5 DAY RETREAT
North Carolina, USA
Oct 30 - Nov 04, 2020
“The deepest form of rest brings the dissolution of the sense of separate self and reveals our true nature: pure, unadulterated peace.”
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Louise's invitation is an exploration of truth focused on self-enquiry and embodied awareness. This combination facilitates the awakening of higher consciousness, the clear seeing of unconscious beliefs and patterns, and the integration of emotional trauma.
As we gently bring our attention fully present into this moment and embrace all emotions and sensations in the body without any judgement or agenda, we open to healing and begin to integrate deep-seated emotional traumas. Sitting together in a field of presence, Louise invites you to open to the deepest truth of your Being, the pure stillness which lies beyond thought, emotion and experience. From this space of non-dual awareness all that wants to be explored is gently welcomed with unconditional love.
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Retreat
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This 5 day retreat is held at Butterfly Farm Sanctuary, a beautiful family run retreat center nestled between more than 4000 acres of state and national forest in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, just 35 minutes south-west of Asheville, North Carolina. The retreat setting will be intimate, with no more than 20 participants, and includes meetings and dialogues with Louise, silent sittings, guided meditations, meditation walks in nature and time for personal reflection.
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Program Fees
Early-Bird Fee
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Regular Fee
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** Prices do not include food or accommodation. Scroll down for info on accommodation. **
Cancellations
Non-refundable deposit on confirmation of booking.
Balance due 18th September 2020
75% of balance refundable if cancelled before 2nd October 2020
50% of balance refundable if cancelled before 16th October 2020
No refund if cancelled after the 16th October 2020
Non-refundable deposit on confirmation of booking.
Balance due 18th September 2020
75% of balance refundable if cancelled before 2nd October 2020
50% of balance refundable if cancelled before 16th October 2020
No refund if cancelled after the 16th October 2020
** If you feel strongly that you would like to attend this retreat but aren't able to meet the financial requirements, please send an e-mail to info@louisekay.net explaining your situation and we will do our best to find a solution to support you. **
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"I consider Louise to be a pure channel of unconditional love. Sitting with her allows you to bring up anything that appears in the moment, without needing to hold back. You are allowed to be totally vulnerable and open. Through her soft and kind guidance, from my perspective a beautiful “Yin” (feminine) approach, you discover the actual root of the disturbing patterns and thought processes that are preventing you from living a happy life. Healing in its truest form. Everyone should be able to experience this. Highly recommended!!"
Andrea, Spain
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Accommodation
Shared or private accommodation is offered at Lake Logan Resort, just one mile from Butterfly Farm Sanctuary Retreat Center. If you would prefer to find your own accommodation there are AirBnBs available in the surrounding areas.
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Shared room
Includes a bed in a shared bedroom, a shared full bath with that other person, access to a living area with a stone/gas fireplace, access to a kitchenette and a beautiful view of the lake. Total price for 5 nights Including 3 meals per day $664.85 |
Private room Including 3 meals per day
Includes private bedroom and private bath, access to a living area with a stone/gas fireplace, access to a kitchenette and a beautiful view of the lake. Total price for 5 nights Including 3 meals per day $859.25 |
For questions regarding accommodation e-mail Charlie at connect@butterflyfarm.us
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"I'm so blessed and grateful to have been able to spend time with you in Rishikesh and the world is blessed with what you are doing. I recommend anyone who wants to experience true happiness and freedom from what limits them to share a space with you. It's been one of the best times of my life!"
~ Louis, The UK |
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Schedule
Friday Oct 30
19:30 - doors open for silent sitting
20:00 - 21:30 - meeting
Saturday Oct 31 - Sunday Nov 01 - Monday Nov 02
10:00 - doors open for silent sitting
10:30 - 12:30 - meeting 1
12:30 - 14:00 - lunch break
14:00 - 15:30 - meeting 2
15:30 - 15:45 - tea break
15:45 - 17:00 - meeting 3
Tuesday Nov 03
10:00 - doors open for silent sitting
10:30 - 12:30 - meeting 1
12:30 - 14:00 - lunch break
14:00 - 15:30 - meeting 2
15:30 - 15:45 - tea break
15:45 - 17:00 - meeting 3
18:00 - Farewell group dinner at Lake Logan
Wednesday Nov 04
10:00 - doors open for silent sitting
10:30 - 12:30 - closing meeting and goodbyes
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"I just wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart. You helped me open my heart and release the old stale emotions blocking me from true joy and abundance, and I will forever be grateful. The most remarkable events have happened as a result and the new found stillness within - is just magical. I cannot thank you enough for helping me find a deeper peace within - you have a true gift for allowing others to release emotional blocks and open up to the divine and I am just so grateful. Thank you, thank you, thank you! And thanks again!! So Happy!!!"
~ Nadia, Australia |
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Allow your attention to very gently drop into the present moment. Notice the sounds, the sensations in the body, the silent, still background of your experience. Rest just for a moment as that which perceives and allow the senses to effortlessly perceive the environment. Don’t judge anything, don’t attach ideas or interpretations to anything. Simply perceive, as though this is the first moment of your life. See the magic and wonder of this moment through fresh, new eyes.
See through the eyes of truth
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As we open deeper and deeper to the stillness of this moment by abiding as the absolute, our system begins to rebalance itself. Contracted muscles and tensions in the physical body begin to relax and the illusion of the separate self begins to dissipate. Melting deeper into the field of oneness, we begin to consciously access the energetic body, where repressed emotions and traumas are held, and as we gently meet these blocked energies with unconditional love, healing takes place at our core.
How to Arrive
Location
88 Steel Bridge Rd, Canton, NC 28716
Charlie from Butterfly Farm is happy to answer any of your questions concerning transport, accommodation, rental cars, etc. Please call him at 828.648.0754.
If you are using GPS please put the entire address in, including zip code.
Arriving from Asheville Regional Airport
The nearest airport is Asheville Regional (AVL). It is approximately 50 minutes from Butterfly Farm Sanctuary. From the Asheville Airport go to traffic light at exit from airport onto Airport Road. Stay in the left lane and travel .7 mile to the first light and merge left onto 1-26W/US-74. Go 9.6 miles and take the left fork and merge onto I-40 W. Go 7.8 miles and take exit 37 toward E Canton. Go down the exit ramp to the stop sign and turn left on to Wiggins Rd. Go to the traffic light (one tenth of a mile) and turn right on to US-19S/US-23S.
Travel approx. 5.5 miles and turn left on to Sorrells St (Sign says 110). Go through traffic light and continue onto Pisgah Drive for .4 mile. Turn right onto NC-110 S/ Pisgah Dr. Go approximately 5.0 miles and you will come to a traffic light at the intersection of 110, 276 and Rt 215. Continue straight through the light onto Rt 215 Love Joy Rd. Continue on this road until it dead ends. Turn left and this will be the continuation of Rt 215 now named Lake Logan Road. Your cell phones will not work beyond this point, so if you feel confused about anything, please call Charlie.
Drive 6.3 miles and you will arrive at Lake Logan Retreat Center. If you are a guest there turn left into their drive and follow the road around until it ends. Turn left and drive up to the guest entrance. If you are continuing on to Butterfly Farm, drive 1.1 miles and you will come to an old steel truss bridge on your left. Turn left onto Steel Bridge Rd. Cross the bridge and drive straight up into the property. The house will be on the right. Welcome!
Arriving from Charlotte Airport
Charlotte, NC (CLT) usually offers the lowest airfares. However, it is 2.5 hours from Butterfly Farm. There is a shuttle you can take into Asheville (about $85 per person). We may be able to arrange to pick you up there and arrange rides with other participants. For more info call Charlie.
Arriving from Greenville Airport
The other airport is Greenville, SOUTH CAROLINA (GSP), not North Carolina. It Is about 1.5 hours from Butterfly Farm and also offers fairly low fares. There is a shuttle that runs from GSP to Asheville as well.
After registering for the retreat please stay in touch with us so that we can assist you and please inform us of your arrival times.
If you are driving, please contact Charlie and he will e-mail you directions.
CHARLIE'S CONTACT DETAILS
Phone: 828.648.0754
E-mail: connect@butterflyfarm.us
If you are using GPS please put the entire address in, including zip code.
Arriving from Asheville Regional Airport
The nearest airport is Asheville Regional (AVL). It is approximately 50 minutes from Butterfly Farm Sanctuary. From the Asheville Airport go to traffic light at exit from airport onto Airport Road. Stay in the left lane and travel .7 mile to the first light and merge left onto 1-26W/US-74. Go 9.6 miles and take the left fork and merge onto I-40 W. Go 7.8 miles and take exit 37 toward E Canton. Go down the exit ramp to the stop sign and turn left on to Wiggins Rd. Go to the traffic light (one tenth of a mile) and turn right on to US-19S/US-23S.
Travel approx. 5.5 miles and turn left on to Sorrells St (Sign says 110). Go through traffic light and continue onto Pisgah Drive for .4 mile. Turn right onto NC-110 S/ Pisgah Dr. Go approximately 5.0 miles and you will come to a traffic light at the intersection of 110, 276 and Rt 215. Continue straight through the light onto Rt 215 Love Joy Rd. Continue on this road until it dead ends. Turn left and this will be the continuation of Rt 215 now named Lake Logan Road. Your cell phones will not work beyond this point, so if you feel confused about anything, please call Charlie.
Drive 6.3 miles and you will arrive at Lake Logan Retreat Center. If you are a guest there turn left into their drive and follow the road around until it ends. Turn left and drive up to the guest entrance. If you are continuing on to Butterfly Farm, drive 1.1 miles and you will come to an old steel truss bridge on your left. Turn left onto Steel Bridge Rd. Cross the bridge and drive straight up into the property. The house will be on the right. Welcome!
Arriving from Charlotte Airport
Charlotte, NC (CLT) usually offers the lowest airfares. However, it is 2.5 hours from Butterfly Farm. There is a shuttle you can take into Asheville (about $85 per person). We may be able to arrange to pick you up there and arrange rides with other participants. For more info call Charlie.
Arriving from Greenville Airport
The other airport is Greenville, SOUTH CAROLINA (GSP), not North Carolina. It Is about 1.5 hours from Butterfly Farm and also offers fairly low fares. There is a shuttle that runs from GSP to Asheville as well.
After registering for the retreat please stay in touch with us so that we can assist you and please inform us of your arrival times.
If you are driving, please contact Charlie and he will e-mail you directions.
CHARLIE'S CONTACT DETAILS
Phone: 828.648.0754
E-mail: connect@butterflyfarm.us
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"What you seek is right here, right now, beyond thought, beyond emotion and beyond story. You already are that which you seek and with the openness and willingness to gently and honestly observe your behaviours, thoughts and emotions, everything that is not aligned with your highest truth will naturally fall away as you begin to embody and radiate your true self, pure awareness. I invite you to sit with me in pure presence as I support you to connect with the essence of your being which transcends all form, as we become still and deeply allow what is already here."
~ Louise |
Interview on The Moore Show
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Weekend Retreat Paris
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BIO
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Louise Kay was born in Lancashire in the north-west of The UK. After graduating from university she worked as an English teacher for 15 years, and during this time began to question the deeper meaning of life. This led her to the path of spirituality, where she found a strong resonance with the teachings of non-duality.
In her early thirties Louise felt a deep call in her heart to visit India, where she found what she had been looking for and experienced a profound spiritual awakening. Shortly afterwards, during a deep meditation, Louise was contacted by a non-physical intelligence and began channeling. She travelled around the world sharing this channeling gift for several years, and during this time experienced a deepening and integration of her initial spiritual awakening. As Louise opened more to this truth the channeling no longer felt relevant and a new form of expression revealed itself from deep in her heart. Louise now holds group events and retreats around the world and offers Embodied Awareness private sessions both in person and on Skype.
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Louise's passion is to sit together in presence and hold gentle, unconditionally loving space for all emotions, all sensations and all experiences which arise in the moment in order to support the integration of unresolved energies and allow the unfolding of the divine in all who feel the call.
Opening to Feeling
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Most of us as children experienced situations where we felt overwhelmed by our emotions. Maybe a parent yelled at us or hit us, projecting their own emotional traumas onto us. Maybe we met our parents with wide open hearts and they weren't able to meet us back in that love, leaving us feeling unloveable and unworthy. Maybe it was something seemingly small like another child not wanting to play with us. And our gentle hearts were so open. We were so sensitive, innocent, pure, and oh so sweet, and our tender little nervous systems didn't know how to handle these situations. |
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That little one wasn't taught how to be present with emotions, how to gently feel and allow the sensations in the body with unconditional love. In fact, most of us were taught that our emotions are bad and that there was something wrong with us for feeling what we were feeling, that our sensitivity was in fact a sign of weakness and that we should hide it and 'be strong.' And so feelings were repressed and emotional traumas were born.
Different nervous systems respond to these emotional traumas in different ways. Some shut down and became numb, some put up walls of protection around the heart and most develop coping mechanisms, behaviours which allow us to keep on surviving despite the agony that we feel inside, such as numbing our pain with food or other addictive substances and functioning in the world on top of repressed, unprocessed emotions.
When we mature on a spiritual level part of the awakening process that we go through involves meeting and integrating the emotional traumas from our past. We remember how to feel again in a healthy way and we learn how to hold gentle, unconditionally loving space for ourselves and our old pain. For many people it can be scary to open up to these feelings. "What if I open a can of worms and I can't handle it? What if it's too overwhelming? What if it's too painful? What if I open up and then lose my capacity to shut down again? I might have to live in a state of constant overwhelm! Then how will I function in my life?" These fears are a by-product of past emotional trauma. The nervous system remembers how challenging it was to feel overwhelming pain as a child and the mind produces thoughts to try to protect us from feeling that pain again.
In its own sweet way the mind simply wants to keep us safe and it believes that the most effective way to do this is to keep us in control of our experience. While this intention is benevolent, its interference (in the form of thoughts and unconscious beliefs) actually creates resistance to us feeling old energies and it sabotages our healing process by continuously pulling our attention out of our body and into the mind. However, once we understand how the mind's protection mechanism functions we are able to override it by disidentifying from our thoughts. By simply observing our thoughts and turning our attention to the space in which the thoughts arise, our consciousness expands and we are able to see a bigger and much clearer picture. It is from this space of clarity that we can begin to approach the repressed emotions and gently open to them on a physical and energetic level. We do this by becoming fully present and gently opening deeper and deeper to feeling and allowing the sensations in the body as we dive into the infinite void of peaceful, transcendant Being.
Like with everything, as we practice being present with our feelings and opening to them with love, our capacity to do so increases. We are able to stay present with larger and more intense waves of emotion. We don't try to avoid emotions, and nor do we get taken over by them. We surrender to the emotions and become one with them, and by doing so we walk through the gateway of truth, the gateway to our True self, the gateway to the infinite oneness, our true nature, pure awareness.
So don't aim to 'half-open' to feeling in order to stay safe. Dive in head first. Let your heart be smashed into a million pieces. Let it be ripped and torn and broken and shredded. Feel the rawness and the vulnerability. Surrender fully, meet everything with presence, and what you will discover is that you cannot be broken. What you will discover is that you cannot be hurt. What you will discover is the truth of who you are. Eternity itself.
Different nervous systems respond to these emotional traumas in different ways. Some shut down and became numb, some put up walls of protection around the heart and most develop coping mechanisms, behaviours which allow us to keep on surviving despite the agony that we feel inside, such as numbing our pain with food or other addictive substances and functioning in the world on top of repressed, unprocessed emotions.
When we mature on a spiritual level part of the awakening process that we go through involves meeting and integrating the emotional traumas from our past. We remember how to feel again in a healthy way and we learn how to hold gentle, unconditionally loving space for ourselves and our old pain. For many people it can be scary to open up to these feelings. "What if I open a can of worms and I can't handle it? What if it's too overwhelming? What if it's too painful? What if I open up and then lose my capacity to shut down again? I might have to live in a state of constant overwhelm! Then how will I function in my life?" These fears are a by-product of past emotional trauma. The nervous system remembers how challenging it was to feel overwhelming pain as a child and the mind produces thoughts to try to protect us from feeling that pain again.
In its own sweet way the mind simply wants to keep us safe and it believes that the most effective way to do this is to keep us in control of our experience. While this intention is benevolent, its interference (in the form of thoughts and unconscious beliefs) actually creates resistance to us feeling old energies and it sabotages our healing process by continuously pulling our attention out of our body and into the mind. However, once we understand how the mind's protection mechanism functions we are able to override it by disidentifying from our thoughts. By simply observing our thoughts and turning our attention to the space in which the thoughts arise, our consciousness expands and we are able to see a bigger and much clearer picture. It is from this space of clarity that we can begin to approach the repressed emotions and gently open to them on a physical and energetic level. We do this by becoming fully present and gently opening deeper and deeper to feeling and allowing the sensations in the body as we dive into the infinite void of peaceful, transcendant Being.
Like with everything, as we practice being present with our feelings and opening to them with love, our capacity to do so increases. We are able to stay present with larger and more intense waves of emotion. We don't try to avoid emotions, and nor do we get taken over by them. We surrender to the emotions and become one with them, and by doing so we walk through the gateway of truth, the gateway to our True self, the gateway to the infinite oneness, our true nature, pure awareness.
So don't aim to 'half-open' to feeling in order to stay safe. Dive in head first. Let your heart be smashed into a million pieces. Let it be ripped and torn and broken and shredded. Feel the rawness and the vulnerability. Surrender fully, meet everything with presence, and what you will discover is that you cannot be broken. What you will discover is that you cannot be hurt. What you will discover is the truth of who you are. Eternity itself.
Transcending the Mind
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The mind is in a hurry. It wants answers and it
wants them now. "When will such and such happen?" "When will I get
that?" For the mind the present moment is incomplete and unsatisfying
and it continuously and desperately seeks completeness. It believes that
completeness will come at some point in the future when a different
emotion is experienced, when certain information has been attained, when
a particular status has been reached or when material gain has been
achieved. "When will I feel differently?" "When will I finally be
happy?" "When will I know my purpose?" "When will I meet my life
partner?" The barrage of thoughts never ends and if one question is
answered, another appears. If one desire is fulfilled, another appears.
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The only way to end this vicious cycle of seeking
and to experience a true and lasting sense of completeness is to
transcend the mind by totally letting go of all thoughts and
surrendering fully into the present moment. Letting go of thoughts
doesn't mean that thoughts stop appearing. It means that they are
noticed but not believed in. They are observed but they are not given
any power and they are not identified with.
Transcendence of the mind cannot happen in the future. It can only happen in this moment, regardless of how this moment presents itself. Become still right now and notice how this moment feels. Simply perceive whatever is here without any judgement. Observe the thoughts, notice the breath and feel the body. Open to the completeness that is already here. Accept this moment fully, exactly as it is without trying to change anything about it. Maybe that means feeling sadness or heaviness or anger. That's ok. Feel deeper and deeper into the sensations in the body and gently welcome whatever is here. This moment is not a mistake. This moment is perfection. It is only the belief that this moment is flawed that prevents us from experiencing the perfection that is here. When we release ourselves from the grasp of that belief by recognising it, and we have the willingness to embrace our experience fully, we naturally open to the completeness that is already here.
Transcendence of the mind cannot happen in the future. It can only happen in this moment, regardless of how this moment presents itself. Become still right now and notice how this moment feels. Simply perceive whatever is here without any judgement. Observe the thoughts, notice the breath and feel the body. Open to the completeness that is already here. Accept this moment fully, exactly as it is without trying to change anything about it. Maybe that means feeling sadness or heaviness or anger. That's ok. Feel deeper and deeper into the sensations in the body and gently welcome whatever is here. This moment is not a mistake. This moment is perfection. It is only the belief that this moment is flawed that prevents us from experiencing the perfection that is here. When we release ourselves from the grasp of that belief by recognising it, and we have the willingness to embrace our experience fully, we naturally open to the completeness that is already here.