Today we’d like to introduce you to Shari Fox.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Shari. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
One way to talk about the start of Soul Nourish Retreats, and me as a leader there, was a yoga teacher training I “accidentally” signed up for in Baja Mexico when I was younger.
We had to move to Atlanta overnight when my now-husband’s mother was diagnosed with two ovarian cancer brain tumors. So, I showed up with no idea what would be next.
That was early 2011. I found my home in the Atlanta yoga scene. The retreats grew out of workshops at a local yoga studio, as I had been teaching movement and meditation for years at that point. I was just beginning to understand the role of personality type, psyche development, and the psycho-spiritual search that we humans to undertake when I let my first retreat.
I firmly believe that there are seeds planted in us that will guide us in the course of our lives, and our job is to take off everything–all of the identifications, all of the assumptions, all of the “shoulds” that we pick up from our parents and society, and discover what is this seed. For some people it’s the soul’s yearning, for some it’s a dream; for Joseph Campbell, it was following your bliss. Many of us we’ve never been exposed this idea, or if we have it’s been in an airy-fairy manner and we probably haven’t been given the tools to really explore it for ourselves. So with this in mind, I believe that my personal track in this work of bringing together like-hearted people, particularly women, began when I was very young.
I always had a calling to be in nature, and I came to equate nature with spirit. It seemed like the world “out there” was in balance and the world of men was out of balance. It took me a long time to realize that in fact we have balance within us and we are part of nature. I think of the retreats as a small way that I can help us to experience and reconnect with our true nature. It’s something the yogis have been talking about for thousands of years, the Buddhists have developed full systems of mythology on, and many of the religions point towards. When I wake up in the morning I want to serve this purpose, in whatever small and meaningful way I can. My goal is to connect with that life inside of me that pulls me on. And, if along the way, I can have the opportunity to connect with other people who want the same and offer space for people to discover how to follow their bliss, well then that’s a good day. That’s a gift.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Hmm, in the greatest sense of things, isn’t it always a smooth road? Meaning life has its way with us and we get where were supposed to go, we’re meant to go. The smoothness of my road has not had to do with the road itself, but with my resistances to go down it.
This business continues to be both the love and the struggle of my life. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. What I mean by that is that it calls forth the best of me, invites me to show up and grow, pushing my edges and never getting too complacent. I’ve been fortunate that the work has always been really well-received.
Please tell us about Soul Nourish Retreats.
Oh god, it’s fun! We specialize in self-discovery retreats for women using yoga, meditation, laughter, and the Enneagram of Personality Type as tools. We offer local Women’s Weekends in North Georgia in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains every season. We offer exotic travel retreats and soul vacations and places like Maui, Sicily, and Todos Santos. We specialize in transformative experiences that allow people to step outside of their day-to-day routine and their habitual ways of seeing themselves–as a mother, an executive, the person who’s always responsible, the person who needs to stay upbeat, the person who is struggling with depression.
We give them space to see who they are outside of these roles. We specialize in integrating the spiritual parts of ourselves with the everyday, human parts of ourselves. When we can do this our lives are more satisfying, our decisions are clearer and we steadier in making them.
It’s lifelong work, and I’m excited to get to share it with the people who are looking for this kind of wild, real life. Your background doesn’t matter. If you’re yoga teacher, or if you have no experience in yoga. If you’re really into psychology, self-help and personal growth, or if you’ve never tried these things. We’ve had women come on retreat in their late teens to their late 70s. When we travel, the staff at retreat centers will often say to us, “We’ve never seen a ‘yoga’ group as diverse and kind as yours. What are you doing?” It’s moving and affirmative to me. My greatest joy right now is my retreat partner Mandy Roberts who continues to bring laughter and boldness into our work. She coined the hashtag #morethanayogaretreat, and you know what, she’s right.
Soul Nourish Retreats are a deep opportunity to connect with what matters most to you. At our final checkout circle on the last day at least one person says sheepishly (like we’ve never heard it confessed), “I thought I was going on a yoga retreat. But this was amazing! This is life-changing!
This is what I didn’t even know I needed!” Now, as a business owner, how do you market that? We tend to play a role in big life transitions.
Based on the integrated psychology and spirituality we do on retreat; these decisions are not whims. They’re coming from the deepest truth of who we are (at least as much of that as we are able to access). Our retreats are built from presence, in really being here. Not being distracted by my thoughts, my endless urges, my to-do list.
We help women find themselves over and over again with life-changing practices and friendly, authentic community on weekend programs and beautiful destination retreats.
I try to always give people tools that they can use when they go home. In my mind, retreats are not meant to be something just to escape my daily life. We unpack our bags and we’re hit with the deluge emails as we jump back into the rat race and think when can I go on retreat again?!
Retreats are meant to be a time we step out of daily lives to reconnect with whatever we may have lost along the way. And through that reconnection, we learn how to bring it back into our normal lives. This is how we create real change, both in ourselves and in the world. I’m proud of the programs we offer and the women who come on retreat because, firstly, I don’t know of a lot of retreats that offer this experience and knowledge of personality and presence, and secondly, because they are the ones going back home and living anew.
My retreat partner Mandy always tells about her favorite moment on retreat. One the women brought her husband to Tulum, Mexico, with us on a co-ed retreat and just cracked up in yoga class. She was laughing so hard we had to stop teaching. She just kept saying how happy she was finally she could do something better than him because he was so good at everything. (He was struggling to touch his toes.) Throughout the course of the week we fell in love with this couple and it gave me great joy to see them exploring their personality types, getting to know each other freshly on the retreat, and then taking this back home and applying it to their family and kids.
Every time I see them out on the square in Decatur or posting on Facebook I feel like I’m part of their family now. I see how much the yoga, the Enneagram and this specific retreat experience has opened up all of us.
Most of us aren’t usually thinking about nourishing our souls–we’re thinking about how to get her kids to school on time, how to rekindle the romance in our relationship, if we’re satisfied in our jobs, and so on.
We sort of instinctively know that if we’re able to calm down all the stress and re-center, our lives will be better. So we go to yoga, we go to church, we go out and share a bottle of wine with our girlfriends. What most of us didn’t learn, what’s not taught in schools, is how to come back to ourselves over and over again during the day well we need to. This is what I mean by presence.
Not getting so wrapped up in all things “out there” that I forget about what’s going on “in here”. The retreats are not necessarily spiritual, they’re human. And anytime we spend enough time with what’s going on inside our humanity, we come to the spiritual. It’s just a natural part of who we are and it wants to be nurtured, too. I’m super grateful to be surrounded by a community of people who are connected by this.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
You know, it struck me in answering these questions that I don’t need to say anything fancy. I just need to say the truth. I suppose that’s what’s up the heart of all of this teaching on retreat. I tried to create a space in the world where we could be authentic, where we could delve deeper into who we are and what matters to us, and where we were supported and celebrated for whatever we found. I wanted to place where people could feel understood and understand themselves better.
I can’t say that I would have done anything differently, but I might have done it with more gusto. With less fear. Each year when people come on retreat I’m continually reminded how much we need this work.
I was recently asked to be a presenter at Dirty South Yoga Festival and I wasn’t sure how my women’s “soulwork” would be received so I opted to play it safe with a standard class time instead of this big, fancy teaching slot. Well, the class filled up so quickly and it was such a hit I got the message: Put the magic out there.
“Women need space. To gather together, to let our hair down. To simply be (ourselves). And in that space, something magical happens…We relax a little (of that grasping to hold it all together), we soften. We remember our dreams. We reconnect to the strength and magnificence that is here waiting for us.” I wrote these words sitting in the waiting room of my holistic OB/GYN on Lawrenceville Highway at the conception of Soul Nourish Retreats. It’s just now that I’m realizing the divine humor in that.
I didn’t grow up with many strong female role models, as is common to so many of us. I was raised in a system where the power of the feminine, her uniqueness and her nurturance, were suppressed. I realized that it’s my responsibility being born into and identifying with a feminine body to understand exactly what is my contribution to make.
I wish I could say that I intended to work with women, but it just happened that way–as life often does when it’s rolling along and we wake up enough to notice the trends. (Then, it’s easier to get on board with them, and to enjoy them, no?) Working with primarily with women is inviting me to inquire into and to try to understand what it means to be a woman in the world today. The Dalai Lama once said the world will be saved by the Western, and I have long wondered what that meant. Philosophers and teachers have been talking about the necessary role of women since recorded humanity.
But before we get into any of that, I had to come to terms things like body confidence, making peace with the middle school girls who picked on me, all of my sexual encounters, fear of judgment, competition with other women, and my own discomfort with the way that the feminine energy has been portrayed. When you sit with a group of women who one by one take off the mask of “this is what I do for a living” or “this is what my husband expects of me” or “this is my feminist side, my spiritual side, my got-my-shit-together side,” whatever…there are millions of them and we each have them.
When you sit with the group of women who take these masks off it encourages you, me, to do the same. That sense of being able to be with whatever I find under the mask, being able to see the beauty and strength in other women, reflect truth back to me.
Universal truths: I’m strong and knowledgeable and I have beauty of my own. I don’t need to fix my sisters, nor do they need to fix me. It’s an immensely powerful to learn how to just be.
Pricing:
- Women’s Weekend: Autumn Renew & Refresh October 6 – 8, 2017 All-inclusive packages. (Early Bird & first-time-retreat rates from $695 / regular pricing from $745)
- Maui Hawai’i Soul Work & Sacred Yoga Retreat October 19 – 25, 2017 Sold out.
- New Year’s Women’s Weekend January 5 – 7, 2018 (Early Bird & first-time-retreat rates from $695 / regular pricing from $745)
- Women’s Weekend: Dive into Love March 23 – 25, 2018 (Early Bird & first-time-retreat rates from $695 / regular pricing from $745)
- Sicily Retreat: Yoga, Wine & Sacred Travel in Italy April 29 – May 5, 2018 Few spaces remaining.
- Mother’s Day Women’s Weekend May 11 – 13, 2018 (Early Bird & first-time-retreat rates from $695 / regular pricing from $745)
- Sign up special pre-sale savings up to $200 on our next co-ed retreat & Todos Santos Soul Vacation (only available to those on our list, both programs to be announced soon)
Contact Info:
- Website: soulnourishretreats.com
- Email: shari@soulnourishretreats.com
Image Credit:
Linden Tree Photography
2TPHOTO
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