“The practice of meditation is an act of kindness for yourself and, ultimately, for others. And what else matters at a time like this than to be kind?
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Meditation + Sailing Day Workshops
The Ultimate In Fun and Effectiveness For Stress Reduction, Greater Focus, and Integrated Well-Being
If you think meditation is about struggling with your mind or white-knuckling your way through it until something “good” happens, you’ve been in the wrong practice. There are many paths to meditative bliss and experiencing the health benefits. Finding your personal pathway is the key to having a practice you love. We help you develop or expand your current practice so your daily experience feels natural, simple, and nurturing for you.
Our innovative Meditation + Sailing Day Workshops offer an array of practices and perspectives to help you start or deepen a meditative practice. You’ll start your retreat day with us on land in our nurturing Studio 23 with soul-nourishing conversations over coffee, tea, and pastries, setting the perfect tone for the rejuvenating and fun day ahead.
Once we’re fueled up, it’s time to ease into your meditation adventure. From mindfulness to mantras and everything in between, we present the many doorways to meditation. You will surely find yours that offers nurturing and progressively deepening experiences to minding your stress, honing your mental clarity, increasing discipline, deepening self-awareness and the long list of physical, emotional and cognitive benefits meditation offers.
No wrestling with your thoughts, struggling with sitting still, or battling with your inner critic. We’re here to make meditation a personally enriching habit so you can easily find your perfect flow state.
We believe in nurturing both body and soul. Following the morning session, indulge in a delectable lunch that tantalizes your taste buds and energizes your body.
Then, it’s off to the waters of the San Francisco Bay for a transformative afternoon sail aboard private 40′ sailing yachts. Experience eco-therapy at its finest as you connect with nature and embody mindfulness through the sailing. Whether taking the helm, lending a hand with the lines, or simply soaking up the sun, you will enter into a natural state of mindfulness and understand firsthand how it feels in your body.
After sailing, we return to the dock for our “wine-down” after-sail networking. Savor a selection of wines, non-alcoholic beverages, and small bites as we unwind and share our experiences, insights and some fun.
You’ll discover that meditation nourishes your mind and nervous system and offers an emotional tune-up and a new level of calm and attention to you and those you love. Our Meditation + Sailing Workshop is an experience from which you’ll emerge feeling more whole, authentic, and empowered to be your best self.
“Meditation is medicine to quiet the chaotic mind, and it allows us to listen to the wisdom of our souls.”
Dr. Romie
A Meditation + Sailing Day Workshop
Time: 10:30 am to 4:30 pm
Cost: $355/per person
($25 discount when purchasing two or more tickets)
Limited To 16 Adventurers
Departs Pt. Richmond
What Meditation Really Is
Meditation is the body’s innate healing-recovery process. It’s the bridge from the deep relaxation and healing of sleep to our ability to regulate the nervous system and bring states of calm during wakefulness and the stresses of daily activities.
Meditation is not about suppressing, pushing away, or struggling with emotions and thoughts. It’s not about holding yourself motionless and being in discomfort. It’s about welcoming all the sensations, feelings, and thoughts that arise in our mind and body without judging them or ourselves. It’s more natural than you realize for the body to seek relaxed states. We welcome, allow, and come to experience all of these sensations as our natural flow of emotions and thoughts, and by embracing them, they flow easily without resistance. We can find ourselves in elevated states even in the midst of the most challenging or uncomfortable thoughts or conditions.
Sailing on the ocean is much like the experience of meditation. The wind and waves are like the mind. They change quickly and can go from calm to stormy in seconds. On a boat, you learn to adjust the sails and orientation to the winds and waves to adjust to the changing conditions and maintain your safety and course. This is why meditation and sailing so complement each other, and we can have a perfect mind-body connection.
Our variety of practices help you learn to work with all the wild sensations, varied emotions, unidentified energies, and mental movies that accompany being an awake human being. Our choice as conscious beings is that we can either be held hostage by our unchecked thoughts, cascading emotions, and life stresses or learn to be with these states and gain mastery of how to navigate and be with them for a happier, healthier life, no matter what the weather of our conditions.
Why Sailing And Meditation?
The idea to offer mindfulness meditation and sailing retreats came from our long-standing practice of meditation and our love of boating. Being on the ocean on a boat is as close to a naturally induced meditative state as possible. Combining sailing with meditation seemed natural to us as they share profound and fundamental health-affirming similarities. Bodies of water naturally induce mild meditative states and raise our serotonin levels (and other feel-good hormones). This phenomenon is called blue mind theory, popularized by marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols. Sailing also has a unique ability to hold us in the present moment, so it helps with understanding and practicing mindfulness and embodying this practice.
There is no doubt about how impactful our thought habits are on the health of our bodies and our greater well-being. Our mind states, along with what we eat, our breathing, physical activity, and even our physical posture, can impact our mental states – both positively and negatively. Science has moved us away from old models of treating symptoms to a holistic approach to health and well-being with a greater emphasis on the mind’s impact on health and nature’s healing capacity. This complex interrelationship between our outer and inner world is termed the mind-body connection. An important connection our Sailing + Meditation retreats help regulate, improve, and expand.
Meditation has been around for thousands of years. Western science has been documenting and studying its effects, both psychological and physiological, since the 1950’s. There are lots of conclusive studies that document meditation’s impact on helping with issues of stress, job burnout, depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, pain management, and even managing diabetes. It’s credited with improving and increasing self-regulation, self-awareness (2 of the pillars of Emotional Intelligence), and overall well-being. It helps develop focus, emotional intelligence, freedom from excessive rumination and negative thinking, and greater self-control.
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor
The skills most necessary in today’s world are increased self-awareness, self-regulation, and reduction in thought processes that diminish our connection to others, our effectiveness, and our ability to be present in our life. Meditation and mindfulness practices help and are at the core about freedom from the tyranny of the mind, growing our abilities to cultivate deep restoration for the body, and touching deep awareness and intimacy with the self. Sailing is a blue-mind physical experience that revitalizes your mind and body and cultivates mindfulness. It brings you to the present moment immediately and naturally, so you can experience this emotionally and mentally.
This is not your ordinary day retreat; it’s a playful, serene, educational, nurturing, and a fun-filled day escape that’s perfect for anyone on a path to self-awareness and healthy living.
For anyone stressed out, overworked, and spending too much time indoors, we’re combining two potent tools to help you learn strategies to reduce your stress, become more in charge of your psychological well-being, and give you tools to use at home for daily renewal and freedom from the tyranny of the mind. The benefits of our day retreat are like taking a week’s vacation.
“Meditation is not a grim duty—it’s meant to be an act of care. We live in a culture that’s forgotten how we can take care of ourselves. One part of that care, even though at first it feels unfamiliar, is just to be quiet for a little bit and listen. Then, in the stillness, there are deeper things in us that we can know—intuitions and understandings that come and guide us to navigate our life from what really matters.” – Jack Kornfield
Who’s This For?
Anyone who wants to make a difference in the quality of their life, from improving focus to managing challenging emotions, from increasing your Emotional Intelligence to having deeper, more intimate connections with others. The world is evolving fast and the tools we need to grow emotionally and cognitively need to change as well. They also need to fit our lifestyle, our unique fingerprint and fit into our overloaded schedules. If you’re new to meditation, struggling to have a regular practice, or want to explore new pathways to meditation, join us.
If your take on meditation is, “I can’t meditate. My brain is too active!” or “I can’t sit still,” or if you’re a struggling meditator and need a practice that allows you more peace and success, join us and learn some techniques to ease you into a practice.
There are many paths of meditation and many techniques to a meditative state of well-being. Our focus and intention is to help you find one that resonates with your body and fits your needs and lifestyle. Meditation is a potent and life-changing practice that can have a long-lasting impact in only minutes a day.
The Benefits You’ll Receive
Our retreat combines the worlds of sailing and meditation which share many of the same healing qualities. While meditation is known to break the accumulation of stress and help to restore calm and inner peace, sailing and the water have their own unique healing qualities. These activities help reduce stress, increase calm, provide a lasting dose of serotonin and dopamine, provide a pathway to focus better, increase mental clarity, and reduce cognitive decline. In our one-day retreat, you will experience this powerful combination and leave with real tools to help you continue. All our sessions include breathwork so you can add this powerful tool to your healthful practices.
The process of sailing is about embodying the calming effects of being on the water and focusing on the external environment. It embodies mindfulness without effort. It’s about tuning our senses into nature and adjusting our sails as the wind changes, much like life.
You’ll end your day with us with a greater sense of tranquility and serenity, a deeper connection with nature, a boost of serotonin (the feel good hormone), new friends, and go home with tools to use in your daily life to have more good in your life.
The Details
Each workshop explores different styles and methods of meditation, from mindfulness, insight, and instinctive meditation practices to mantra-based practices that ease you into a meditative state, so there is no struggle with the mind and resistance from the body. We help you develop a practice that feels natural, simple, and effortless for you.
Meditation is a natural state of recovery for the body. We are often eased into meditative states by being present to nature or an intensely pleasurable experience. Ancient meditation practices (still alive today) accommodated practices for everyday people, those not leading a monastic or aesthetic lifestyle. We present the most modern-day approaches to timeless meditation practices that can accommodate your life. Our practices incorporate joy and fun along with the fundamental components for a meaningful practice that you can love.
The workshops are held at our Pt. Richmond workshop space, Studio 23. The hours are from 10:30 to 4:30.
This experience is about deepening awareness and the benefits of a meditative practice, connection, self-care and how to bring more happiness into your life no matter the outside circumstances of life. Please join us on this special adventure.
Our Meditation + Sail Workshop Includes
- Our connecting and enjoyable morning session discussing, exploring and practicing short meditations.
- A delectable catered lunch.
- An embodying and fun sailing experience aboard our comfortable private yachts.
- A valuable collection of practical tools to enrich your daily life.
- A decompressing and reconnecting experience for everyone.
- Vegan, vegetarian, and gluten free diets can be accommodated.
“There is no pushing away thoughts, or concentrating involved – and you don’t have to control the mind in any way. True meditation feels natural, simple and effortless because you never ‘try’ to meditate.”
Studio 23 is our event room, where we create the space for our meditation and other Sailing experiences.
Gift Certificate
Give the gift of peace and adventure when you gift our unique Meditation + Sailing Day Retreat. There is something for everyone in this day of learning, experiencing, and connecting.
