Guatemala Retreat

Join us for Creative Writing, Hatha Yoga and meditation at the unforgettable Villa Sumaya Retreat Center, in the Santa Cruz Pueblo on the shore of Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. We will write and practice yoga mornings and late afternoons on most days, with one full day and several half-days free to explore, rest, swim & kayak. Includes: 8 days, 7 nights, shared accommodations; all meals (& they are wonderful); two daily writing and yoga sessions; all instruction and materials; workshops on the craft of writing; individual manuscript critiques. (does not include transportation to and from Villa Sumaya, special excursions, or gratuities.) Cost: $1,950. $500 non-refundable deposit required to hold space. Balance due January 16, 2009. Register before November 15th for a discount of $150. Alums of previous retreats led jointly by Patricia & Charles will receive an additional $100 discount. Travel to Guatemala: You may find good ticket prices by contacting Isaac Hilpman at Exito Travel; tell him that you are with the Patricia Lee Lewis Group and give him the code, ABQYOGA. Isaac will give you the website ticket price and help to coordinate the arrival times for our group. The phone number is: 800-655-4053 ext. 8507 and the website is www.exitotravel.com Other participants have recently found good prices through American Airlines. Transportation & lodging within Guatemala: You will land at Guatemala City airport and be responsible for getting yourself to Antigua about 30 minutes away. Public transportation is available for about $8.00; a private taxi is about $30 and may be shared. We will recommend a moderately-priced hotel and Villa Sumaya will arrange with the hotel for you to stay overnight, if you wish. As hotels require a deposit to hold a room, you may find it more convenient to ask Villa Sumaya to make reservations for you. If they make the arrangements, you will pay Villa Sumaya directly for your stay. We will also provide the names of a few other more expensive hotels at which you may make your own arrangements. We recommend arriving in Guatemala no later than February 13, the Friday before the retreat, and staying in Antigua overnight. Charles will stay in Antigua Friday evening, and meet early arrivals for dinner. Those who arrive on Saturday should land at the Guatemala City Airport no later than 2:30 on Saturday and go straight to the designated hotel in Antigua. Charles will meet you there; at about 3:30 you will board a private bus for Panajachel on Lake Atitlan, about 2 hours away. (Details will follow in the letter you will receive after registration). A private boat will take you across the lake to Villa Sumaya. We suggest that you plan to stay one or more extra nights in Villa Sumaya or Antigua after the retreat. Charles will stay until Monday, and fly out Monday morning. Most participants choose to spend their last night in Antigua so that they are closer to the airport for their departing flight the next day. If you have to fly out on Saturday, the day the retreat ends, we suggest a departure time after 1 p.m. but later is better, to give you plenty of time to get back to the airport. Private transportation from Panajachel to Guatemala City costs about $62; public transportation is about $20. The only drawback to public transportation is that you are limitied to pre-determined arrival and departure times. On Saturday, February 21, you will return by private bus to the hotel in Antigua. At the end of our retreat you will be billed by Villa Sumaya for any hotel rooms they book for you, and for the bus (about $10.00 each way) . Click here to view our Refund Policy Request Registration Form ABOUT OUR RETREATS Our retreats include people with a wide range of yoga and writing experience, from beginners to professionals. We are all enriched by the diversity. While we will offer a daily schedule of suggested activities, writing and yoga sessions are optional: your time is your own. The yoga is practiced 2-3 hours a day, in the early morning and some afternoons, in a safe, supportive environment with a deep respect for individual strengths as well as for areas of challenge or difficulty. The writing is done in structured groups for about 4 hours each morning and several evenings. You will have opportunity to write in an encouraging, confidential and inspiring setting, in response to exercises we suggest. You will be invited to share what you have just written, and to respond to the writing of others with what is fresh, what you like, what you remember. Patricia will meet with individual writers to discuss their manuscripts or issues relating to their writing life and offer a special workshop on the craft of writing. While Patricia and Charles will always be where the schedule calls them, for you all activities are optional, and the entire week should be considered free time. Pick and choose from organized activities to make your own schedule. Take as much time each day as you'd like to set off on your own or with others. A long veranda offers handmade lounge chairs and tasseled hammocks for resting and reading. Visitors can swim and kayak in Lake Atitlan. Explore a nearby traditional Maya village or hike the magnificent lake basin. Villa Sumaya offers a library, outdoor hot tub and sauna, as well as Thai, Reiki, and Swedish deep tissue massage treatments upon request. The retreat is designed and facilitated by Patricia Lee Lewis and Charles MacInerney. Combining Yoga & Writing The practice of yoga, the joining of body and mind, can open pathways into the feelings, memories, stories and images embedded in the tissues. Writing workshops during the retreat are designed to help you shift your awareness and write from those deeper levels of consciousness. Through Hatha Yoga, we will get in touch with our kinesthetic sense of self. We will use special meditation techniques to slow the mind and create a sense of the sacred. No writing or yoga experience is required - only a sense of adventure. Beginning and experienced writers will find a supportive, encouraging context in which to write from their deepest selves. We will write in response to exercises offered by Patricia Lee Lewis, MFA. In a small group, writers will be invited to read their work aloud, and the group will offer simple affirmations of what is done well and what stays in the memory. ABOUT LAKE ATITLAN Lake Atitlan is a 45 square mile lake in the highlands of Guatemala, surrounded by volcanoes. It is famous for its natural beauty and colorful Mayan villages. Lake Atitlan has been described by Aldous Huxley as the most beautiful lake in the world. Villa Sumaya is a picturesque hotel, restaurant, and retreat center located on the shores of Lake Atitlan. Staff members speak English and Spanish.We invite you to relax and discover Lake Atitlan's living and legendary Mayan landscape. The Villa Sumaya Yoga Retreat Center offers a beautiful, new 1000 square foot facility with hardwood floors, a palapa roof with a glass pyramid skylight, and floor to ceiling windows providing a full panoramic view of the lake and 3 perfect volcanoes Villa Sumaya's newest addition; a world class group facility called Blue Tiger Temple. While matching the hotel décor with thatched roof and simple lines, it has a unique Japanese motif. Boasting a lake front location, full panoramic view, hard wood floor, and glass pyramid sky light, this space is ideal for group activities such as yoga. Each double bedroom is carefully appointed and fully equipped with an en suite bathroom/shower with hot and cold running water, electricity, and a spacious veranda where the lake is a stage. The veranda showcases the best of Lake Atitlan and Guatemala's timeless nature and history. In your room you'll be surrounded by flowing fabrics (the hallmark of Guatemalan artistry), hand-crafted ceramic tiles, and wooden furnishings. Private rooms are not available at the retreat center, but may be available in homes close by. Due to recent mud slides in the area (the retreat center was not touched), we do not yet know the damage to neighboring homes, so it may be a while before we know what options there are for a private room. Cafe Sumaya, the villa's restaurant, caters to vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike. The cuisine, created from Guatemala's cornucopia of fruit, vegetables, and fresh fish, meat, and poultry, is available three times a day. Baked goods are produced daily. ABOUT THE STAFF Patricia Lee Lewis lives and works at Patchwork Farm Retreat in western Massachusetts. She shares the world with trees and stones, chickadees, writers and bears, and leads weekend writing retreats and weekly workshops in her mountain cottage at Patchwork Farm, throughout the United States, and yoga and writing retreats at sacred sites around the world - Guatemala, Mexico, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Costa Rica. Patricia holds an MFA degree in Creative Writing from Vermont College, and completed her undergraduate degree at Smith College, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1970. She is affiliated with Amherst Writers & Artists, and leads national training workshops in the AWA method for workshop leaders on the east and west coasts. Patricia's poetry, fiction and feature articles have appeared in journals & anthologies, The Los Angeles Times, Hampshire Life, and The Boston Sunday Globe. Her poems have most recently appeared in The Berkshire Review, Vol. 11, and Crossing Paths: An Anthology of Poems by Women, Mad River Press. She was supported by a grant from the Chester Cultural Council under the auspices of the Massachusetts Cultural Council to perform her poems to a full house to benefit the Miniature Theatre of Chester. Her poem "Two Hundred Wings" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry, and her book of poems, A Kind of Yellow, won first prize in Writer's Digest's International Self-Published Book Competition in 2005. Copies of the book are available at the shop. Patricia has spent much of her life as an advocate: for women, for civil rights, for peace, for a healthy environment, for small farms and rural communities, for the arts. Born and raised in Texas, she moved north years ago with her children. She has been a business owner, tree farmer, director of several organizations, including women's centers, community economic development corporations, district congressional offices, and served as an elected county commissioner for four years. In 1985, when she joined Pat Schneider's Amherst Writers & Artists writing workshop, she finally found the courage to write for others to read Patricia is responsible for the writing program at all retreats and serves as retreat coordinator. Charles MacInerney is registered with the Yoga Alliance at the 500 hour level (the highest registration currently available), and is the co-founder and serves on the faculty of the Living Yoga Teacher Training Program. He is also the co-founder of Texas Yoga, and helps organize and presents at the Annual Texas Yoga Retreat. Charles is a guest writer for Yoga Journal's "Ask Our Expert" column, and has been interviewed for articles in Yoga Journal four times, on yoga retreats, creativity, heart disease, and Yoga for overweight students. One of Charles' essays (written on retreat with Patricia) appeared as the lead essay in a National Chess magazine in India. He has numerous essays published in regional publications through out the US, and on the internet. Charles MacInerney has studied Yoga and Meditation since 1971. He teaches classes on Yoga, Meditation, Posture, Visualization, Breathing, Balance, Creativity, Concentration and biofeedback for a variety of businesses, corporations and institutions. He has worked with over 12,000 students in Austin, where he lives. Charles has led over 50 retreats since 1992, including 15 international retreats. For more information please visit his web-sites at www.yogateacher.com and www.expandingparadigms.com. D M Gordon, Phi Beta Kappa, M.M. from Boston University, started the Writer-In-Residence at Forbes Library In Northampton MA, establishing and leading writing workshops and a weekly forum on contemporary poetry. Her prize winning poems and short stories have appeared in a variety of journals. Providing freelance editorial services for poetry and prose, she is also the senior poetry editor for Patchwork Journal. She has led workshops for Word Street, the Great River Arts Institute, and is currently on the faculty of Writers In Progress. She was recently chosen as a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Grant finalist. This is Diana's second year as part of the leadership team in our international retreats; she offers workshops on the craft of writing and works with individual writers on their manuscripts. Besides fully participating in the Guatemala retreat, DeAnn Duteil will lead exercises joining movement with writing. She will also assist Charles during the yoga sessions. After dancing professionally for 20 years, DeAnn trained as a yoga instructor at the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center. She has also studied massage therapy and energy work extensively. “Nourishment for body and soul is one way I like to describe my work,” she says. Now with 15 years experience teaching yogagiving energy work and massage, she finds they all connect with her heart’s desire to immerse herself and others in a playful and joyful exploration of what it is to be a spirit well grounded into a body. E-mail your registration inquiries Request Registration Form or call (413) 527-5819 back to top