A 3-Day Restorative Experience
Friday, August 21, 2026 – Sunday August 23, 2026 • Garrison Institute
The Unburdening retreat offers those who identify as BIPOC women of color, a chance to reconnect with themselves and remember that our imaginations hold the power to make new futures.
Why Join
The psychological malaise caused by living in America is peculiar and heavy, and intergenerationally held. As BIPOC women, we feel this. In today’s world of white supremacy, racism, xenophobia, and genocide—we are often operating on our last nerve. What we truly need is care for ourselves. This care allows us to set down our burdens, remove our armor, and finally breathe. It helps our hearts find grounding in the dark depths that grow our potential.
We invite you to this three-day retreat to unburden and recreate with the intelligent beauty of your body, mind, and spirit. You will explore somatic attunement to the body’s wisdom. You will have the opportunity to enjoy the summer sun and wander the gardens and forest. Portions of the retreat will be held in silence, providing space to listen deeply to yourself and find the voice that may have been quieted or overlooked in your daily life.
What You Will Gain
- Reconnection with yourself through expressive movement and theater, poetry, painting, and bookbinding
- Tools for regulating the nervous system through creativity breathwork, chanting, meditation, and gentle movement
- Discovery of how process-based art-making serves as a mirror for the self, guiding you toward a deeper, more authentic alignment with your emotions
- A deep remembering that you are creative, a dreamer, and that your imagination holds the power to make new futures
What We Will Do
Arriving Ground into the space and into each other. Begin the work of setting down what you’ve been carrying.
Moving Through Kundalini yoga, expressive arts, contemplative practice, and somatic exploration woven across the three days. Each experience is an invitation to listen more deeply to yourself.
Resting Time in creative stillness. Time in artful absorption. Time in nature. Time that belongs entirely to you.
Returning A closing that honors what has shifted and prepares you to carry it forward.
All practices are optional, trauma-informed, and accessible regardless of prior experience.
Who Should Attend
This retreat is for BIPOC women who are ready to set down their burdens and finally breathe.
Especially relevant if you are:
- Feeling the weight of living in a body the world does not always make room for
- Carrying grief, exhaustion, or stress that has built up over time
- Longing to remember what pleasure, rest, and joy feel like in your own body
- Seeking connection with others who understand what it means to hold space for others, and are ready to remember what it feels like to be held
- Ready to remember that your creativity, dreaming, and imagination are sources of power
- Craving beauty, play, stillness, and the company of people who get it
No prior experience with yoga, meditation, or expressive arts is needed.
Our Commitment: We cultivate a respectful, contemplative space that honors diverse experiences, identities, and backgrounds. All practices are optional and trauma-informed. You are invited to participate in whatever way serves your wellbeing.
Questions? Contact us at CBRProject@garrisoninstitute.org Learn more about CBR: www.garrisoninstitute.org/programs/contemplative-based-resilience
FACILITATORS
This retreat is led by Arisa White in collaboration with the Garrison Institute’s Contemplative-Based Resilience team
Arisa White is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College and a Cave Canem Fellow whose work bridges rigorous literary craft and somatic healing. An award-winning poet and multidisciplinary artist, she is the author of Who’s Your Daddy, co-editor of Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart, and co-author of Biddy Mason Speaks Up, part of the Fighting for Justice series for young readers. As a certified Kundalini Yoga teacher, Arisa integrates breathwork, mantra, and movement into her creative pedagogy, helping writers bypass the inner critic to access visceral truths. She views writing as a physical act of release; her workshops create soft landings for Black women to dismantle the armor of survival through the dual technologies of verse and nervous system regulation. Her work consistently explores the intersectional realities of having a racialized and gendered body. Arisa’s excellence in letters has earned her nominations for the NAACP Image Award and the Lambda Literary Award. She is the recipient of the Per Diem Poetry Prize, the Maine Literary Award, and the Nautilus Book Award, among others. Her creative reach extends to the stage as the librettist for Post Pardon: The Opera (forthcoming from Ecstatic Motion Press in 2026) and into public spaces with her poem installation, look after your heart, displayed at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. Beyond her creative practice, she serves on the Community Advisory Board for the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Learn more at arisawhite.com.
Melissa Small Cooper is an oil painter and art educator whose work is rooted in themes of care and connection. Her experiences as a nurturer have deepened her attentiveness and patience, qualities that infuse both her artistic practice and teaching with sensitivity to observation, detail, and storytelling. Through painting, she explores growth, fragility, and the beauty of shared human experience, creating spaces that invite reflection and healing. Cooper maintains an active exhibition practice throughout the Hudson Valley and serves on the board of the Garrison Art Center, supporting exhibition planning and community engagement. Alongside her studio practice, Cooper has served as a public school art educator for more than a decade and leads community workshops that guide participants in intuitive painting, close observation, and handmade book arts. Influenced by her love of gardening and her lived experience of motherhood, her paintings explore the parallels between cultivating a garden and tending to relationships, with others and with oneself. Through attentive, layered mark-making, she invites participants to slow down, listen inward, and honor the quiet wisdom that emerges through artmaking. At The Unburdening, Melissa will guide participants in book-binding and observational painting practices that support reflection, release, and reclamation. She offers artmaking as both a grounding ritual and a generative possibility. Explore melissasmall.com
Isabel Saez, LCSW, is a bilingual Latina, first generation born in New York City, unceded Native Lenape lands. A graduate of New York University in clinical social work, she has practiced for over 20 years with adults, couples, and families. Her work encompasses a range of life challenges from abuse, family, marital & other relational conflicts, anxiety, depression, grief, trauma, and the impacts of systemic injustice. She serves in both English and Spanish.
Her approach to healing is decolonizing, relational with a strength-based focus, and a trauma-informed, equity-abiding lens. She draws from multiple models including family & other systems, mindfulness meditation, somatic practices, indigenous focusing, ancestral, collective, and historical orientations.
In her practice, she believes in the power of education and in skill building. This includes awareness of the body-heart-mind, the neurobiology of stress, nervous system regulation, co-regulation, mindfulness meditation, self-compassion, and somatic practices for resilience and resourcing.
Details
Accessibility: We welcome participants of all abilities. Please share accommodation needs during registration or contact us at CBRProject@garrisoninstitute.org.
Our Commitment: We cultivate a respectful, contemplative space that honors diverse experiences, identities, and backgrounds. All practices are optional and trauma-informed. You are invited to participate in whatever way serves your wellbeing.
SCHOLARSHIPS
There are a limited number of partial scholarships available for this retreat. Please visit us here for more information, and to apply. Please do not sign up for the retreat if you have submitted an application. Please wait to hear from us. For questions, please contact us at: scholarships@garrisoninstitute.org.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need prior meditation or mindfulness experience? No. All practices are designed for beginners and those new to contemplative approaches. Our facilitators create a welcoming space for everyone, regardless of experience level.
What if I can only attend part of the retreat? We encourage attending the full three days to enable a more harmonious gathering that fosters meaningful and deep connection.
What should I bring? Comfortable clothing for movement and rest, a journal if you like to write, and an open heart. Lodging and all meals are included in your registration. More detailed preparation suggestions will be sent after you register.
What if I need to cancel? Please notify us as soon as possible at events@garrisoninstitute.org so we can open your spot to someone on the waitlist.
Can I share this with friends, co-conspirators, and colleagues? Absolutely. Please share widely with anyone you think would find this experience nourishing.
Register Now
After registering, you will receive:
- Pre-retreat preparation suggestions
- A brief set of questions to help us understand how creative art expression fits in your life
- Information about the retreat and what to expect
To honor the depth of the work, space is kept intimate and limited. If the retreat fills, you can add yourself to our waitlist and we will notify you of future offerings.
Questions? Contact us at CBRProject@garrisoninstitute.org
Learn more about CBR: www.garrisoninstitute.org/programs/contemplative-based-resilience
The Garrison Institute taps the power of contemplation, wisdom traditions, and contemporary science to help build a more compassionate and resilient future. Our initiatives include Contemplative-Based Resilience, Pathways to Planetary Health, Meta Economics, and Spirituality and Social Change. We hold multiple retreats and virtual events throughout the year. For more information, visit www.garrisoninstitute.org
ACCOMMODATIONS