Come Alive: Tending To Self Weekend for BIPOC Leaders

Belonging: to ourselves and to the world

A Dharmakaya Center STILL program

Please note: this program is fully subscribed. If you would like to be considered should a space open, you may add your name to the waitlist.

Racism, whether implicit or explicit, is exhausting, spiritually depleting, and in too many cases, life-threatening. At this moment in history, meaningful change is urgently needed, along with real support for the leaders carrying this work forward.

In response, this weekend retreat offers a restorative space led by two wonderful BIPOC presenters. We will sponsor 12 BIPOC leaders who are not only navigating racialized trauma in their own lives, but also holding, guiding, and inspiring the communities they serve. The intention is to help strengthen resilience so participants can continue their bold, compassionate work with greater steadiness and care.

The program focuses on:

• Identifying the stress factors that affect healing, activism, and service work through systemic constellations, ancestral healing, nature-based practices, expressive arts, and ritual as healing
• Cultivating mental, spiritual, and emotional wellbeing
• Developing sustainable self-care strategies

“Brilliant, moving, creative, and healing. The best workshop I have experienced in my life—and I am almost 70!”

“Absolutely incredible… amazing and eye-opening… deep blessing… can this go on forever? Breathtaking experience… It’s rare that I feel so welcomed in retreat spaces… radical permission to return home…”

Guided by Howard Thurman’s reminder — “What the world needs is people who have come alive” — the retreat invites participants to reflect on what it means to come home to themselves, tend the spirit, and keep the inner fire alive in daily life. Thurman’s teaching points to an inner truth-tone and core vitality that can be obscured when we live against our deepest nature.

Through guided meditation, group process, ceremony, sacred writing, play, and embodied connection, the weekend explores how to rekindle that essential spark so it can radiate beauty, power, and vitality. The experience weaves together gentleness, spaciousness, connection, depth, and community.

Featured experiences

• Create a Living Altar: bring something meaningful to be infused with the energy of the weekend as the group co-creates a Living Mandala Altar and shared community agreements
• Sound Bath with Ben Brown, LMT: using singing bowls, gongs, and other instruments, this session invites rest, resilience, and deep listening
• Sacred Poetry with Sushmita Mukherjee: writing prompts and the French Pantoum open a gentle yet powerful path into presence and soul listening
• Ancestral Presence with yvette shipman: a quiet, spacious invitation to turn toward well and healed ancestors as a source of remembrance and sustenance
• Closing Ritual and Ceremony: a final gathering to honor the teachings, beauty, and guidance that emerge over the weekend

Application: this retreat is free of charge, but an application is required. Only one applicant from any single organization can be accepted.

Schedule

Friday, July 17

3:00 PM — Check in begins

6:00-7:00 PM — Dinner

7:00-9:30 PM — Welcome and Introduction; Opening Ceremony; Pouring of Libations; Living Mandala Altar; Community Agreements; Sound Bath with Ben Brown; Blessing on the Dreams

9:30 PM — Informal connection around the fire pit

10:00 PM — Lights out on campus

Saturday, July 18

7:30-8:00 AM — Morning Salutations and optional Meditation

8:00-9:00 AM — Breakfast

9:00 AM-12:00 PM — Sacred Poetry, led by Rev. Sushmita Mukherjee

12:00-1:00 PM — Lunch

1:30-3:30 PM — Ancestral Presence with yvette shipman

3:00-6:00 PM — Unstructured time: read, sleep, walk the nature trail, socialize, or enjoy silence

5:00-6:00 PM — Facilitators available to chat and connect

6:00-7:00 PM — Dinner

7:30-9:15 PM — Sound Bath with Ben Brown

9:15-10:00 PM — Bubble & Flow: A Dance Party

10:00 PM — Lights out on campus

Sunday, July 19

7:30-8:00 AM — Morning Salutations and optional Meditation

8:00-9:00 AM — Breakfast

9:00 AM-12:00 PM — Closing Ritual and Ceremony

12:00-1:00 PM — Lunch

1:00-2:00 PM — Check out and departure

Teachers

Rev. Dr. Sushmita Mukherjee bridges advanced biomedical research and a spirituality shaped by image, imagination, and creativity. She serves as an Associate Professor of Research and Co-Director of the Microscopy and Image Analysis Core Facility at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, and is also Academic Dean of the Interfaith/Interspiritual Seminary Program at One Spirit Learning Alliance. She is an ordained interspiritual minister and trained spiritual companion/counselor.

reverend yvette shipman — also known as rev. ivé and dear one — is an interfaith, interspiritual minister, facilitator, and founder of rev ivé, a practice devoted to collective healing and restorative connection. Her background includes work in television and video production, as well as social and public policy with a focus on conflict mediation and peace studies. Her decades of global experience include sharing mindfulness practices with the United Nations Foundation’s Peace on Purpose program, and she is the founder and steward of the Liberation Genealogy Project.

Ben Brown is a sound practitioner, visual artist, and bodyworker whose work explores how vibration can create space in the nervous system and support self-soothing and healing. He facilitates live and virtual sound experiences and is the co-creator of HOME and E L I X I R, monthly sound practices, along with LUSH and Beauty Medicine.

Therese is a spiritual director and psychotherapist in private practice in the Hudson Valley and the former director of The Interspiritual Counseling Program at One Spirit Interfaith Alliance. She is a seasoned retreat and workshop leader with advanced training in trauma-based teachings, guided visualization, mindfulness meditation, Buddhism and Psychology, expressive arts, Jungian Sandplay Therapy, Soulcollage, Restorative Justice, and Collective Trauma.