In 2010 Kalani Oceanside Retreat hosted the Gathering and the following centers were represented:
Kalani Oceanside Retreat
The Haven
Kahua Institute
Harbin Hot Springs
Brietenbush Hot Springs
Queenswood
Pelelani Center
Dragon Fly Ridge
Open Center
www.hawaiiansanctuary.com/retreats.html
Ala Kukui/Hana Retreat
The North American holistic centers began to meet on a regular basis in the mid-80’s. At that time the group consisted of the New York Open Center, Interface (Boston/Cambridge), Omega, Esalen and Wainwright House (Rye, NY). Within a year or two Hollyhock had joined the meeting. We met on average twice a year through the second half of the 80’s moving from center to center in an informal rotation.
Each center was represented by, on average, two people, who often had responsibility in the creative programming area on the one hand and the administrative/management domain on the other. The frequency and regularity with which we met was testimony to the fact that most participants felt this gathering was of real value.
What benefits did we derive from it? [Read more…]
The Centers Gathering 2006
The Haven Institute, Gabriola Island, B.C., Canada
During the introductory session of the 2006 Gathering, the participants expressed they would like to explore these overall themes:
Participants created the following list of what they wanted to accomplish during the Gathering:
By Margaret Critchlow, Ph.D.
28 April 2008, written for submission to Alternatives
Have you taken a workshop at a holistic center? There are many advertised in this magazine, ranging from yoga teacher training to How to Sing in the Shower. Have you spent quiet time at a center on a personal retreat or a holiday? Perhaps you’ve been to Breitenbush Hot Springs here in Oregon or to one of the fourteen centers represented at the Holistic Centers Gathering, held at Breitenbush, April 20-24, 2008?
Even if you haven’t visited a holistic center are you curious about what goes on at these places? Do you wonder whether the people in charge “walk their talk”? I did, and that’s what led me to begin an anthropological research project on the cultures of holistic centers.
By Margaret Critchlow
The news that Queenswood Retreat Centre in Victoria, Canada is closing after forty years (Monday Magazine, June 18, 2010) comes at a time when retreat centres matter more than ever. Why? As an anthropologist studying the culture of retreat centres for the past five years I have been asking: What is the value of holistic centres as the second decade of the twenty-first century begins?
In my research, I have visited nine centres, mainly on the west coast of North America and attended three Holistic Centre Gatherings, annual conferences for owners, managers, and staff. Some centres are religious, many are not, but all participate in a global, holistic movement, seeing all beings, the planet, and universal energy as interconnected and interdependent. (Holism, a concept also important to anthropology, is the idea that any system is greater than the sum of its parts and that the parts make sense only in terms of the whole.)
In the best anthropological tradition I have participated in the culture of these centres, taking workshops, talking with several hundred people, and learning the local “language.” I’ve done a lot of what we anthropologists call “deep hanging out:” overlooking the ocean from a hot tub, chatting with guests under shady trees, sitting in meetings and in meditation with staff. This has been some of the most enjoyable and deeply rewarding fieldwork of my career. And, I suggest, it is has profound significance for understanding the human condition.
That significance comes down to one simple question: What is the value of being there? This is not to question the value of being here. The power, indeed the necessity, of being fully present in the here and now is indisputable. The precious, impermanent beauty of the present moment is all we humans have. But what I have touched is the power of retreat centres to disturb the comfortable “here” of day-to-day life. Centres create a “there” in which to be fully present and from which to envision and ground that most precious and elusive goal, a positive future.
Kalani Oceanside Retreat
2009 Gathering - Mount Madonna
2008 Gathering - Breitenbush Hot Springs
2006 Gathering - The Haven
The 2010 Gathering, hosted by Kalani Oceanside Retreat, included the following topics, these were chosen by the participants at the start of the week;