Grappling with cancer is one of life’s greatest challenges. When gently and skillfully embraced, it also serves as a pathway to profound healing and awakening physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

Grappling with cancer is one of life’s greatest challenges. However, when gently and skillfully embraced, it can also be a pathway to profound healing and awakening—physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. The question is, how do we navigate this potentially confusing, treacherous, heartbreaking terrain in the most enlightened and empowering way?

Courageous Women, Fearless Living will provide you with the roadmap, guides and companions you need to assist you on this journey. Join your fellow sisters in this unique five-day retreat based on Dr. Jeremy Geffen’s highly acclaimed book, The Journey Through Cancer: Healing and Transforming the Whole Person.

In concert with an extraordinary team of experts, Dr. Geffen will furnish a map to whole-person healing and transformation, touching on the seven essential domains of inquiry and exploration encountered by everyone on the journey through cancer. He will provide clear, cutting-edge information about cancer and conventional as well as complementary and alternative treatment options, and the entire team will also address the equally important mental, emotional and spiritual dimensions of the healing process.

As Tibetan meditation master Tulku Thondup points out in his book Boundless Healing, we live in a golden age of science and medicine, and we also have access to ancient golden teachings. Why not enjoy the benefits of both?

Tulku Thondup will share esoteric Tibetan Buddhist healing visualizations, an extremely potent aspect of this ancient wisdom tradition. Tulku will teach meditation techniques that awaken healing energies in the body and mind. Using Buddhist principles as a basis, Tulku has created a univeral guide that anyone can use.

Providing instruction in basic meditation practice, Shambhala senior teacher Judith Lief will show us how to meet and hold all of our experience—our pain, fear, sorrow, anger, joy, gratitude—moment by moment and breath by breath.

Yoga instructor Linda Sparrowe, who is committed to women’s health and well-being, will lead gentle, transformative yoga sessions throughout the retreat.

The program will also include a life assessment process, a sacred dance performance by Sofia Diaz, small group discussions, ritual and community building.

For a sample daily schedule, see below.

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Jeremy Geffen is a board-certified medical oncologist, a pioneer in integrative medicine and oncology, and author of The Journey Through Cancer. He has traveled extensively and has more than 30 years of experience exploring the great spiritual and healing traditions of the world, including Ayurveda, Tibetan medicine, yoga, meditation and other approaches to health and self-awareness.

Tulku Thondup was born in Tibet and trained at the Dodrupchen Monastery. He fled to India in 1958 and came to the United States in 1980 as a visiting scholar at Harvard University. His many books on Tibetan Buddhism include Boundless Healing; The Healing Power of Mind; and Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth: A Tibetan Buddhist Guidebook. Tulku Thondup has dedicated his life to helping beings discover their own innate capacity and deep-seated longing for a mind and heart at peace.

Acharya Judith Lief is a contemplative hospice pioneer and former dean of Naropa University. A close student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Judith is the author of Making Friends with Death, available from Shambhala Publications.

Linda Sparrowe is a writer, yoga teacher, mentor and practitioner with deep roots in yoga, the Vedas, Sanskrit and women’s health. Editor-in-chief of Alternative Medicine magazine, she is also the author of several books, including A Woman’s Book of Yoga and Health and Yoga: A Yoga Journal Book.

Sofia Diaz offers a unique approach to Hatha Yoga, sacred movement and feminine spiritual practice, deriving her style of teaching and body philosophy from the South Indian temple arts. She lectures at Naropa University and teaches at both Prasad (the yoga studio based on her work) in Boulder, Colorado, and throughout the United States.

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DAILY RETREAT SCHEDULE

The schedule may vary slightly from day to day. We invite you to participate in as many activities as you like.

7:00am – 8:00am
YOGA
with Linda Sparrowe

7:30am – 8:30am
BREAKFAST

9:00am – 11:00am
THE JOURNEY THROUGH
CANCER & THE SEVEN
LEVELS OF HEALING
with Jeremy Geffen, MD

11:00am – 11:15am
BREAK

11:15am – 12:30pm
MEDITATION INSTRUCTION,
PRACTICE & TALK
with Judith Lief

12:30pm – 1:30pm
LUNCH

1:30pm – 3:00pm
BREAK

3:00pm – 5:00pm
HEALING VISUALIZATION
with Tulku Thondup

5:00pm – 5:15pm
BREAK

5:15pm – 6:30pm
GROUP DISCUSSION
with all of the presenters

6:30pm – 7:30pm
DINNER

7:30pm – 9:00pm
SPECIAL EVENING PROGRAMS,
SESSIONS & RITUALS

All women are welcome, but they must be ambulatory and able to comfortably participate in the program, particularly at the altitude of the center (7,500 feet).

We want to thank the generous support from Whole Foods (Boulder store) and White Wave Foods for their yummy organic food donations.

Extend Your Stay. We are offering a 25% housing discount for additional nights. Come early and relax before your program starts or stay an extra day or more after this program to savor your retreat experience.

Please arrive between 2 and 5pm on Friday, August 18. Program ends with lunch at 12:30pm on Wednesday, August 23. View Detailed Program Information.

"The Seven Levels of Healing" by Jeremy R. Geffen, MD, FACP

On the journey through cancer, patients and their loved ones inevitably encounter seven distinct, but intimately interrelated, areas of inquiry and exploration, which I call “The Seven Levels of Healing.” Through my years as a medical oncologist, serving as physician, guide, mentor and friend to thousands of individuals with cancer and their families, I have come to recognize that these levels are both universal and eminently practical. They represent a crystal-clear map, or topography, of how human beings instinctively seek healing and wholeness in the face of any serious illness or crisis.

Level One: Education & Information
Level One provides basic knowledge and information about cancer and the latest treatment options, empowering patients and their loved ones to actively participate in and obtain the greatest possible benefit from their care. Feeling clear and confident about one’s treatment plan helps put the mind at ease, facilitating one’s ability to enter the deeper dimensions of healing. Level One addresses these issues directly and helps individuals make the most informed and empowered choices about their care.

Level Two: Connection with Others
Level Two is based on the understanding that connection with others lies at the heart of healing. Here we explore the importance and benefits of finding support and connection with others on the journey through cancer. The simple act of sharing with others is ancient, profound and deeply healing. A growing body of evidence also clearly shows that connection with others—which can occur in a variety of settings—can greatly improve one’s quality of life and reduce feelings of anxiety, depression, isolation and pain.

Level Three: The Body as Garden
Level Three invites patients and family members to regard the human body as a sacred and wondrously complex garden, rather than a machine. Here we explore how individuals can nourish, strengthen, nurture and detoxify the garden of their being so that the fruits and flowers of health and wellness can blossom and grow. Level Three is also the realm in which complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) approaches to healing find their natural home. In this context, we explore the safe and effective use of CAM modalities such as diet, nutrition, yoga, massage, acupuncture, Reiki and guided imagery, among many others.

Level Four: Emotional Healing
Level Four enters the tender realm of the human heart. Here our focus and attention are gently redirected from the external world of drugs, surgery, support groups, diets and other treatment modalities toward the internal world of feelings and personal emotional experience. In Level Four, we skillfully address the range of difficult emotions that can often accompany cancer, a process that is essential to whole-person, multidimensional care. We also explore the profound healing power of compassion, forgiveness and acceptance of all parts of ourselves.

Level Five: The Nature of Mind
Level Five looks carefully at how our entire experience of life—including life with cancer—is profoundly influenced by our conscious and unconscious thoughts and beliefs, and the meanings we give to events. The thoughts and beliefs patients have regarding their illness, their relationships with doctors and their treatment options significantly impact their ability to assess, choose and respond to care. In Level Five, patients and family members explore their individual thought patterns and beliefs, and make choices that can best move them forward on their journey.

Level Six: Life Assessment
Level Six explores the hopes, aspirations, goals and purposes of our lives. What do we want to accomplish, experience and share with others while we are alive, regardless of how long that might be? In Level Six, patients and family members are supported in creating a personal and inspiring mission statement for their lives. They also define and prioritize their top 20 goals for the coming year. This process can liberate previously unknown and extremely valuable reserves of energy, focus and strength. We also ask, “How do I want to be remembered by those I love and care about after I am gone?” Answering this question powerfully inspires individuals to live in greater alignment with their most cherished values.

Level Seven: The Nature of Spirit
Level Seven embraces the vast and mysterious spiritual dimension of life. Here we explore the universal, non-physical aspect of our being that exists beyond time and space, illness and health, and even beyond birth and death. Spirit is the timeless and eternal source from which all awareness, all creativity and, ultimately, all healing flows. Recognizing and experiencing the nature of spirit relieves anxiety and distress, calms the turbulent waves that are an intrinsic part of human existence and deepens the potential for healing. Here the love, joy and peace that all humans seek are also revealed and understood, and their source is found within.