This is a weekend to disconnect from everything and think about yourself and we've got some powerful tools for you to make a quantum leap in the short time we have together. During the weekend there will be: * periods of silence and contemplation; * plenty of time for sharing and chatting, it's what we women love to do - connect! .. especially with like-minded souls; * plenty of nourishing, soul-sustaining food to enjoy; * time in nature to restore your well-being, with breathtaking views over our garden to the Dales; * lots of new information and learning.

You'll take home new skills especially from the exciting feng shui experience where we bring this ancient wisdom to life so you can use the key insights to see how your current home is supporting you or unwittingly working against you. You will also learn how to dowse for negative energies like geopathic stress and understand how to neutralise them.Plus, find out how you can get mastery over your energy levels once and for all and understand the secrets of keeping younger longer ........... a bumper bundle of a weekend and there's still time to be relaxed!!

Julie Hamilton: "Your retreat, UUUUMMMMMM, what can I say? It was a life changer. I would say one of THE most powerful events / personal development workshops I have ever attended. Little did I know that within 6 months of me doing the vision exercise you asked us to do, I would be living 90% of it! " Marilyn Devonish: "The whole thing was fabulous - from the moment I stepped through the door it was warm and inviting. The food was brilliant and all the little details like the handmade welcome cards and flowers made it very special. You were lucky to get me out of there, I just didn't want to go home. " Kate Hull Rodgers says: "I can whole heartedly recommend the Healthy Home retreat. Not only is the setting in the Yorkshire Dales exquisite, but the Home itself is an inspiration. I came away from the weekend full of possibilities and easy-to-action ideas that I could implement immediately. Gina oozes knowledge and wisdom, the other participants are quickly kindred souls, and the new perspective I gained is profound enough that it has stayed with me since." Vivienne Mee: "My favourite session was the feng shui afternoon - absolutely brilliant. It's such a fascinating subject and Gina really brought it to life in such a way that I could take the ideas away and easily use them to check my home against my life at the moment. That gave me some very interesting insights! " Photographed here is our new teaching space, flooded with light and with breathtaking views.

The New Internationalist magazine ran a great article last summer. It was about how stressed King Mswati III has been ruling his Kingdom of Swaziland, the smallest country on the African continent, and how he has been driven to spending tens of millions of dollars on "consumer therapy". Head of state since 1986, Mswati is often strongly criticized for living so lavishly in a nation that is afflicted by the world's highest HIV infection rates. His fleet of luxury cars, and the millions spent on luxury mansions, are at odds with the approximately 34 % of the population that are unemployed, and nearly 70% who live on less than a dollar a day. Around 39% of adults are afflicted by HIV.

Swaziland is one of the poorest nations in the world and has the world's lowest life expectancy, 32 years. New Internationalist Magazine reported that in "2003 (when Mswati planned to buy his $45 million royal jet) the World Food Programme announced that 250,000 people - a quarter of the population - were facing starvation." In 1973 he suspended the Constitution and banned all political parties, putting the country into a state of emergency which is presumably still in force. Opposition by banned parties still continues and the women's movement apparently stage vigorous protests. Don't you just love this photo of a group from the women's movement cursing the king by showing their bottoms. We should definitely consider this when we want to show Tony Blair that we don't like his foreign policies!

In August I caught a great interview with Anita Roddick on CNN. When asked what makes a great entrepreneur she said “Obsession. Bordering on the pathological. Obsessed with an idea and then ... pushing it to see how far it can go, but you've got to start with an idea... be pathologically optimistic." Asked about how she thought women approach business different to men she answered “I think women are good at taking what they're interested in and what they're skilled at and molding it into a livelihood. I mean that's the basis of most women's sort of adventures into the business world." She also said that women dialogue better. They don’t like hierarchy. They like more seamless networking. “I think when they see hierarchy, in my experience, they want to undo it at any given point, but still on the downside of women in business and women in management, they still do a lot of invisible work, they still look at power and don't want any part of it because they see what it's done to, you know, the other gender.”

Her advice advice for anyone who wants to become an entrepreneur was “Don't go to business school. It's about having an idea and seeing how you differ from the competition and shouting those differences from the rooftops.” So girls, be creative, really tune in to what excites you and see how you can build your passion into a business. And remember what Anita said about our invisible contribution - think about how you can make your efforts more visible. Let's not be unsung heroines - let's learn to sing our own praises and be prepared to step out into the spotlight and take the recognition we deserve.

OK you girls in the north of England, as if on cue following Anita's advice, there is a great day lined up at the Centre of Vocational Excellence in Enterprise Management based at Wakefield College. It aims to "explore and develop some new and powerful approaches to enhance enterprise and entrepreneurial skills for women - whether they are in business, considering starting a business or wanting to develop enterprise in the public sector and in the community".

There's a brilliant line-up of speakers including Soul-Woman Molly Harvey, Confidence Coach Una Doyle, Naheed Arshad-Mather MBE (for services to housing and community in West Yorkshire) and inspiration Global Leader Sandra Smethurst among others. The day is a bargain at £45 for self-employed and £90 for organisations. I shall there be there with a stand. I actually got to know Sandra earlier this year (pictured here) on our Spring Women's Wellness Retreat. She is one of the most positive and inspiring women I have met so I highly recommend her workshop on this Leadership Day. She really enjoyed participating in our women's weekend and was kind enough to say "Absolutely everyone needs a Gina retreat".

The launch of the j-a-m global initiative at Wembley Arena on September 17th was absolutely brilliant. It touched many souls very deeply around the world. The hosts and organisers, the Brahma Kumaris, have put up a short video of highlights on the j-a-m website. I have to say that my two favourite special moments were firstly when Robin Gibb sang a song dedicated to Dadi Janki on her 90th birthday which he sang for the first time, from hand-written notes. It was called Mother of Love, Angel of Light and you can hear the chorus on the j-a-m video (I don't think there was a dry eye in the house!). Secondly, the moment at 4.25pm when the world seemed to stand still and 10,000+ of us sat silently joined by millions or people connecting around the world. Well that was the launch and the initiative is just beginning. It's all about taking those regular minutes of silence, which I now do every hour, to reconnect with who I am, my purpose and to be conscious of what my mind is doing.