“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” — Anais Nin

Come on an adventure with Felicity, Daria and Sommer at Present Moment in Troncones, Mexico. This dynamic trio of beautiful, passionate yoga teachers, each with different backgrounds, experiences and energy. They will take you on a yoga journey of spiritual connection, physical expression and body movement. Their collective energy is complementary but connected around a shared passion and gratitude for a practice that unites them all: yoga. 

Recharge, reenergize and find joy on this seven-day journey. Take this time to reconnect with yourself and others in beautiful beachfront surroundings. Wake up and begin each day with meditation and yoga on a beautiful open air platform just steps away from the blue, warm waters of the Mexican Riviera. 

Nourish your body with amazing locally sourced meals, play and move freely, and soak up the magic of this little surf community and its surroundings. Troncones is a hidden gem that inspires and brings together people from all over the world and all walks of life. It’s a place to tap into your inner joy and magic while sharing the experience with others and having fun the entire time. This experience is for everyone no matter where you are on your yoga journey, even if it’s just beginning. Let’s go!

Register

To register email: felicityjodell@gmail.com

Payments accepted through Venmo and Paypal

Retreat Facilitators:

Felicity Odell, Daria Gershman & Sommer Leitz

We’re all in different stages of our lives and focus on different areas. But as a trio we’re a blend of human connection, spiritual progress and genuine joy and gratitude for yoga.

Felicity Odell is a yoga teacher from the San Francisco Bay Area.

I’m just a woman on a life-long journey to find purpose &  joy. I’ve lived a life. I’m a wife, mother of three and consummate seeker. I’m drawn to new experiences, places and people. My life is filled with friends I’ve known for 40 years and 4 days. I’m driven by curiosity: What makes a person tick? Why does Troncones feel like home to me? Why can’t I find the energy to get out of bed today? 

My journey with Yoga began in my twenties but was activated deeply in my 40s. I was called to teach and, in my exploration, found an endless pool of discovery bound by a practice called yoga. I’m naturally a physical person. From my childhood as a swimmer and ice skater to later in life as a marathon runner and yoga nut. Physical activity isn’t a choice for me. It’s a must. 

I love the ocean. I need to be near water, which is what drew me to Kauai for 6 years and initially drew me to Troncones. In Troncones I found another home, a place with people, music, food and energy that can’t be captured in words. This is my first yoga retreat and I’m doing it with two other women who share my passion for life and love for yoga. 

Depression and anxiety have plagued me for many years and I’ve learned to manage it through yoga and movement. When I discovered Vinyasa Yoga combined with a heated room I found something I couldn’t deny, like discovering water for the first time. Vinyasa gives me what I need physically but more importantly, quiets my mind, relieves my anxiety and connects me with a force and feeling outside of myself, but emanates from within. 

I began my yoga teaching journey with a 200-hour training through Corepower yoga which focuses on Baron Baptiste’s method. I love to teach. I love the feeling in the room, the connectedness of the class, and the diversity of people, all sharing a common desire to learn and grow. I see clearly the benefits teaching brings to my students and to myself. It’s like sharing my heart with their heart and vice-versa and it gives me tremendous reward. In addition to my regular teaching, I’ve taken yoga sculpt training, an assist workshop, and Prison Yoga Project training, which focuses on trauma-informed, mindfulness-based yoga and brings yoga to incarcerated people around the world. I’ve done additional workshops and classes with world-renowned yogis like Seane Corn, MC Yogi, Janet Stone, Chelsey Korus, Shiva Rea, and more through the Wanderlust Yoga Festivals.  Recently, I intuitively found my yoga mentor Amelia Andaleon through Just Be Yoga in Walnut Creek, California. 

I am so excited to share my love for Troncones and Present Moment. I have experienced the joy of teaching yoga as a guest instructor in 2019 at this magical place. I cannot wait to share it with you.

Daria Gershman is a yoga/dance teacher and health/wellness coach from the San Francisco Bay Area.

My life changed the moment I entered my first Journey Dance class at Kripalu in 2007. There I found my two greatest passions in one practice. Yoga and Dance. I didn’t even know they could merge. In yoga, I felt grounded and at peace. In dance, I felt wild and free. Together I was brought to a place I never imagined. Moments of Pure ecstatic joy and moments of deep pent up sorrow all uninhibitedly flowed through my body. I merge ecstatic movement with principles of Yoga, sound healing, and liberating beats to give our community the ultimate stress reliever, and an opportunity to let your body release emotions you don’t need and replace them with endorphins that will last for the rest of the week. This practice takes everything to a new level, with intention and Grace that delivers a phenomenal emotional, physical and spiritual experience. 

I am a yoga/dance instructor and health and wellness coach. I have several yoga certifications, including two children’s yoga teacher trainings and two somatic movement/dance trainings. I am CHC and CLC certified, Health Coach and Life Coach. I completed healing one at the Academy of intuitive medicine. My lifetime passion for spiritual development and intuitive eating shapes my daily life. My own struggle with Lyme’s disease have inspired my path to find healing through changing my lifestyle and seeing food as medicine. I underwent many years of Lyme treatment with both eastern and western protocols. Through my own regiment of diet, lifestyle, herbs, pharmaceuticals and some crazy alternative treatments, I conquered the disease and have been symptom free for years.

I am currently in private practice in Mill Valley where she is raising her two teen daughters Alexandra and Sasha. 

Sommer Leitz is a yoga teacher and student from the San Francisco Bay Area.  

I did not seek out the practice of yoga, it sought out me. As a 15-year-old struggling with an anxiety and eating disorder, my mom recognized I was not receiving the deeper, spiritual healing I was longing for from clinical approaches. 

I began having private sessions with Misha McNair, my mentor from Just Be Yoga in Walnut Creek, California. She introduced me not only to the healing I was searching for but a new philosophy of life. Before yoga, I was focused on calculated perfection, lost in my suffering and unaware of my inner essence. 

My life since yoga is full of confrontational self-study, active awareness and compassion towards even the damaged parts of myself. What brings me back to my practice on and off the mat is community, connection to something higher than myself and continuous learning.

When it came time to decide what to do after high school, I was offered a place in my studio’s 200-hour teacher training program. I answered a deeper calling by forgoing the social norm and focusing on educating myself holistically and spiritually.  

I am currently working towards a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Asian Philosophy. I plan to use yoga as a form of therapy, much as my mentor has done for me. As a teacher and student, yoga challenges me to foster the energy and presence required to lead a life aligned with my divine essence. It also gives me the opportunity to harmonize a space of authenticity, compassion and love towards myself, and others. 

Your Home

Your Boutique Bungalow

About Troncones & Getting Here

Dive deep into the rhythms of your own voice on the shores of the pacific with an award-winning writer to guide you at one of the world’s top 25 wellness centers. The equinox is a time of struggle between light and dark. We must write ourselves into that struggle, embracing both light and dark on the page and seeking balance in the art as well as in our bodies and breath. We will lean over the edge of doubt, where new things come from, and crack open a space for the unexpected. We will be challenged and inspired … and laugh – a lot! – while becoming vessels for creativity and breaking new creative ground. Inquire soon, as space is limited. For all levels and genres, including beginners.

Elephant Rock writing retreats are highly unique. People tell us year after year that no matter how many writing workshops or retreats they’ve attended, Elephant Rock is different. We build creatively intense spaces that are also deeply nurturing. This helps to open and challenge every writer at every level to go further into the work, see new angles, discover sharper facets. Our intentional workshops lead you toward unfolding and connecting, discovering and uncovering. We use precise writing exercises to guide us to the page in ways we never imagined. Language comes alive again, grows more elastic and expands with possibility. We welcome writers of all levels and all genres. And we take your work as seriously as we take our own. Many writers find this work life-changing. Read what some have said here.

This retreat is held at the gorgeous, secluded Present Moment in Ixtapa, Mexico. Present Moment, nestled right on the edge of the Pacific, is one of the world’s top 25 wellness centers. This exclusive oceanfront boutique hotel and yoga retreat is situated on a quiet, serene beach in Troncones, thirty minutes up the coast from Ixtapa, Zihuatanejo, Mexico. This center offers a breathtaking setting with wellness classes, yoga by the sea, meditation, qigong, dance classes, spa treatments, as well as local adventures such as sunset horseback riding, eco tours, waterfall hiking, kayaking, surf-yoga excursions, surf lessons, and exploring the village.

During our retreat, morning and afternoon writing workshops free up your thinking about words and loosen the binds on your creative process in unexpected ways. Your inner critic will fall away as you surrender to your innate ability to imagine the unknown.

With the ocean at equinox as our backdrop, we will explore themes of water, rhythm, rebirth, and balance in our writing and in the yoga/meditation. We will make full use of our environment to infuse our writing with what can only be found where we are.Writing workshops will include innovative writing exercises that engage powerful aspects of writing craft, including the senses, imagery, dialogue, and sound, among others. For writers with specific goals and projects, fireside chats will provide a space to talk shop and seek advice on specific projects as well as universal challenges of the writing life. Finally, select multi-sensory immersion activities and artistic work will echo and amplify the themes of the writing sessions. Writing workshops will include time for both new writing and revision, and, in the evening, a chance to share and discuss work in progress. Writers will also have the option to receive feedback from Jeannine on up to 7 double-spaced manuscript pages before or after the retreat.

You will end the week with new work in hand, substantial revisioning of a work in progress, or both. You can also expect to come away with many new inroads to your creative practice as well as an array of new craft tools and insights to apply to your work after the retreat is over. Our creative work will be supported by daily yoga and meditation structured specifically to foster and support creative synergy. As you connect your body, mind, and senses through movement and stillness, you release tension and cultivate insight and balance. Ultimately, you hear your own fierce, original voice again, and find exciting new portals through which you can bring that voice to the page.

Register

Deposit of $1500 holds your spot; full tuition is due by October 15. Payment by check, money order, Zelle, Venmo, Square, or PayPal. Space is limited. Register early!

For further questions, please email elephantrockretreats@gmail.com or call
612-801-2566

Your Leaders

Jeannine

Jeannine is an award-winning writer of memoir, essay, creative nonfiction, and narrative journalism. She is the author of several nonfiction books as well as a children’s picture book, and her writing has appeared widely in literary journals and magazines and been supported by Millay Colony for the Arts, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, and Tin House, and recognized in many contests including those sponsored by The Iowa Review, Bellingham Review, Masters Review, Narrative, Chattahoochee Review, Fairy Tale Review, Orison, December, Cutthroat, Tiferet, New South Review, and others. Jeannine has been writing, editing, and teaching for more than twenty years and is a writing mentor and instructor with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. She also mentors students at the University of Minnesota, where she works as a writer and editor. Jeannine earned her MFA in Fiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and recently completed her first novel. She is the founder of Elephant Rock. You can read her full bio here.

Zoe

Zoe has a bachelor’s degree in Traditional Eastern Arts with a focus in Yoga Studies from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, where she also completed her 1,000-hour Yoga Teacher Certification. She focuses on the contemplative study of yoga, with a teaching style rooted in the cultural and historical context of the tradition while remaining relevant to today’s lived experiences. Yoga is more than asana (yogic postures). It is the cultivation of connection between mind, body, and spirit. Yoga has been a powerful healing force in Zoe’s life and she is excited to share it. Many of us spend very little time in an embodied state. Zoe knows personally how difficult true embodiment can be. Personal experience has led her to teach in ways sensitive to traumas that might arise during embodiment practices including physical yoga, intentional breath work, guided meditation, and non-denominational chanting. Zoe invites you to come as you are and move into all aspects of your being.

Your Home

Your Boutique Bungalow

About Troncones & Getting Here