Finding Meaning, Reclaiming Life Story: A Journey through Time

A facilitated retreat open to individuals and professionals from all walks of life, participants will explore time as it flows through their lives through symbols and story. Pausing precious time, we validate the wisdom and resilience carried within.

Join us March 15 – 17, 2025

Our retreat is centered on creating a safe space to deepen personal reflections, a time to recapture the experience of being centered and grounded. A time to re-energize.

In this guided retreat, we will explore the power of stories in our lives. Through guided poetics, sand scenes, journaling, and drawing, the emerging stories give way to meaningful turns in one’s life path. It is a time to empower the wisdom of your intuitive, instinctual self, so essential in every aspect of daily life. It is a time to strengthen healing stories and reconnect with parts of you that may be lost in the rush of everyday stress. It is a time to pause for Being rather than Producing.

Our retreat is grounded with safe boundaries, paced to balance creative flow with reflection, nourishing meals with our small cohort group, breaks to walk the meditative grounds of Bon Secours, commune with nature, and laughter to balance solitude with community.

Graphic promoting the immersion track for the retreat

 

Time. Time to pause. A respite to focus on meaning, purpose, and new ways of being.

     We pause the rush of time, to reflect, to consider life’s meaning, to center, to ground.
     We pause to find joy despite pain.
     We pause time to honor the gifts of who we are, and who we can be.

In time, we seek hope, giving ourselves space to reclaim, repair, and enhance our flow of being, becoming, and belonging.

Registration Fee of $850 Includes:

Co-facilitated by:

  • Dr. Preston-Dillon, founder and director of the Center for Culture and Sandplay and co-founder of The Sand Therapy Training Institute.
  • Tim Mewmaw, MS, co-founder of The Sand Therapy Training Institute.

Accommodations and Amenities:

  • Hosted at the Bon Secours Conference & Retreat Center in Marriotsville, Maryland.
  • Each participant will have a private single room with a queen-sized bed, a full, private bathroom, desk, and chairs, cable Internet, and Wi-Fi access.
  • Meals are served daily in communal dining rooms. Light refreshments are available throughout the day in hospitality lounges which also have refrigerators.
  • There is a quiet chapel for private prayer/reflection, a beautiful landscape with a footbridge that crosses a pond, a peace garden, a labyrinth, and comfortable benches for your rest and quiet reflection.

Agenda:

The retreat runs from 10:00 am on Saturday, March 15, to 2:30 pm on Monday, March 17, 2025. Room check-in with Bon Secours is at 4:00 pm. Please place luggage in the luggage closets until 4:00 pm. A CE track is available at this retreat. Learn more about earning CEs at the retreat.

Saturday 

  • 10:00 to Noon 
    • Introductions, participant goals – The two-symbol exercise to ground retreat process
    • A poetic invitation on our theme, The Metaphor and Poetics of Time by Dr. Dee
    • Beginnings and Endings: Time flow, stopping time, pausing time, capturing time, stillness in time, deepening experience in time, waiting in time, stepping into time/ stepping outside of time, developmental time, partnering with time, agreements with time.
  • Noon to 1:00 pm
    • Lunch
  • 1:00 to 1:30 pm
    • Private time, walk, stretch, journal, reflect, meditate
  • 1:30 to 3:00 pm
    • Mindful Existential Time
      • Create a personal sand scene reflecting your experience of time
      • Movement through time in your sand scene
      • Individual reflections from Tim and Dr. Dee
  • 3:00 – 3:30
    • Circle Grounding the Flow of Time
  • 3:30 – 3:45
    • Pause
  • 3:45 – 5:45
    • Developmental Moments: Your Life Movie
      • Celebrating, Honoring Memory: Developmental moments in the sand
      • Individual reflections from Tim and Dr. Dee
  • 6:00 – 7:00
    • Dinner
  • 7:00 – 7:30
    • Private time, walk, stretch, journal, reflect, meditate
  • 7:30 – 9:00
    • Entering Dream Time

Sunday

  • 7:30 to 9:00 am
    • Breakfast
  • 9:00 to Noon
    • Activating Your Imagination
      • Voices in the Sand: Dialogues, I-Thou Conversations, Relationships
      • Individual reflections from Tim and Dr. Dee
  • Noon to 1:00 pm
    • Lunch
  • 1:00 to 3:00 pm
    • Private time, walk, stretch, journal, reflect, meditate
  • 3:00 to 4:30 pm
    • The Companion: Connecting a Partner from the Sand Scene
      • The One, the Two and the Three – Strengths, Vulnerabilities
      • Relationships in Time with Deep Listening
      • Individual reflections from Tim and Dr. Dee
  • 4:30 to 5:30 pm
    • Collective Group Voices
  • 6:00 to 7:00
    • Dinner
  • 7:00 to 7:30 pm
    • Private time, walk, stretch, journal, reflect, meditate 7:00 to 7:30 pm
  • 7:30 to 9:00 pm
    • Healing wounds of time, reclaiming time
      • Private Reflections and validations in small groups with Tim and Dr. Dee

Monday

  • 7:30 to 9:00 am
    • Breakfast
  • 9:00 to 9:30 am
    • Private time, walk, stretch, journal, reflect, meditate
  • 9:30 to 11:30 am
    • Transformation of life through time and final transformations in sand scenes
  • Noon to 1:00 pm
    • Lunch
  • 1:00 to 2:30 pm
    • Closure for individual sand scenes
    • Group closure

 

Payment Options:

Partial payment options are available upon request. Please email us at admin@sandtherapytraining.com for details and to make arrangements.

Cancellation Policy:

Cancellations must be requested in writing by emailing us at admin@sandtherapytraining.com

For a full refund, written cancellation needs to be received 30 days prior to the event. Cancellations received between 15-30 days prior are eligible for a 50% refund. Cancellations received fewer than 15 days prior are not eligible for a refund.