Photos by Cate Woolner (unless otherwise captioned)

Embodied Montreal: City of Water

What creative rivers are moving in us? What is unseen in us that wants to come into the emerging light of the new year? How do we experience ourselves in place?

Montreal, city of water, is co-created with the St. Lawrence, with hidden rivers driven underground, its ancient stones from nearby islands, and the faded outline of the fortified wall form the geometry of place.

We will explore our bodies as a conduit to imagining and knowing this place’s unseen histories, experiencing embodiment practices that will help us create connections with this place that we can then use on our own private wanderings. Through breath work, visualization, and mindful attentiveness, we will awaken and tune ourselves to the stories of that arise in us as we respond sensorily to this place.

 Included in the Retreat:

·      A pocket-size, handmade zine with embodiment practices and writing prompts to guide you when exploring the Old Port and writing on your own.

·      Your own copy of Old Montreal: History Through Heritage, a 300-page book with 277 beautiful photographs, maps, and writings that tell the many stories of the Old Port from its pre-history to the present day

·      An initial group exploratory walk with embodiment practices of the Old Port's original walled city to find your special place. (Tuesday afternoon)

·      A final mindful group walk and gathering to share our writing (food and drink not included, but fellowship is) (Friday afternoon)

·      Participation in a mapping project that will add your writing to a creative map of the city (at your discretion)

Options to enhance the experience:

·      One-hour private gentle yoga/breathwork/relaxation session that closes with a foot, hand, neck and head Swedish/Essalen massage  ($60/hr), with embodiment workshop leader Anne Bergeron

·      Spa visit (discounts of 10%-15% available )

About Anne Bergeron: writer, editor, Ayurveda and Yoga instructor: www.annebergeronvt.com

Anne Bergeron’s essays and poems appear in Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment, The Hopper, The Dark Mountain Project, About Place Journal, Eastern Iowa Review, The Calendula Review, and multiple print issues of Blueline Magazine. She is a contributing writer for Dark Matter: Women Witnessing, and an editor for the journal’s recently published anthology, Dark Matter Women Witnessing: Dreams Before Extinction. She is the solo finalist for the 2023 Barry Lopez Creative Nonfiction Award at Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts. Her writing is anthologized in The Black River: Death Poems, and in the forthcoming book, ICE. Anne teaches teens at a rural school, shares yoga with people of all ages, and lives on a handmade homestead in Vermont where she and her husband grow food and share their lives with a medley of animal companions.

Anne's studies in foundational Ayurveda, Yoga’s sister science, include completion of Cate Stillman's year long course, Living Ayurveda, and Anne McIntyre's year-long course  Living Wisdom: The Foundations of Ayurveda, both completed between 2016 and 2019, as well as  study sessions with Gina Mastroluca, an Ayurvedic practitioner in Portland, Maine. Anne completed an Ayurvedic massage course with Allison  Bransfield Morse, A.D., of the Ayurvedic Center of Vermont in 2017, and engaged in a year-long Ayurvedic mentorship program with Adena Rose Bright of Adena Rose Ayurveda. Anne loves sharing how to use simple Ayurvedic practices, based on her learning and on her own experience. "It is a pleasure to share my understanding of the body’s natural capacity to heal itself through attention, movement, nourishing food, herbs, and rest."