Awakening Together as the World Unravels
August 19–23, 2026 · Olympia, Washington
A five-day, non-residential, in-person Trillium Awakening retreat
A five-day, non-residential, in-person Trillium Awakening retreat
Step out of the intensity of life and into the nourishing field of Trillium transmission and renewal.
Together we will explore embodied presence through the yoga of mutuality, somatic experiencing, poetry, sound healing, creative expression, ritual, and small-group inquiry as a way to deepen our capacity to rest in and be nourished by Being.
Supported by six Trillium teachers and a low student-to-teacher ratio, you’ll be guided in slowing down, replenishing your inner resources, and deepening your capacity to meet life with presence and openness. Many initial Whole Being Realizations happen at multi-day retreats.
We will gather daily in both small groups and with the whole retreat community. Each evening includes a shared catered meal and an evening program. Daytime hours feature small group sessions and workshops offered by our teachers.
Whether you are longing for deeper connection to community, renewed inspiration, or a sense of ease within yourself, this retreat offers an opportunity to listen deeply, nourish your heart, and remember the joy of being fully alive together.
Teachers: Vivian Coles, Krishna Gauci, Joanne Lee, Margit Bantowsky, Subhaga Crystal Bacon, Sugandhi Katharine Barnes
Mentor: Jim Hutcheon
Is this retreat for you?
This retreat is intended for people with prior Trillium Awakening experience, such as teacher sessions, sittings, a core-dharma retreat, the Foundation Course, or the Discovery Course.
If you are newer to Trillium Awakening, or simply unsure whether this retreat is right for you, we warmly invite you to request a conversation with retreat faculty through the registration form. This conversation can help you discern whether this is a good fit for you at this time.
Fee: $700. This includes the five-day retreat, teacher and mentor contact hours, four catered dinners, optional morning and evening events, and the Saturday evening celebration. Financial aid is available; details are included on the registration page.
Together we will explore embodied presence through the yoga of mutuality, somatic experiencing, poetry, sound healing, creative expression, ritual, and small-group inquiry as a way to deepen our capacity to rest in and be nourished by Being.
Supported by six Trillium teachers and a low student-to-teacher ratio, you’ll be guided in slowing down, replenishing your inner resources, and deepening your capacity to meet life with presence and openness. Many initial Whole Being Realizations happen at multi-day retreats.
We will gather daily in both small groups and with the whole retreat community. Each evening includes a shared catered meal and an evening program. Daytime hours feature small group sessions and workshops offered by our teachers.
Whether you are longing for deeper connection to community, renewed inspiration, or a sense of ease within yourself, this retreat offers an opportunity to listen deeply, nourish your heart, and remember the joy of being fully alive together.
Teachers: Vivian Coles, Krishna Gauci, Joanne Lee, Margit Bantowsky, Subhaga Crystal Bacon, Sugandhi Katharine Barnes
Mentor: Jim Hutcheon
Is this retreat for you?
This retreat is intended for people with prior Trillium Awakening experience, such as teacher sessions, sittings, a core-dharma retreat, the Foundation Course, or the Discovery Course.
If you are newer to Trillium Awakening, or simply unsure whether this retreat is right for you, we warmly invite you to request a conversation with retreat faculty through the registration form. This conversation can help you discern whether this is a good fit for you at this time.
Fee: $700. This includes the five-day retreat, teacher and mentor contact hours, four catered dinners, optional morning and evening events, and the Saturday evening celebration. Financial aid is available; details are included on the registration page.
Scroll down to learn what each teacher is offering as part of the retreat, or:
Click Here for Registration Details
Click Here for Registration Details
Here are some offerings from each teacher, as part of the retreat:
VIVIAN COLES
Sandtray Exploration
"Keep silent, because the world of silence is a vast fullness." — Rumi
I have always loved working with the sandtray and am delighted to offer this quiet, nonverbal invitation into reflection, play, and discovery. During this session, you will choose from hundreds of miniature objects and arrange them in the sand, creating an expression of your inner world.
Through this simple process, thoughts, feelings, intuitions, and deeper layers of the psyche can emerge without the need for explanation or analysis. In sandtray work, the unconscious is given a symbolic voice, allowing what Jung called the "transcendent function" to unfold as inner and outer experience meet.
We may work together as a group or individually. No artistic skill is required—only curiosity, openness, and a willingness to see what wishes to reveal itself.
Orienting and Grounding
This session offers a space to connect with yourself and your innate wisdom. During the retreat, new aspects of yourself may come into awareness. Together, we will explore orienting and grounding practices that communicate safety to the nervous system and bring us into the here and now. Through simple experiential exercises and guided reflection, we will explore what it means to trust the body's wisdom and respond to ourselves with greater presence and care.
Sandtray Exploration
"Keep silent, because the world of silence is a vast fullness." — Rumi
I have always loved working with the sandtray and am delighted to offer this quiet, nonverbal invitation into reflection, play, and discovery. During this session, you will choose from hundreds of miniature objects and arrange them in the sand, creating an expression of your inner world.
Through this simple process, thoughts, feelings, intuitions, and deeper layers of the psyche can emerge without the need for explanation or analysis. In sandtray work, the unconscious is given a symbolic voice, allowing what Jung called the "transcendent function" to unfold as inner and outer experience meet.
We may work together as a group or individually. No artistic skill is required—only curiosity, openness, and a willingness to see what wishes to reveal itself.
Orienting and Grounding
This session offers a space to connect with yourself and your innate wisdom. During the retreat, new aspects of yourself may come into awareness. Together, we will explore orienting and grounding practices that communicate safety to the nervous system and bring us into the here and now. Through simple experiential exercises and guided reflection, we will explore what it means to trust the body's wisdom and respond to ourselves with greater presence and care.
SUBHAGA CRYSTAL BACON
Poetry as Self-Discovery
For the uninitiated, poetry may seem like an obscure secret handshake that requires extensive study to master. In fact, poetry is a way of putting into words our most true perceptions of ourselves, our experiences, our lives. Yes, there are techniques that make poetry different from an instruction manual, novel, or biography. In the right circumstances those techniques: sound, image, and metaphor can become easily accessible. Our retreat is one such circumstance. Join me for a generative writing experience where we’ll use poetry’s language of essence to discover something new about ourselves.
Poetry as Self-Discovery
For the uninitiated, poetry may seem like an obscure secret handshake that requires extensive study to master. In fact, poetry is a way of putting into words our most true perceptions of ourselves, our experiences, our lives. Yes, there are techniques that make poetry different from an instruction manual, novel, or biography. In the right circumstances those techniques: sound, image, and metaphor can become easily accessible. Our retreat is one such circumstance. Join me for a generative writing experience where we’ll use poetry’s language of essence to discover something new about ourselves.
KRISHNA GAUCI
Krishna's sitting is a place to relax and steep in transmission, allowing a deepening recognition of our shared experience. Through silence, gazing meditation, and open conversation, Krishna invites an exploration of the Spiritual Heart and its inseparable expression within ordinary life. You may share or remain quiet as you wish. Nothing is required beyond being there.
Krishna's sitting is a place to relax and steep in transmission, allowing a deepening recognition of our shared experience. Through silence, gazing meditation, and open conversation, Krishna invites an exploration of the Spiritual Heart and its inseparable expression within ordinary life. You may share or remain quiet as you wish. Nothing is required beyond being there.
MARGIT BANTOWSKY
Birth of the Future Human -- A Trillium-Related Event
Margit will give a presentation about Christopher Bache's book, LSD and the Mind of the Universe, focusing specifically on the visions he received about humanity's ecological crisis-induced "dark night of the soul," and what he calls the birth of the future human. We'll ponder the implications of Bache's visions for our personal and collective evolutionary development, including embodied awakening a la Trillium, and how to apply these insights to our daily lives.
About the book:
A professor of religious studies meticulously documents his insights from 73 high-dose LSD sessions conducted over the course of 20 years and chronicles, with unprecedented rigor, his systematic journey into a unified field of consciousness that underlies all physical existence. Bache shows how psychedelic experience can take you beyond self-transformation into collective transformation and help birth the future of humanity.
Sound and Poetry Spa
Margit will guide a nourishing soundscape immersion illuminated by ecstatic poetry to expand consciousness, activate imaginal wisdom, and relax you to the core. Using a variety of instruments -- crystal bowls, chimes, rattles, drum, and voice -- to create a catalytic sonic environment, and reciting poetry by awakened writers, Margit will support resonance with themes emerging in the retreat's participant body. Includes time for reflection and brief sharing.
Birth of the Future Human -- A Trillium-Related Event
Margit will give a presentation about Christopher Bache's book, LSD and the Mind of the Universe, focusing specifically on the visions he received about humanity's ecological crisis-induced "dark night of the soul," and what he calls the birth of the future human. We'll ponder the implications of Bache's visions for our personal and collective evolutionary development, including embodied awakening a la Trillium, and how to apply these insights to our daily lives.
About the book:
A professor of religious studies meticulously documents his insights from 73 high-dose LSD sessions conducted over the course of 20 years and chronicles, with unprecedented rigor, his systematic journey into a unified field of consciousness that underlies all physical existence. Bache shows how psychedelic experience can take you beyond self-transformation into collective transformation and help birth the future of humanity.
Sound and Poetry Spa
Margit will guide a nourishing soundscape immersion illuminated by ecstatic poetry to expand consciousness, activate imaginal wisdom, and relax you to the core. Using a variety of instruments -- crystal bowls, chimes, rattles, drum, and voice -- to create a catalytic sonic environment, and reciting poetry by awakened writers, Margit will support resonance with themes emerging in the retreat's participant body. Includes time for reflection and brief sharing.
JOANNE LEE
CREATE! Write
An introduction to a simple, yet powerful process that enables our souls to speak what's emerging in our Beings now.
Yoga of Mutuality
A gentle, fun, irreverent opportunity to move in mutuality, in community, in embodiment. No yoga experience necessary. You will be guided in easy partner or group movements toward relaxation, flexibility, joy.
Honoring Our Embeddedness in the Natural World
An opportunity to remember that we are not separate from nature, we are nature. Through ritual ceremony we will explore our mutuality with the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral realms.
CREATE! Write
An introduction to a simple, yet powerful process that enables our souls to speak what's emerging in our Beings now.
Yoga of Mutuality
A gentle, fun, irreverent opportunity to move in mutuality, in community, in embodiment. No yoga experience necessary. You will be guided in easy partner or group movements toward relaxation, flexibility, joy.
Honoring Our Embeddedness in the Natural World
An opportunity to remember that we are not separate from nature, we are nature. Through ritual ceremony we will explore our mutuality with the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral realms.
"I feel utterly changed. I have found my ground of being in consciousness.
It was the skillfulness, container, and wide welcome of every possible part of me - or expression of me - that made it possible.
I made peace with a fundamental existential angst, distrust, and wounding that I never thought was possible. I've done a lot of workshops and retreats, but this has been the most profoundly healing week of my life. Thank you so much!"
- Kirstin Eventyr, WA (comment on previous, similar retreat)
It was the skillfulness, container, and wide welcome of every possible part of me - or expression of me - that made it possible.
I made peace with a fundamental existential angst, distrust, and wounding that I never thought was possible. I've done a lot of workshops and retreats, but this has been the most profoundly healing week of my life. Thank you so much!"
- Kirstin Eventyr, WA (comment on previous, similar retreat)