Journey Into Sacred Expression Women’s Retreat / Aimee Hansen

Rise from within and together with this Lonely Planet recommended women’s writing retreat in a luxurious space on Lake Atitlan. Breathe and relax into lakeside comfort as we gather for a magical and soulful week beneath the watch of volcanoes.

Join a very intimate sacred circle of women in the spirit of reclamation for a creative inner adventure through meditation, yoga, movement, magical ceremonies and self-exploratory writing.

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 truly value your raw embodied presence and your truest soulful desires. 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.

• 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
• 9 nights stay in shared or private accommodation
• 3 delicious organic vegetarian meals/day and juice bar
• 4+ sacred healing ceremonies (eg. Mayan Fire Ceremony, Sound Healing, Movement, Sauna Ceremony)
• Solar hot tub, on-site spa services, pool, sauna, jacuzzi
• Breaks for swimming, hiking, kayaking, SUP, therapies, relaxing
• Optional excursions (village tour, outdoor adventure)

journey into sacred expression

Set out on a transformative creative and powerful journey through daily meditation, yoga, movement and self-exploratory writing as a channel to reveal insight from within. Participate in diverse healing ceremonies that awaken your feminine energies and stoke your soul connection.

Breathe, stretch, relax, and align with your center while sharing in this experience with other women. This retreat is not about ‘writing’ as a subject or art form. Writing serves as a channel to allow vulnerability, reveal insight and enchant new possibilities. Every woman has a voice in her own life that calls her – we are gathering together to raise it up, embrace our wholeness and allow our self-expression. When we stop chasing our worth, allow our essence and share our gifts from inspired action, we are invited into a great adventure in life.

Infused by the four shamanic directions and rising the feminine, we embark on a revealing week of re-igniting the voices of our hearts and empowering ourselves as the fluid storytellers of our lives.

In this women’s retreat, you will:

• Gather with a powerful circle of women in rawness, vulnerability and expression.
• Ground in your body and intuition through meditation, yoga and movement.
• Show up in this here and now, present to whatever is real to you, as you are.
• Honor and be witnessed for your embodied experience as a woman.
• Immerse in a journey that is both individual and collective to you and to the circle and to women.
• Reveal your truths moment to moment by connecting to your own inner voice.
• Embrace yourself in all of your contradictions and wholeness.
• Loosen the stories you tell against allowing yourself and your expression, in the many ways we tell them.
• Reconnect with your essential self, your vivid energies, your heart-led and soul-seeded desires – all that conspires for your expression.
• Call back your inner voice to hear what sways your soul.
• Reclaim your connection and belonging to the greater mystery and beauty all around us.
• Remember the magic that unfolds when women circle together with love and compassion at our core.

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 exploring our humanity and stepping into our courage and vastness as women. Aimee is based in Guatemala and has co-created and facilitated this retreat with over 200 women since 2015, across 24 different events in Guatemala.

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 also bring in curated movement & ceremony facilitators offering magical sessions to expand our journey together.

what women say about it

“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. But be careful. This is not a retreat to be entered into lightly. Because it will rock your world!” – Nisrine

“”The retreat was awesome. I was looking for a conduit to heal after a long, draining experience. The retreat combined with an amazing facilitator helped me find my way back to life and me again. I can be loving, compassionate and curious again without fear of pain or heartbreak. The experience regenerated my soul, enabling me to once again, lead with my heart.” – Lynn

praise & recommendations

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