Body love and acceptance may seem like an unattainable concept. Body compassion is all about starting small. From compassion comes acceptance.

In a world that thrives on unrealistic beauty ideals and external validation, we can lose our connection with our personal power and feel discontent with our bodies. That’s why I’ve made it my mission to teach simple yet powerful ways to: practice compassion and connection with your body; experience more peace and grace in the unscripted chaos of life; develop mindfulness skills; and cultivate more appreciation for your unique values and qualities.

Join us for a retreat at the serene, scenic, and peaceful Himalayan Institute in the Poconos and begin or expand upon your own personal body compassion project! With rolling hills, a beautiful pond, and magnificent sunrises and sunsets as our backdrop, this special weekend will include discussion, journaling, yoga, art, and support from a group of like-minded individuals who want to create a more compassionate relationship with their bodies. There will also be plenty of time to explore the grounds, connect with nature and one another, and replenish your mind, body, and spirit with rest and relaxation.

This series is appropriate for anyone who wants to explore how to be kind to their body. Whether you struggle with body image because of diet culture, your past, and/or cultural and societal pressures around weight, race, size, ability, aging, illness, or more—we invite you to join us. Those looking to (re)connect with their bodies after trauma, medical trauma, fertility treatments, pregnancy, injury, illness, and more can also greatly benefit from body compassion work. No yoga experience necessary! And no flexibility required!

This year’s theme: The Revolution Is Within

In a world that constantly demands our performance, obedience, and self-correction, it is a radical act to return to the body—not to fix it, but to listen, tend, and reclaim it.

This year’s Body Compassion Project Retreat—The Revolution Is Within—offers a sacred space for personal and collective transformation. Through gentle movement, somatic awareness, creative expression, and embodied practices, we will explore what it means to come home to ourselves in a time when disconnection is everywhere.

This theme arose organically from last year’s retreat, held just days after a national election, when participants arrived holding grief, urgency, and righteous anger. In our time together, we realized that body compassion isn’t always soft or gentle. Sometimes it roars. Sometimes it burns. And sometimes, it’s the quiet persistence of showing up again and again in a world that teaches us to disappear.

Together, we will engage the body not as a problem to solve, but as a landscape to return to—with reverence, resilience, curiosity, and care. With compassion, we will shed the messages that were never truly ours, honor the ones we’ve chosen to carry, and plant new seeds of compassion, wisdom, and belonging.

This retreat is a space to slow down, come inward, and reimagine what it means to be whole. Not perfect. Not fixed. But deeply, definitely connected to yourself.

Body Compassion is being kind to your body in terms of how you talk to yourself about your body, how you move your body, and feeling present within your body.

This retreat is designed for anyone who wants to cultivate a more compassionate relationship with their body. This is inclusive of body image, but extends beyond that to the relationship with the body as a whole.

What exactly does that mean?

So, when most people think of body image, they think it’s a mental picture of their bodies and what they think and feel about that image. This can include size, shape, attractiveness, and general satisfaction with appearance. Body image is that, but it’s also so much more.

Did you know that in the most recent research, body image is seen as a complicated construct that can include the following?:

• How we relate to our bodies
• How we experience our bodies
• How we connect to our bodies
• How present we are in our bodies
• Actions we take related to our body’s perceived appearance
• Our own unique individual life experiences
• And sociocultural factors such as family, culture, peers, and systems of power and oppression.

All these layers and complexities can make it harder to shift the way you think about, feel about, and feel in your body!

Body Compassion Yoga can help make that shift feel more attainable by breaking it down into small, accessible parts. Body love or body acceptance may feel like impossible, far off dreams, making it hard to take action at all. But compassion is possible. And body compassion is all about starting small. From compassion comes acceptance.

Whether you struggle with body image because of your past, illness, injury, medical trauma, and/or social constructs and societal pressures around weight, race, sex, gender, gender expression, shape, size, ability, injury, aging, or more, we invite you to join us.

No yoga experience necessary!