Registration is open now for Fall Retreat to Sacred Waters with Erin and other fall events
Guest Blog Post:
I’m grateful for the wonderful community members who joined me on our recent retreat to Whidbey Island in June. We had a truly memorable experience, with lots of laughter, joy, stillness, tenderness, quiet, and beauty. Enjoy this guest post about the retreat experience from community member and writer Tamiko Nimura. Tamiko is a local writer and historian, and has recently published A Place for What We Lose: A Daughter’s Return to Tule Lake, (University of Washington Press, 2026) Look for a Source Yoga book club this fall – we will be reading this beautiful memoir together.
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Twenty-five minutes.
That’s how long it took for my mind to quiet during meditation on retreat. I’m not sure I’d ever experienced that kind of quiet before.
It only took twenty-five minutes of guided meditation in a beautiful quiet space. Plus my phone being tucked away in my room, my fellow retreat participants’ commitment to silence, my calendar cleared for the weekend, an hour and a half drive from Tacoma to Port Townsend, a fifteen-minute ferry ride to Whidbey Island, and yes, some financial commitment.
Being on retreat this summer at the Whidbey Institute with Erin was my first multi-day retreat, despite my long association (almost two decades) with the studio. I was thrilled to take the opportunity when Erin offered it. I had a tiny room (just big enough for my twin-sized bed and a little bedside table) in the Farmhouse, but it was my own room. I loved having this little attic space to myself, and when we had some free time on the second day of the retreat, I stayed nestled in my room, happily looking out at the meadows of the retreat center. A space where the robins sang all day. Where I could watch a hawk circle for minutes. Where I could eat outside and watch the trees after eating a delicious from-scratch breakfast. Where the bunnies would come and nibble on the kitchen herb garden in front of the yoga and meditation room. Where a rock-outlined labyrinth invited walkers to seek intentions and questions and deep answers.
With so many of my comforts taken care of, with such a gorgeous setting, it’s hard to envision why I would not find some peace. But of course, wherever you go, you take yourself with you—and in my case, that meant taking my whole little ball of anxious thoughts, bouncing around. Maybe sometimes you travel in order to retreat from your everyday life and concerns, and other times you travel and those concerns show up gently, reminding you that they still need to be addressed. That they do need to be moved through, but moved with.
But I got to experience a quiet mind, a rarity for me. It was as if my mind was looking around at itself, thinking, ohhhh. Is this what it looks like when we are present? No mind chatter, no to-do lists clicking away and multiplying. I often have a snippet of music playing repeatedly in my head, a sort of radio channel that I have to try really hard to turn off, and to my great surprise, that was gone too. Only recently have I realized that these lists, this music, is my anxiety trying to be helpful. When other retreat participants were vulnerable in sharing their concerns and even losses, that freed me to be more open to that little ball of anxiety, the one that I sometimes envision as Kermit the Frog, trying to manage the wacky Muppet show that is my mind most of the time.
And so that first morning meditation, I rolled out of bed and walked up the grassy hill to the meditation room. Found blankets and pillows to sit on, and some rest. Listened to Erin’s voice. Twenty-five minutes of watching my mind ride its waves, moving upward, downward, feeling the difficult feelings I didn’t really want to feel—some sadness, some grief—asking the hard questions I didn’t know I had come to ask. And only after twenty-five minutes of watching that, feeling that, did my mind sink below the surface of those turbulent waves, watching them from below.
I was in a beautiful room surrounded by worn-smooth wooden pillars and stone, looking up at a skylight.
Once I was there in that quiet, though, really there, I was shocked at how peaceful it was. It was as if I’d come upon a lush and quiet grove after wandering through acres of an unwelcoming forest filled with thorny bushes and potentially poisonous plants. A clearing.
It was a space that I can envision now when my online meditation classes talk about home, about a space of quiet that is always there. It was a feeling of, at last, being home in my mind.
The challenge, now, is to see if I can take some of that with me after the retreat, off the island, back with my devices and my Muppet show mind. I’ve had my yoga practice for almost two decades, though, so I’ve got some experience with a daily practice.
Learn more about Tamiko: https://www.tamikonimura.net
Join us for our other upcoming retreat opportunities:
The Wisdom of Rest: Fall Weekend Retreat to Sacred Waters Center (Union, WA) Oct 23-25
Finding Center: A Day of Balance and Ease – A One Day Retreat in Gig Harbor: Sept 12th
Also Upcoming At a Glance:
- Kirtan with Rob and Melissa – August 2nd, 6-8pm
- Community Care Yoga (5-6:15pm) and Community Care Mindfulness (6:30-7pm) 1st and 3rd Friday monthly: donation based community classes, Next classes August 7th
- Strong Core and More with Sandi Koch – 6 week series beginning September 8th
- Deep Dive: Understanding the 5 Koshas 6 week series with Jeni Martinez – Sundays, 3-3:30pm; beginning Oct 3rd.
