itself to us.’ Anais Nin
Our capacity to stay consciously connected during each contact increases. We realize that we can let go of our own points of view and enter into the reality of each being we meet. When we are no longer afraid of ourselves and our own thoughts and feelings, we don’t need to keep interfering with the people in our lives. We can remain non-reactive when suffering and turbulence arise in the people we love. We can offer them instead, a basic trust in their inborn capacity to find their own way.
Meeting in this way, we are totally available to the wisdom, the clarity and the beauty that lives in each being. When the struggles and the misery that happen in our relationships fall away, we are finally available to a bigger field. We can make a natural contribution to our world, as self-preoccupation falls away.
How does this transformation, this awakening, happen?
There are three streams in Mutual Evolution. Learning to rest, to be where we are, to be fully present, to allow others to be as they are, is the first stream. It happens in the realm of Being, and it calls us into a deep place of allowing, opening, settling into ourselves. Discovering that we can meet, in this space of presence, and recognize that we are whole and complete as we are.
The second stream is what I call the practice of ‘penetrating inquiry. ‘ This is inquiry that goes deep, that allows us to work with the undeveloped and hidden parts of ourselves. When we are willing, these aspects of ourselves begin to emerge. We can listen to them fully, and explore the beliefs and stories they are carrying. Opening up these stories gives us a radically new perspective on life, even on our whole personal history.
The third stream is about integration and embodiment. We can bring this way of being right into the heart of our everyday life. An organic and powerful evolution starts to happen when we do this kind of work. We are not in charge of this evolution, but we can learn to support and nurture it. And we can do this for each other, by creating certain structures in our lives, in our days, that make space for a whole new way of being with ourselves, with each other, and with life.
In the space of ‘Mutual Evolution’ we step out of a solitary, individual kind of practice, into a much bigger view. We realize that we are all participating in collective assumptions and agreements, and that we can wake up together. We don’t have to believe any of the fearful stories we have been telling ourselves about who we are, or what life is.
When we join together, when we are really here for each other, everything is so much easier. We can stop postponing the authentic life that wants to be lived, now. This intensive is simply a place to open, with your whole being, to this precious opportunity. This is the time when you can awaken to a clear, loving, and natural way of being. At home with yourself, at home in the universe.
For more information about Shayla and her work, visit her profile on this website.
Structure of the Retreat
This retreat is being offered as a three day or a five day retreat. All participants arrive on Friday afternoon, August 3. The three day retreat ends on Monday Aug. 6, at lunch time. The five day retreat ends on Wednesday Aug. 8, after breakfast.
The work we will be doing in this retreat includes a dynamic balance between work that is structured and radically unstructured. Sessions include guided meditation and contemplation, dialogue, and inquiry, and talks by Shayla, Some of the practices are done in solitude, and the rest happen with partners and small groups.
This does not include the ongoing, organic practices that become part of your everyday life, that infiltrate themselves into your meditation, your work, your sexual life, your relationship with food, with money, and all of your interactions, and conversations.
There are 2 follow up telecalls after the retreat.
The basic cost for food and lodging varies quite a lot. Information about this is below and is available when you contact the retreat centre.
To register, email: info@JohnsonsLandingRetreat.bc.ca or phone toll free 1.877.366.4402
Retreat Schedule
Fri. afternoon and evening
Welcome session 4-5:30pm
Dinner 5:30pm-6:30pm
Evening session 7-9pm
Sat. Sun. Mon. and Tues.
Optional Morning Chi-Gung and Pilates: 7am-7:45am
Morning session 7:45-9am
Breakfast 9-10am
Main session 10-12:30pm
Lunch 12:30-1:30pm
Afternoon break 1:30-4pm
Afternoon sitting 4-5:30pm
Dinner 5:30-6:30pm
Evening Session 7-8:30pm
Monday Aug. 6
Three day retreat ends after lunch.
Wednesday August 8
Morning session and closing: 7:30-10am
Breakfast 10am-11am
Departure 11am
Participants are welcome to stay and have lunch before they leave.
Johnson’s Landing Retreat Centre fees
All accommodations at the retreat centre include meals
Administration fee for the retreat is $140.
If folks register BEFORE June 29th it is only $115.
A Private cabin for five day is $120 a day (+ Tax)
Deluxe option for five days: $600 for a private cabin with all your meals, plus the administration fee of $115 (if youregister BEFORE June 29th).
This equates to $715 plus tax plus Shayla’s tuition, which is a fantastic price
The least expensive option: $375 (camping which includes all your meals)
plus an administration feeof $115 (if you register BEFORE June 29th).
This equates to $485 plus tax, plus Shayla’s tuition,which is also a fantastic price.
There are lots of other choices between these two sample options.
Call the retreat centre for more information at 1 (877) 366-4402.
When people sign up they only pay the Administration Fee of $115 or $140. That holds their space in your Retreat. The balance is due upon arrival.
Private
Cabin (private outhouse) $ 119.95
Tree House (private outhouse) $ 114.95
Room in the Lodge (shared bathroom) $ 104.95
Tipi (private outhouse) $ 104.95
Tent Cabin $ 84.95
Campground (Bring your tent, bed and linen) $ 64.95
(NO cooking is permitted in the campground, meals are included in the price)
Shared (most have 2 singles or a double bed)
Cabin (has private outhouse) $ 94.95 ea.
Tree House (has private outhouse) $ 89.95 ea.
Room in the Lodge (shared bathroom) $ 84.95 ea.
Bunk House sleeps four (has private bathroom) $84.95 ea
Tipi (private outhouse). $ 84.95 ea.
Group use (3 people in single beds )
Bunk House (own bathroom) . $84.95 ea.
Tipi (private outhouse) $74.95 ea.
We have two showers outside on the deck for people
who stay in the Cabins, Tree Houses or are Camping.
There is also a Solar Shower in the campground.
