“Join a self-exploratory women's journey”
8 Day Journey Into Sacred Expression Women's Retreat on Lake Atitlan, Guatemala
Villa Sumaya, Santa Cruz La Laguna, Sololá, Guatemala
Writing, Movement, and Yoga Retreat in Guatemala
Rise from within and together with this Lonely Planet recommended women's writing retreat in a luxurious space on Lake Atitlan. Breathe and relax into lakeside comfort as you gather for a magical and soulful week beneath the watch of volcanoes. Join a very intimate sacred circle of women in the spirit of reclamation for a creative inner adventure through meditation, yoga, movement, magical ceremonies, and self-exploratory writing at Villa Sumaya in Santa Cruz, Guatemala.
Meet the instructors
Aimee & Robin
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Highlights
- Daily morning guided meditation and yoga/movement practice
- Two self-exploratory writing circles on most days
- 4+ sacred healing ceremonies (e.g. Mayan fire ceremony, sound healing, sacred sweat)
- Sauna/jacuzzi evening for group
- Use of swimming pool and solar hot tub
- Base gratuities for local staff members
- 7 nights accommodation at Villa Sumaya (double or private)
- Delicious vegetarian breakfast, lunch and dinner
Skill level
- Beginner
- Intermediate
7 days with instruction
Group size: Maximum of 12 participants
Accommodation
Check-out Time:
10:00
Facilities
- Hot tub / Jacuzzi
- Sauna
- Shopping
- Spa
- Swimming pool (outdoor)
- Bar
- Café
- Dining area
- Environmentally friendly
- Lounge
- Yoga studio
- Wireless internet
Villa Sumaya
On the shores of the magical Lake Atitlan, beneath the watch of three majestic volcanoes, Villa Sumaya lies in a secluded cove and offers an eco-sanctuary dedicated to rejuvenation, holistic practices, and preserving Mayan tradition. Enjoy expansive views, comfortable accommodation, delicious meals, beautiful open spaces, on-site spa services, solar hot tub, pool, Mayan sauna, and more in gorgeous natural surroundings. Villa Sumaya is an idyllic setting for refreshing perspectives, renewing energies, and reviving inspiration. Villa Sumaya is an eco-friendly wellness center perfect for self-care, refreshing perspectives, and renewing energies.
Program
You are invited to take a brave and honest journey into your center to connect with your intuition and express from your core. To unravel the ways you have learned to limit or deny yourself. To trust, embrace and truly value your raw embodied presence and your truest soulful desires. Within each of you is the call to open your heart, step further into your courage, expand your self-acceptance, and animate your own sacred expression.
Retreat highlights
- Intimate women's gathering: Only 12 spaces available
- Inspiring lakefront location with expansive volcano views
- Solar hot tub, on-site spa services, pool, sauna, jacuzzi
- Breaks for swimming, hiking, kayaking, SUP, therapies, relaxing
- Optional excursions (village tour, outdoor adventure)
Journey into sacred expression
Set out on a transformative creative and powerful journey through daily meditation, yoga, movement, and self-exploratory writing as a channel to reveal insight from within. Participate in diverse healing ceremonies that awaken your feminine energies and stoke your soul connection.
Breathe, stretch, relax, and align with your center while sharing the experience with other women. This retreat is not about ‘writing’ as a subject or art form. In this retreat, we ourselves are the art form. Every woman has a voice in her own life that calls her – you are gathering together to raise it up, embrace your wholeness, and allow self-expression. When you stop chasing your worth, allow your essence, and share your gifts from inspired action, you are invited into a great adventure in life.
Infused by the four shamanic directions and rising the feminine, you embark on a revealing week of re-igniting the voices of your heart and empowering yourself as the fluid storytellers of your life.
In this women's retreat, you will:
- Gather with a powerful circle of women in rawness, vulnerability, and expression.
- Ground in your body and intuition through meditation, yoga, and movement.
- Show up in this here and now, present to whatever is real to you, as you are.
- Honor and be witnessed for your embodied experience as a woman.
- Immerse in a journey that is both individual and collective to you and to the circle and to women.
- Reveal your truths moment to moment by connecting to your own inner voice.
- Embrace yourself in all of your contradictions and wholeness.
- Loosen the stories you tell against allowing yourself and your expression, in the many ways we tell them.
- Reconnect with your essential self, your vivid energies, your heart-led and soul-seeded desires - all that conspires for your expression.
- Call back your inner voice to hear what sways your soul.
- Reclaim your connection and belonging to the greater mystery and beauty all around you.
- Remember the magic that unfolds when women circle together with love and compassion at your core.
Sample retreat flow
Here's a sample schedule (subject to change and days will differ, to accommodate ceremonies, special sessions, and excursions):
- 07:00 - 08:30 Meditation and holistic Hatha Flow/Vinyasa Flow
- 08:30 Delicious breakfast
- 10.30 - 13:00 Sacred Expression Writing Circle/Discussion
- 13:00 - 15:45 Delicious lunch and free time
- 15:45 - 18:30 Sacred Expression Writing Circle/Discussion
- 18:30 - 19:30 Delicious dinner
- 19:30 Sauna, circle, healing ceremonies (some evenings)
Relax in a hammock and enjoy the views, swim in the lake, do a meditative walk on nature trails, receive a spa treatment, dip in the solar hot tub and pools, or detox in the sauna in daily breaks.
On a day or two, there will be longer breaks and offer optional group excursions - visits to villages or hiking/kayaking adventure options.
Instructors
Aimee Hansen
Aimee is the founder of Storyteller Within, and has hosted over 200 women across 27 retreat events, with 950+ hours facilitating the circle across nearly ten years. She is inspired and humbled by witnessing how something raw and honest in the human spirit aches to open, when given the invitation. She began Storyteller Within Retreats to share in the experience of exploring humanity and stepping into courage as women.
Robin Kempe
Robin Kempe is a Guatemalan-based esoteric conscious yoga teacher, who weaves seamlessly with Aimee. She combines her deep knowledge of transpersonal shamanic principles, anatomy and physiology, yoga philosophy, mindfulness, and pranayama with dynamic hatha flow postures, intuitive energy healing, sound, and the power of storytelling to ignite the fire within, open the heart and help us to return back home to wholeness, peace, and love. For each event, Aimee brings in curated guest facilitators offering magical sessions to expand your journey together.
Location
A stunning location in Guatemala
Cradled by rural highlands and lush forests, Lake Atitlan is a breathtaking beauty framed by three majestic volcanoes. The lake is known to attract travelers in search of soulful reconnection.
Resting in a secluded lakeside cove accessible primarily by boat, Villa Sumaya is an eco-chic sanctuary dedicated to rejuvenation, holistic practices, and preserving Mayan tradition.
Lake Atitlan has beautiful villages to explore (weaving, artisan) and cultural and wildlife tourist activities. It's also a gorgeous place to simply soak up the volcano views and nature. On your way from the airport, the UNESCO World Heritage charming streets of Antigua offer many colorful, cultural treasures. It's always recommended to stay at the lake and in Guatemala for some extra time and enjoy the beauty if your schedule allows it.
A serene setting
Villa Sumaya is located on the shores of Lake Atitlan, outside of Santa Cruz La Laguna, with a private dock accessible by boat. Lake Atitlan is famed for holding a magnetic attraction for those travelers who seek to gain a deeper connection with nature and within.
The magical waters are framed by three sister volcanoes: Atitlán (11,598 ft), Toliman (10,360 ft), and San Pedro (9,908 ft), which create a panoramic vista from Villa Sumaya. The lake is dotted with small villages with local inhabitants of Mayan descent.
Indigenous women on these beautiful shores continue to wear traditional dress and create colorful weavings. Farmers grow coffee, corn, and pitaya fruit. Avocados, papayas, and jacotes are plentiful.
Food
The package includes a delicious vegetarian breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Unlimited tea and coffee are also provided.
Meals are vegetarian and gourmet. Chicken / fish and alcohol can be added to meals at your discretion.
Delicious meals and juice bar
Embracing the values of slow-food preparation and culinary consciousness, Cafe Sumaya Sol offers delicious homemade vegetarian meals that blend local and international cuisine.
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner buffets are abundant and fish and chicken are available for an additional fee (8 USD per meal). Organic artisan coffee and a wide selection of herbal teas are available 24/7.
You can also treat yourself to exotic smoothies, kombucha, wine or cocktails, and raw homemade snacks and treats.
The following meals are included:
- Breakfast
- Lunch
- Dinner
- Drinks
The following drinks are included:
- Coffee
- Tea
The following dietary requirement(s) are served and/or catered for:
- Vegetarian
- Other dietary requirements on request
If you have special dietary requirements it's a good idea to communicate it to the organiser when making a reservation
Things to do (optional)
Relaxation and rejuvenation
In the spaces between the yoga and group sessions in the circle, Villa Sumaya offers space for integration, relaxation, spa treatments, and restorative self-care.
There are plenty of cozy outdoor nooks for lounging, for a private journaling session, or even a good old chat. During afternoon breaks, you could dip in the lake, swing in a hammock, lay on the sun deck, swim in the pool, take out a SUP, or soak in the solar-heated stone hot tub. You can also explore the nearby mapped nature trails for 30, 45 minutes, and one hour.
The on-site Harmony spa also offers rejuvenating bodywork sessions, including various massage styles, ayurvedic consultation, and energy work depending upon the available therapists at hand. The spa can accommodate four women in private healing rooms.
This is an opportunity to connect and re-treat yourself to the experience of going inwards and being fully present.
Optional excursions
Twice during the week, you will have a break for much of the day to allow you to soak in more of your surroundings, or just relax.
During these days, the retreat will offer optional excursion(s), such as a visit to a village or kayaking/hiking. Aimee will provide specific options catered to the group. You may also wish to stay back at Villa Sumaya for some extra relaxation, spaciousness, or for treatments.
What's included
- Daily morning guided meditation and yoga/movement practice
- Two self-exploratory writing circles on most days
- 7 nights accommodation at Villa Sumaya (double or private)
- Delicious vegetarian breakfast, lunch and dinner
- Unlimited tea/coffee service
- 4+ sacred healing ceremonies (e.g. Mayan fire ceremony, sound healing, sacred sweat)
- Sauna/jacuzzi evening for group
- Use of swimming pool and solar hot tub
- Base gratuities for local staff members
- All taxes
What's not included
- Optional excursions during longer breaks (approximately 60 USD each)
- Spa treatments, massages (85 USD per hour, 110 USD for 1.5 hours, 140 USD for 2 hours)
- Meal protein supplements (fish and chicken 8 USD) or alcohol
- Flights and ground transport (usually shareable) to the retreat
- Travel insurance (strongly recommended)
How to get there
Recommended Airports
GUA
La Aurora International Airport
74 km
Transfer not provided
Arrival by airplane
Please book your flight to arrive at La Aurora International Airport (GUA). Transfer from and to this airport is available upon request.
The closest international airport to Lake Atitlan is Guatemala City La Aurora International Airport, three hours away from Panajachel on Lake Atitlan. From Panajachel, it's a ten-minute scenic boat ride to the private dock at Villa Sumaya.
Private transport to Villa Sumaya
Once Storyteller Within Retreats has your travel plans, the team will arrange your private transportation to Villa Sumaya from the airport, hotels nearby, or from Antigua. Private shuttles are from 100 - 25 USD per person, depending on how many other guests you are sharing with. The team can coordinate with other guests with arrivals or pick-ups at similar times.
The private shuttle will pick you up from the airport or your hotel for the three-hour journey to Panajachel, where it will bring you to the boat dock. From the dock in Panajachel, Storyteller Within Retreats can pre-arrange a private boat ride for 25 - 5 USD per person, depending on how many guests you are sharing with. You can easily get a public boat to the Villa Sumaya dock too (15 quetzals, or 3 USD). The ride is fifteen minutes.
Cancellation Policy
- A reservation requires a deposit of 20% of the total price.
- The deposit is non-refundable, if the booking is cancelled.
- The rest of the payment should be paid 30 days before arrival.
For this organizer you can guarantee your booking through Tripaneer.com. All major credit cards supported.
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