first annual WORK PARTNERS' RETREAT
A RESIDENTIAL WEEKEND FOR FOCUSING WORK PARTNERS
FROM 13 - 15 MAY, 2001

with Kye Nelson


January 5, 2001

 

Hello,

Late this spring (after the taxes are done), from May 11-13 there will be a Work Partners' Retreat. This retreat is for anyone with a project dear to your heart: something you've been wanting to do... something you would like to get into the world... something that matters (maybe matters a lot), but that seems to get lost in the busyness of daily life... something that could use some set-aside time and the support of a Focusing work partner.

Perhaps it's time to begin writing that article... that story... that book... to start working on your dissertation again... to explore that new edge in your painting... to experiment with ..... to lay out .....

The retreat will be at Stony Point Retreat Center in the New York area, and will take place under the auspices of the Focusing Institute. We will arrive Friday night, and leave mid- to late- afternoon on Sunday.

It will be a little like an artist's or writer's retreat--you'll be away from the responsibilities of your daily life (no cooking, no cleaning, no kids, no anwering the phone, no email)--with lots of time to work on your project. It will be a time and a place where each person can become energized for their project from within, not pushed by some outside agenda.

There will be time to work by yourself, and time with your work partner. There will also be time together as a group, as well as any level of support you might need at any time. Often in daily life, interactions with other people can be distracting--but a lack of personal interaction can be depleting. We will aim for a middle way, where our interactions are feeding the work we care about, not distracting from it.

If you have a work partner or someone you would like to partner with, the two of you can attend together. If you don't already have a work partner you can experience what it's like, and learn some tools for cultivating a partnership. If you hit a stuck place, you can get skilled help getting unstuck. Or, you can be completely independent. On Sunday when you leave, you will have begun to get some momentum with your project.

But that's not all. I would like to make this an annual event that you can come back to again and again. Since the content will always be your content, it will always be as new as your newest project. But the people who come will become familiar faces over time--people you look forward to seeing again, sharing a cup of coffee, catching up.

This is not a workshop--not a teaching venue where I provide content and you are there to learn it--but a new and different kind of event where my job (and your partner's) is simply and only to support you in your own working. In the fertile ground of our group time we will also support one another by sharing what is coming alive and what is working, and sometimes we will help each other as we look for the stuck places and find ways through these obstacles.

Because this is not a workshop, but is a new kind of event, I would like your input to help me shape it. I would like the Work Partners' Retreat to be just the way that you would like it to be. I would like it to become, over time, a treasured part of our Focusing tradition. But I cannot make it that--my job is simply to make a supporting structure so that you who come can create the thing itself. If you think I've got this structure partly right in my description above, and it only needs ..... to be just right, I invite you to become part of the process of creating this structure, by letting me know what may have come to you in the ..... in the previous sentence.

The retreat will cost $375 including room and board. To register or ask for further details about time, place, travel arrangements, etc. please contact Melinda at the Focusing Institute: 845/362-5222.

Warm regards and thanks,

Kye Nelson


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