Relaxing the Mind

Qigong & Meditation Retreat Week, 2010

Being on Holy Isle has certainly made me re-think things. I enjoyed the week immensely and really love Wild Goose and it's graceful movements and have been practising to perfect the sequence.

I am becoming more and more interested in the loving kindness meditations and feel that this has opened up an area for me that I have been struggling with for some time i.e. softening the heart and letting love and compassion in.  I will certainly be following this up. I do have very real feelings for everyone there and am a bit overwhelmed by the loveliness of everyone. 

I think it is really wonderful to be able to bring back so many valuable practises since quite often on courses I can come home remembering hardly anything and am eternally grateful to you.

Other years:

This was a memorable experience - a real holiday with a difference. Barbara Muston

A truly wonderful week with a lovely group of people – a friendly atmosphere. As a beginner I found Qigong to be inspiring and I hope to take what I have learnt into everyday life. Sue is a wonderful teacher, kind, considerate and encouraging, and very patient. She taught us how to improve our lives and I so enjoyed the meditation. Thank you, Sue. A healing experience.
The Centre for Peace & Health is a beautiful building both inside and out. A caring, loving and safe atmosphere with wonderful staff and volunteers. Excellent food, beautifully cooked.
Lovely gardens and surrounding areas. It was a pleasure and a privilege to stay in this lovely place. A joyful place. Joan Corney

Sue, thanks for a wonderful course. It was everything I expected and more! I leave feeling relaxed and refreshed. And will definitely be back again!
The Centre for Peace & Health was absolutely wonderful. Everyone was friendly. I was worried about the vegetarian food, but it was superb! John Bennett

Very well structured and presented. Enjoyed the variety of exercises, meditations and the medical Qigong. Also appreciated the course content was different from last year.

After an adventurous journey from London I arrived on Holy Island via the visitors ferry. During the
journey I realised I was about to experience something amazing. Holy Island is an extremely beautiful and tranquil place. It gives you the space to find yourself again, away from all the distractions of modern life.

Sue Weston's Tai Chi and Meditation week was a fantastic experience. Through Sue's wisdom and teaching I found the week was the beginning of spiritual journey for me. Sue gives you the tools to make changes in your life and appreciate what is important. For me I have found happiness, well being, to live with an open heart, be loved and to love. Of course there are days when all this fails me but I think of Sue and Holy Island take a deep breath and start again.

The whole week was an amazing experience and something I will always remember and hold close to my heart.

The week of meditation on Holy Island was a marvellous antidote to the stresses and strains of 21st century living. It provided a wonderful  mixture of spiritual uplift, exercise and relaxation, all in an atmosphere of  great companionship. Mornings and evenings were spent in meditation and T'ai Chi, led by Sue Weston, whose leadership and  compassion offered us all a chance to learn and grow. Afternoons provided the opportunity to explore and enjoy the island or join with members of the volunteer staff on the island in gardening or other conservation activities.

Holy Island is a jewel of peace and tranquillity - a haven for birds  and animals with a magical air, which contains in a very small space a mountain, moors, cliffs, rock pools and beaches. It's a fitting location for the Inter-faith Centre which provided more than comfortable accommodation and food that was almost too delicious.

I felt truly embraced by the community and, under Sue's guidance, felt myself unwinding and relaxing as the week went on. And I was able to take away tools to help me carry the peace of the Island into my daily life.

I had come to a place within myself where I felt at home and it seemed like such a long time since I had last visited that beautiful place. Doing Sue’s work is like coming back to a place deep within that one already knows but keeps forgetting about -  and it’s real.

I’m not one for early morning starts, but standing on the deserted beach with the dawn breaking over the silent sea at six o clock in the morning, moving as one with the rest of the group doing the gentle movements of Tai Chi was simple beautiful.

Sue’s calm yet firm and always joyous energy infuses the week on this sanctuary of peace that is Holy Island. And the accommodation is lovely and the food good and the walks are lovely – what more can I say? Siobhan McMahon

What Happens on a Qigong & Meditation Retreat?

When I arrived on Holy Isle in September 1999 Lama Yeshe Rinpoche gave me instructions for my year of retreat. To my surprise Lama provided only two guidelines one of which was to not do anything unless I could rejoice. Not what I had expected to hear. The subtly of this has been filtering through ever since: can I also rejoice when things fall apart as well as on a sunny day when all's well?

Lama's instruction is a precious gift that I share freely with others through Qigong and T'ai-Chi, which I have been practising and teaching for many years. When in the summer of 2003 The Centre of World Peace and Health opened I immediately offered to lead Qigong & Meditation Retreat weeks. I knew from my year on Holy Isle that this place would make a superb holiday destination offering beauty, wellbeing and adventure.

At the beginning of each course I guide everyone through a deep relaxation that allows his or her retreat to begin after the convoluted journey to the island. Over a week or weekend course participants, always a mix of ages, backgrounds, beliefs and abilities, learn the gentle, releasing and healing movements of Wild Goose Medical Qigong. We practice this flowing form alongside simple peaceful mind and loving kindness meditations. People who have arrived as strangers rapidly form friendships as the work and the island weave their magic. Many are at a watershed in their lives. The company, the practise sessions and the non-denominational spiritual sanctuary of Holy Isle provide a space for insight and inspirational choices to bubble through.

As well as the Qigong and meditation the island itself is restorative. In the afternoons, which are kept free for all to enjoy its beauty, participants might climb the mountain even though their greatest fear is of heights - and return filled with glowing confidence. Another day they may help in the garden, take walks along the shores and some plunge into the cold waters of the Firth of Clyde. All reasons to rejoice! The volunteers who so generously look after Holy Isle ask visitors to help in the kitchen. These could be labelled Laughter Sessions, for this is what is heard during the cleaning and washing up.

Relaxed and revitalized participants take back home with them skills to sustain their own ability to rejoice. Katherine's feedback speaks for many:

'What a wonderful, magical and transformational week. I arrived tired and depleted and now have fully restored, and with so much more than I ever imagined.'

And the other instruction that Lama Yeshe gave me at the beginning of my retreat year? I'll share this with you when next we meet on Holy Isle, the perfect place to study the art of rejoicing!