Wild Heart Writing Retreat
with Mirabai Starr
Offer the lead of your story to the flames of creativity.
Santa Fe, NM
August 31-September 4, 2023
"When we offer the lead of our stories to the flames of creativity, alchemy happens, gold unfolds, our hearts are transformed and in turn our writing transforms the world."
Mirabai Starr
You are invited to the high desert of magical New Mexico for our first annual Wild Heart Writing Retreat.
August 31-September 4, 2023
Find the freedom to speak your deepest truths
Join us for an intimate gathering in the magical high desert of New Mexico with five days of writing, practice, time in nature, delicious food and community connection.
Are you longing for creative tender space to write your story?
Would you like to generate a large quantity of writing over a short period?
Does the company of other people experiencing loss feel like refuge?
Is your wild heart ready to be revealed and witnessed?
Do you feel drawn to the magic of the high desert of New Mexico?
Yes!
"Writing as a spiritual practice honors our stories as holy and mysterious; sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrible. It is in the telling that they open us to a vast new inner landscape."
Mirabai Starr
What to expect during the retreat...
Join us for five days of guided writing exercises, deep dialog, and practice immersed in nature.
A small, intimate group experience including...
Writing
Each day we will dive into guided writing exercises and deep dialog with teachings from Mirabai about writing as a spiritual practice.
Dialogue
You will be able to share your work in small circles of soul companions and bear witness to the sacred creation of others.
Community
Take refuge in the company of other people experiencing loss and on a path of radical transformation.
Chanting
Steep in sacred song with guided chants from Willow. These will weave naturally into our practice of expression with an invitation to inhabit your beautiful voice as a prayer, exactly as it is.
Movement
Each morning we will practice Body Temple yoga and dance with Adriana, accessible to all bodies and abilities, as a way to set our bodies free and allow our creativity to move through us.
Meditation
Grant access to your inner landscape with contemplative and embodied meditation practices.
Ready to astonish yourself and nourish the world with your words?
We welcome you to five days of connection as Mirabai shares teachings on writing as a spiritual practice and offers a series of guided exercises to help you access your authentic voice and tell the truths you may not have even realized have ripened inside you. You will be able to share your work in small circles of soul companions and bear witness to the beauty and bravery of others who are navigating the terrain of the wild heart.
Meet Mirabai
Mirabai Starr is an award-winning author of creative non-fiction and contemporary translations of sacred literature. She taught Philosophy and World Religions at the University of New Mexico-Taos for 20 years and now teaches and speaks internationally on contemplative practice and inter-spiritual dialog. A certified bereavement counselor, Mirabai helps mourners harness the transformational power of loss. Her latest book, WILD MERCY: Living the Fierce & Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics, was named one of the “Best Books of 2019”. She lives with her extended family in the mountains of northern New Mexico.
See what people are saying about retreats with Mirabai...
"Mirabai invites us into a sacred encounter with the Divine while giving permission to trust our own hearts to lead the way. She is firmly rooted in her own inquiry and understanding of the mystical so you feel safe to unravel what you thought you knew to discover what is coming alive in you, to leap into insight, and to have an embodied experience that is both intimate and communal."
-Wendy Brown-Báez, author of Heart on the Page and Ceremonies of the Spirit
Our Retreat Team
Sacred Song with Willow Brook
Willow will weave chanting and song from a multitude of sacred traditions into our retreat, offering a space of profound beauty. An earth loving educator, seeker, artist and friend on fire for love, truth and embodied liberation, Willow is the co-founder of Wild Heart and has led retreats with Mirabai since 2021. With a lifetime of experience on an interspiritual path and a decade of experience teaching in classrooms across the world, Willow brings devotional song and prayer into everything she does.
"Willow is indeed a tree of strength and grace. She has a way of creating order without hindering flow and spontaneity. She was a leader, and she was also a sister, allowing herself to see and be seen. Most of all, as I watched her beaming face leading us in song, unselfconscious and full of love, my own childlike joy in music-making was given back to me."
Christa W
Body Temple Movement with Adriana Rizzolo
Adriana will share her Body Temple Dance practices to help us integrate and celebrate. She will hold space for somatic healing, body tending and awakening our creativity. She has experience working with transforming trauma into purpose and has a strong space for both deep rest as well as energy activation. Through mantra, breath, movement and exploring the imagination, together we will deepen in soul love while embodying our humanness more fully. Adriana guides others in taking their role as leaders in the feminine healing arts, in which Mirabai has been a massive inspiration and teacher.
"No matter what your age, or if you have never danced in your life, Adriana's Body Temple Dance opened my body to a new way of loving. In one dance I began to open to my wisdom, my Crone, and my connection to Mother Earth. I felt FREE. I had come home to the joy of the wild ride to life."
Karin G
Access your authentic voice
"My writing became yet more honest and more concerned with the wellbeing of the collective, and I began to choose projects in alignment with where I am now. There is an inner voice that has my attention and allegiance now. Mirabai’s stories of the great mystic women awakened that spirit within me."
-Christa W
"Mirabai's prompt to write about our spiritual life shifted my focus from writing about the things I need to take care of, to let go of, or to change, to writing about my desire for the end of suffering and how that has infused my longing for the Divine. I call it spinning straw into gold, and it was exhilarating and freeing."
-Wendy Brown-Báez
"Mirabai speaks from the heart and exceeded all my expectations. The retreat was wildly powerful but at the same grounding. I am totally transformed.
-Geraldine C
Emerge with a revitalized connection to the core of your experience, and a fearless voice to tell about it.
By the end of our retreat, together we will have...
Created a body of writing you can shape into a finished piece
Generated a list of evocative prompts to be able to continue writing
Forged bonds of community connection
Laid down the burden of concealing and containing your real feelings
Learned songs, chants, meditations and body practices to integrate your life experience
Join Us
Where we will be...
We will gather at Synergia Ranch outside of Santa Fe, NM surrounded by high desert mountains. The ranch has exquisite fruit trees and we will do much of our practices enjoying the beauty of nature.
Write your Story of TransformationĀ with MirabaiĀ
Our retreat has filled!
"For women mystics, contemplative life is not so much a matter of transcending the illusions of mundane existence or attaining states of perfect equanimity as it is about becoming as fully present as possible to the realities of the human experience."
-Wild Mercy by Mirabai Starr
