A transformative week-long journey, blending The Work of Byron Katie with morning and evening Yoga.

Join Grace Bell, long-time facilitator of The Work, and Vincent Santos, yoga instructor, for a week in self-inquiry and physical nourishment at Mount Madonna in California.

Four questions. Your answers.

DECEMBER 6 - 13, 2024

Mount Madonna Retreat Center in Watsonville, California

Mount Madonna is a community deeply rooted in the Yoga tradition and dedicated to serving the world by holding space for personal transformation.

The Mount Madonna campus is situated within an inspirational and spacious mountaintop setting overlooking the Monterey Bay in California. The land and facilities offer a balance of well-appointed professionalism and simplicity, amidst a beautiful, rustic natural environment designed to distill and deepen personal and spiritual development.

Retreat registration includes tuition, your lodging choice, and all your meals and snacks.

Curious about lodging? Scroll to here.

Ready to book? Scroll to here.

Why attend The Work of Byron Katie + yoga retreat?

The primary task of a good transformational retreat, is not to answer your questions, but to question your answers

This practice known as The Work is a self-inquiry method helping individuals identify and question the thoughts that lead to stress and suffering. Through four simple yet profound questions, it guides you to challenge your beliefs and shift your perspective, leading to a deeper understanding of yourself and your reality.

This process fosters inner peace, clarity, and the ability to live with greater freedom and joy. Who are we, without our stories? What's that like? Together we get to explore this wonderful experience of being human, thinking, feeling. Just like we do as children putting on costumes, and taking them off. We'll study our patterns of thinking, and question the spots where they are painful. We'll have morning (before breakfast) and evening (after dinner) sessions in yoga to bring the practice of our work into the physical body.

Step outside of daily life, connect with others, and deeply listen to your inner conversation with reality. Situations, relationships, behaviors come into focus and clarity is found.

This retreat is right for you, if:

• You are a beginner to The Work and a beginner to questioning your stressful beliefs. You may be acquainted with the method called The Work of Byron Katie and self-inquiry around what you think, but have not actually practiced it yet or repeated the process enough times to receive the internal benefit. You're aware the way you see something troubling can make all the difference in the world....but you'd like to experience this fully, and understand the process from the neck down.
• You're familiar, even well-practiced in The Work, and you're aware every time you join in this practice with others, you learn, grow and expand your ability for insight, love, empowerment, kindness. You're ready for a new step in your awareness and joy (even awe) for being human.
• You're a service provider, coach, therapist, parent or healer who supports others, and you know you're capable of offering facilitation that changes lives, rather than see people remain embedded in their difficult stories. You'd like to refine your capacity to work with anyone, especially allowing your own well of unconditional wisdom to be present to others. You know one of the best ways you can bring presence to others, is to feel free within.
• You'd like simple nutritional support and ease (Mount Madonna provides a simple vegetarian fare). You seek change around a particular habit of thinking, a way of being, a compulsive behavior that's confusing, painful, and appears to extend your suffering. You have maybe even "tried everything" to stop the insanity. The Work helps us see the way the mind engulfs us at times, and to find freedom from getting caught in the struggle and to finally leave it all alone. Whether you've suffered from binge-eating or trouble with food and body weight, or, you're reaching for screens, alcohol, buying, trauma history, games, over-working, anxiety, wakefulness, depression....this retreat gives us a dopamine-detox, and nourishing meals to support us. The Work aligns beautifully with members of 12 Step Programs and can enhance your experience of recovery.
• You're seeking balance in the physical body, and peaceful structure for movement. We will have two yoga sessions to begin and end each day without words, but in the strengthening and deeply relaxing practice of yoga. All levels of yoga will be welcome from beginner to very experienced. Even if you've never done yoga before, you may find delight in the meditation and silent guided movement offered.
• You have a very painful situation or relationship that isn't going as you truly desire. You're frightened of the future, or very upset and disappointed about the way it went in the past. You may even have lost faith in life, or lost trust. This work helps those of us suffering from a dilemma or a problem to see the meaning we've gotten stuck in, and discover new ways of seeing that bring possibility, and peace, even if we can't change what happened.
• You're drawn to spend quality time in a small group, devoting yourself to recognizing the way through and beyond personal dilemmas. You've wanted to attend other in-depth programs (The School for The Work, 10 day Silent Meditation Retreats, Cleanse Retreats, Thought-Leaders' immersion programs) but they are significantly more expensive or scheduled at times you can't attend. You'd like to discover your own answers.
• You're seeking a reset button in your life on all the tasks, duties, work, obligations, calendar events, and you're ready for a clean-up. You want to unhook from the usual stream of technology, to disconnect from the pace of "incoming" doing, ingesting, busy-ing.
• You're deeply interested in the great existential questions of human life: Why am I here? Who am I? What does it all mean? What is going on? You're a student of life, but you know entering a monastery, becoming a priest or leaving everything behind isn't your path (at least not now). Still, you want to incorporate faith, love, spirituality, religion (for members of a faith community) more fully into your daily life, your daily activities, your ability to serve and to be in love with the world.

Welcome. This retreat is for you.

“I did The Work, because I was in a hurry.” ~ Byron Katie

By the end of our retreat together, you may find the following possibilities....