4 Day Wellness Retreat at Eros Monastery, Bay Area, Mendocino, CA

Retreat Highlights

• A day in the life of our retreat center guest looks something like this. You wake up in a traditional strawbale house with the sun coming over the hills. You can hear the chattering wild turkeys outside the window, and as you get ready and leave the house, a group of deer look at you with mild curiosity.
• You walk five minutes to the yoga studio and find an open mat. Your yoga class begins with sun salutations and ends with a long savasana. The group moves into meditation. Everything is so still and alive all at once. Once the meditation is over, you head to the lodge for breakfast.
• The kitchen had put out the apple pie from the night before and made it into a breakfast treat. It’s a nice touch. You look out through the lodge windows and see someone walking through the garden and recognize it as the person you cut herbs for dinner with the day before.
• After a while, the other guests arrive, and the guest director leads a warm meeting, sharing what’s happening that day on the property and asking how everybody is doing that day. This morning’s guest activity is planting seeds in the garden for an hour. It feels good to push your fingers into the cold soil. You return to your cabin and get some personal work done.
• Lunchtime rolls around, and your friend from the garden tells you about their morning. After lunch, everybody helps clean up, and you volunteer to fold some kitchen towels for your afternoon active service.
• Afterwards, you take a long walk in Hendy Woods, filling your lungs with the perfect air of the redwoods. You make sure to get back by 4 pm because there’s a talk being given in the barn that you don’t want to miss. After the talk, you lie down and have a quick nap before dinner.
• Dinner is simple, loving food. You grab a broom and sweep the lodge floor for your evening service. Darkness is falling over the Land, and you naturally start to wind down. You notice that even though you are feeling a little tired, your body feels warm and alive.
• For the third day in a row, you feel inspired to work on the book you wanted to write before bed. You aren’t totally sure how all this is happening, but the one thing you know is that when you leave, you are going to bring this feeling with you the best you can.

About this Retreat

Your Guides

Eli

Yia

Nancy

Aubrey

Rachel

Eli Block

Eli Block has been a lead meditation instructor for 15+ years. Born to a psychologist and a Zen Buddhist, he has been meditating since childhood. Eli is a deep lover of the feminine, and he’s passionate about realigning our understanding of gender, and our relationship with nature. Eli works with clients privately, coaching men, women, and couples on topics such as desire, intimacy, attraction, purpose & fulfillment.

Yia Vang

Yia has over 15 years of experience teaching thousands of individuals meditation and various aspects of feminine philosophy. She has a passion for exploring the intersection of intimacy, personal growth, and spiritual exploration. Yia is also a writer currently working on her first book, a unique blend of Hmong culture, food, her upbringing, and personal insights, with various lessons from the Eros Sutra laced within the narrative.

Nancy Coleman

Nancy is an accomplished expert in the realm of psychology and personal wellness. With a Master's Degree in Psychology, she's a Certified Master-level life coach focusing on addiction recovery, guiding clients to make beneficial health and life choices. For 35 years, Nancy has been a master-level pilates instructor and studio owner, emphasizing the bond between the brain, mind, and body. Through her sessions, she provides insights into releasing physical and emotional distress via easy-to-follow guidance and exercises. Her pilates lessons integrate the mind and body, utilizing apparatuses like the Reformer and Trapeze Table. Moreover, she offers Acupressure (Tui Na) Massage that unwinds the body, aligning it through hand manipulations and emphasizing head and neck release. Nancy's expertise extends to structural alignment and posture education, promoting functional movement and rehabilitation. For those grappling with persistent pain or stress, she customizes programs to facilitate relief, ensuring the mind and body experience enhanced breath, movement, and the release of longstanding restrictions.

Aubrey Fuller

Aubrey has been a meditation teacher for 13 years. She is skilled at taking people into their involuntarily (the place where we are who we are beyond facade and script) and is known for her keen intuition and care in working with people to reveal their true brilliance. Teaching people meditation roots her into a sense of purpose and a daily feeling of usefulness. In her work with clients, Aubrey uses the power of meditation to reveal the blueprint of who they are and what their unique, irreplaceable function is in the world. Once a shy introvert without much of a voice – her power a mere potential – she is now a bright, brilliant woman and representative of Eros in the world. Aubrey is certified as a Master Coach and meditation trainer and specializes in meditation training, the Art of Intimacy, and the Art of Connection.

Rachel Cherwitz

I’m a lover of all things wild. Wildlife, wild animals, the unhoused, the incarcerated, addicts, and women. I believe in rewilding humanity. At their essence, the sutras remind us who we are: intimate love. I believe that by turning toward the discarded parts of ourselves and asking “how can I love even this?,” we are bestowed with the greatest gift: loving the unlovable and turning poison into medicine.

Details of this retreat