Journey Into Sacred Expression Women’s Retreat / Aimee Hansen

Breathe and relax into lakeside comfort as we gather for a magical and soulful week in the presence of majestic volcanoes. Join an intimate circle of women for a creative inner adventure through a self-exploratory writing journey with yoga, movement, and sacred ceremonies on the shores of stunning Lake Atitlan in Guatemala!

You are invited to take a brave and honest journey into your center to connect with your intuition and express from your core. To unravel the ways you have learned to limit or deny yourself. To trust, embrace and value your embodied presence and unique nature. To open to the mystery of your unique path beyond your vision.

We need the beauty of each being coming into harmony with who she truly is within. Within each of us is the call to open our hearts, step further into our courage, expand our self-acceptance and animate our own sacred expression.

Retreat Highlights

• Intimate Women’s Gathering: Only 12 spaces available.
• Inspiring lakefront location with expansive volcano views
• Daily guided meditation & yoga/movement practice
• Two intensive self-exploratory writing circles on most days
• Scenic lake-side thatch-roofed yoga temple & writing space
• 7 nights stay in shared or private accommodation
• 3 delicious organic vegetarian meals/day and juice bar
• Traditional Mayan Fire Gathering
• Sound Healing Night Ceremony
• Sacred Sweat Ceremony
• Candlelit writing Ceremonies
• Solar hot tub, on-site spa services, pool, sauna, jacuzzi
• Breaks for swimming, hiking, kayaking, SUP, therapies, relaxing
• Optional excursions (cultural, adventure)

This retreat in an open invitation for any woman who seeks an opportunity to connect and listen in. The women who find this circle often want to pause and reconnect with their center and hear their own voice, in a space that supports and facilitates this. In the circle, women often receive the clarity (and self-validation) of their inner knowing so they can move from the heart freely and with trust.

In this women’s retreat, you will:

• Gather with a powerful circle of women in rawness and vulnerability.
• Ground in your body and intuition through meditation, yoga and movement.
• Show up here and now, as you are, and present to whatever is real to you.
• Honor and be witnessed for your embodied experience as a woman.
• Immerse in a journey that is both individual and collective for the circle and all women.
• Reveal your truths moment to moment by connecting to your heart within.
• Embrace yourself in all of your contradictions and wholeness.
• Shed the stories you tell against yourself, in the many ways you may tell them.
• Reconnect with your essential self, your vivid energies, your soulful desires.
• Call back your inner voice to hear what sways your soul.
• Conspire with your unique presence, frequency and expression in this life.
• Reclaim your belonging to the greater mystery and beauty all around us – and open to listen to the divine call beyond or outside of your vision.
• Remember the magic that unfolds when women circle together with love.

Your Facilitator(s)

Aimee Hansen, creator of Storyteller Within Retreats, chases big questions with butterfly nets, only to set them free again. She’s always had an irresistible attraction to words and metaphors as a way of playing, provoking, revealing, exploring, understanding and connecting.

Her work explores the power of stories and invites a creative and playful adventure in the yoga of perception. She trusts in the mysterious sways of our hearts and the truth in our bodies, listening to what lights us up from within and moving, again and again, from this knowing.

She is inspired and humbled by witnessing how something raw and honest in the human spirit aches to open, given the invitation. She began Storyteller Within retreats to share in the experience of stepping into our courage and vastness as women. Aimee is based in Guatemala and has co-created and facilitated this retreat with 200+ women over the past ten years, across 25 different events in Guatemala. She has co-authored a guided retreat journal with Marianne Richmond to be published in August 2025.

Robin Kempe is a Guatemalan based esoteric conscious yoga teacher and soul sister who weaves seamlessly with Aimee. She combines her deep knowledge of transpersonal shamanic principles, anatomy and physiology, yoga philosophy, mindfulness and pranayama with dynamic hatha flow postures, intuitive energy healing, sound and the power of storytelling to ignite the fire within, open the heart and help us to return back home to wholeness, peace and love.

We will be bringing in curated movement & ceremony facilitators offering magical sessions to expand our journey together.

What women say

“My experience of this retreat was nothing short of magical. I shed toxic stories that held me captive for far too long. I rediscovered parts of myself that were buried somewhere within for indeterminate amounts of time, and even discovered aspects of myself that I never knew existed. I spoke truths that I previously never dared. I danced, stomped, howled at the moon, cried, felt alive in ways I didn’t know were possible, profoundly connected to myself and other beautiful women, and emerged with a light inside of myself that continues to shine brightly.” (Ellen)

“I feel I am not the same person I went into the experience as. All aspects of the retreat combined well to create a holistic journey that was transformative spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically. I felt a profound healing took place and a shift of consciousness in which I cannot view myself or life in the same way again. Overall I feel that this retreat gifted me many experiences that will remain in my heart for the rest of my life.” – Myshelle

“I’m a big skeptic – especially as I’ve done other retreat types, yoga teacher training and one week retreats. Aimee is one of a kind. She’s a walking, talking poet! A combination of fairy, wild woman, magician, mother, soul sister, who can see you and facilitate change gently. She’s genuine and engaged with us. She’s real – 100%. Words can’t describe this experience.” – Nisrine

Recommendations

The Sacred Expression Women’s Retreat has been recommended among ‘Incredible Writing Retreats to Attend’ by The Write Life. This women’s circle event was one of 17 “Inspired” global offerings featured in the Lonely Planet Wellness Escapes travel guide – for experiences that combine creativity, personal growth and culture.