Event Description

Paddling is a wild environment that brings us face to face with what really matters in this world. The Healing Retreat provides space for people to reflect as we paddle through one of the worlds most compelling places.

While we kayak we will deepen our relationship with our selves, each other and nature. We will engage in powerful rejuvenating, heart opening, healing practices that will focus on what really matters most in our lives. We expect you will leave the retreat feeling rested, rejuvenated, and renewed and ready to dive into what is most important to you in your life.

Led by Diana Fried, Director of Acupuncturists Without Borders, heart-opening healing practices will include:
• Five element qigong (Chinese Medicine meditative movement) focused on the elements of nature and our connection to them
• Meditation on the beach including guided meditation practices from Chinese medicine
• Council practice (an amazing storytelling practice that can be used for healing self and all relationships in one’s life, including for families, groups and professional practices) you will find this extremely valuable in so many settings.
• Group acupuncture treatment for healing
No previous experience with any of these practices is necessary.

This 6-day, self-supported kayak camping trip takes place in the Loreto National Marine Park. We camp on Carmen and Danzante Islands. We play. We eat well and enjoy the scenery. Despite slowing down to take in the experience, time seems to fly by between kayaking, walking, snorkeling, relaxing, stargazing, and chatting, and sometimes singing.

Wildlife is part of the Baja mystique, including dolphins, sea lions, whales, magnificent frigatebirds, brown pelicans, blue-footed boobies, and tropical fish such as the king angel. Sea birds live side by side with desert birds like canyon wrens, hummingbirds, warblers, and even cardinals. Plants also offer a rich variety in this lush part of the Sonoran Desert, from the passion flower to the cholla.

Tap into the natural spirituality and awe that is inherent in any extended, focused time in nature. Evolutionary biologist, Edward O. Wilson says, For the Naturalist, every entrance into a wild environment rekindles an excitement that is childlike in spontaneity [and] often tinged with apprehension. He continues, saying that such experience reminds us of the way life ought to be lived all the time.

Take home with you not only the memory of an amazing vacation, but an inspiration for life.

Diana Fried is the founder and Executive Director of Acupuncturists Without Borders (AWB), which she launched in 2005. She has worked in disasters and underserved communities doing community acupuncture healing in Louisiana, Haiti, Nepal, Mongolia, Ecuador, and Mexico and has supervised disaster relief work in other locations worldwide. Diana developed AWB’s Healing Community Trauma training program which has now provided training for over a thousand acupuncturists in the United States in how to do mobile community service field work with acupuncture. Diana envisioned and fostered AWB’s Military Stress Recovery Project (MSRP) to help heal the wounds of war and heal intergenerational trauma, establishing free community clinics around the U.S. to serve active duty military, veterans and their families. This program has actualized into close to 30 affiliated MSRP clinics nationally, providing many thousands of treatments to active military and veterans each year and is now expanding to serve other populations in need of services.

Diana Fried has many years of experience and training in emotional/trauma healing work, along with years of work in international grassroots community development (Oxfam America, Grassroots International), including travel and work in Mexico, Central America, Asia, and Africa. She graduated from the Academy for Five Element Acupuncture with an M.Ac. (1999), is a certified Acupuncture Detoxification Specialist trained by the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA), and a certified Qigong Instructor. She was on the staff of Spring Hill in Massachusetts where she co-facilitated “Opening the Heart” workshops, and is trained in Critical Incident Stress Management, Plant Spirit Medicine, and Acutonics. . Diana is a graduate of Upaya Zen Center Buddhist Chaplaincy program about engaged activism around the world. She is also a video producer, writer, and meditation practitioner, and has worked as a media consultant.

10 PDA/CEUs are available for this trip upon request from AWB at $250