The next Women's Wellness Retreat here at the Healthy Home will be on June 30th - July 2nd. If you have been thinking of doing this for some time then I encourage you to book this one as I am not sure can I still do the September 1-3 date as I might be travelling overseas. The Retreats have proved extremely powerful for many of the women who have attended so far. Isobel just shared with me the impact that the spring weekend just had on her. "Booking the Retreat was the first thing I have done differently for myself, it was a big thing to stick my neck out and commit to having a weekend away from my husband and three young children. I am so glad I broke that pattern as I came away from the weekend refreshed and inspired and now see things in a different light. I have mustered the energy to go through years worth of ‘stuff ‘ and am really creating space for new possibilities to happen. Things are definitely changing both personally and professionally and I feel excited instead of being stuck with old habits. As an added bonus I am thrilled with the new found energy that’s come with eating differently thanks to the great food ideas!".

The theme for the summer retreat will be "Blossoming" as the energy of the season is about fruition. This feels like a very appropriate energy for times ahead. It has been so long since women have been listened to but now there is a big readiness for women to become leaders. Globally, energies are shifting and there is a reversal of polarity happening that will herald in a new era when leadership from women will be needed and recognised. We must be ready by removing any internal barriers that still exist within ourselves. The Women's Retreat is an opportunity to release the powers you have within, whether that be to use them in your home, community or in the wider world. It's time for us all to show up because the world IS ready. Remember the story about the baby elephant trained to stay put by being tethered to a short stake? When it grew up it still had the same stake there but although it now had the physical strength to pull it from the ground and walk away, it didn't realise that it had the power to do so. Do you realise the full extent of the powers you have to contribute and serve in the world? This Women's Retreat weekend is part of the preprartion to empower and nurture ourselves to greatness. Let go of everything that is holding you back! Come join us.

The Retreat weekend has a wide curriculum of topics that come together to support you in having a new outlook, fresh energy and a healthier approach to creating an optimum environment at home. Feng shui forms part of the study we do and that was one of Sandra Smethurst's favourite parts. She says, "Thank you for a fabulous weekend. I learned so much about feng shui - a whole new area of knowledge that I am now integrating into my professional as well as personal life. When I came home I immediately put into practice what I had learned starting with a garage clutter clear. That effort resulted in two significant contracts with major universities being given to me. Your retreat weekend taught me how to move the energy in my home to my advantage - thank you Gina!!"

Last weekend I attended Be The Change - a 3-day gathering in London of global thinkers (about 500) who want to see change in the world and are inspired by Ghandi's call to BE that change that we wish to see! I am going to share my insights in the next newsletter but for now I wanted to connect you with the event & suggest you visit the website where you can buy recordings of the sessions. The second day opened with Gill Hicks, a survivor of the London bombings who lost both her legs in the explosion. She shared with us her wonder and gratitude for the medical teams who fought so hard to save her life even though she was an "unknown" with absolutely no identification on her. It reinforced her sense that at the end of the day, race, religion or creed have no importance - we are all human beings underneath. Later when her identity was discovered and she was reunited with her fiance she described the euphoria of being alive and having a second chance, of living life as Gill Hicks mark II, a different person to Gill Hicks mark I. To say it was deeply moving is an understatement and she set a powerful, emotional tone for the day when we discussed peace building, women's role in conflict resolution and creating peace within ourselves. Later that morning, inspirational author Lynne Franks, hosted a women's circle. Although it was one of 4 event options most women wanted to attend it and many men as well - one said that this was the one place he would learn the most! Lynne let the men sit in as observers outside the circle. We had an interesting discussion about how we manage our inner peace and how we view our role as leaders. More of that in the next women's newsletter very soon.

Do you find you bump into interesting people? I haven't been in my local pub in London for at least 6 years but I took friends (alumni from our Women's Retreat) in there on our way back from The Be Change conference as we could hear the strains of "Roll out the barrel" drifting out from the pub piano and it sounded like fun. It's only a tiny pub but the couple we ended up chatting to were a great laugh. After Brian finished telling us about his life as a submariner we quizzed his wife Lynne and found she had started a women's holiday retreat in Kerala, India, that offered Ayervedic treatments. Her inspiration to do this was when her daughter was very ill years ago and the only way she could get her better was to send her to India for Ayurvedic medicine. She then started a holiday company to support other women called Treatyourself.uk.com. Of all the people to run into as a group of women! Let me know your stories of synchronicity. (Lynne is on the right of the photo).

Earlier in May, a group of women from my local town of Skipton were inspired to stage what they called a Fair Trade & Environmental Fashion Show - an educational evening to highlight the real cost of clothing us in the developed world. A creative partnership was brought together between the local Oxfam store, the Christian Ecology group who had been pioneering the use of fair trade goods into many Skipton churches and local businesses, and Craven College fashion department whose students added several ranges of creatively made clothes to the fair trade outfits loaned to us by many UK mail order suppliers. Bryony Partridge had researched a very moving presentation that she had delivered half a dozen times before to highlight what exactly happens to real people at the other side of the world in order for us to have cheap, bargain clothes. The last slide featured on the Photo Album below sums it up: Jesus told us to clothe the poor, but it is the poor who are clothing us.

Vivienne Mee is a friend and another Women's Retreat alumni. We met up again at the Be The Change event and she shared that she is launching a very courageous venture. Her poster says, "Using film and live theatre as her backdrop, Vivienne's One Woman Show 'Being' explores the idea that we are all potential visionaries and that with only a small shift in our thinking, we can each create a totally different storyboard for our future." I have cleared my diary to go so if you can join us on June 1st in Manchester, please do so. Ladies, Vivienne would love your support so do let her know if you want a ticket and she will let you know the venue.