Kushi Institute Logo 4
New Year's Retreat

December 28, 2012 - January 1, 2013    


Image of Winter Trees

 

Enjoy four days of:  

Meditation & contemplation practices 

Cooking classes 

Unique exercise &  movement routines
Nine-Start directional analysis
Delicious meals of fresh organic whole foods
(gluten free & low-salt  options)

Strengthening brunches 

New Year Eve's gourmet dinner 

Serene woodland setting & mountain views for restful, relaxed experiences

 

 

Open time options:
Socialize, relax, and enjoy the grounds
   

 

Treat yourself to private 
sessions
*  

   - Restorative massage 

   - Other exceptional
      body modalities
to
      improve skeletal &

      organ well-being

   - Optimize your health  

      with individualized
      macrobiotic  

      consultation or menu
      planning  

    - Nine Star Ki personal
      chart and analysis

    - Energy healing  

For complete descriptions 
of private session options
click HERE    
 
* Separate fees, not
     included in program tuition
 

 
Explore the beautiful
Berkshires, click here:
   · Art Museums         
   ·
Skiing, Ice Skating, or
     Snowshoeing

   ·
Theater Events
   · Music Festivals

   · Wildlife Sanctuaries

   · Antiquing 

   · Outlet Shops
   

 

Come sense, feel, and experience the start of the New Year in this uniquely transformative retreat, situated on our six-hundred acre natural wonderland in the beautiful Berkshire mountains.

Use this forward-looking time to let go of old habits that define and confine, and welcome in the New Year - ready to step into a healthy, happy, rewarding, and renewed life.  

 

Become an open doorway - connecting  

to your deepest ability to be nurtured and nourished, increasing in strength, flexibility, and vitality - and thrive! 
 

Give yourself a few restful and restorative days before the bustle of the New Year.

Come get inspired by integrating meditation, movement, and macrobiotics
to nurture your body and soul.  

 

Feel the healing power of breath, posture, and macrobiotic foods, to increase awareness, insight, and pleasure. Dig deep into these nourishing properties which provide an expanded sense of wholeness, supporting your understanding of your own potential and capacity for extraordinary health. 

Enjoy cooking classes as you learn how delicious macrobiotic dishes can support spiritual and physical well-being.    

 

Explore Nine-Star Ki energetics, a vast and insightful system that can help transform your understanding of connections and relationships, finances, health, and success.     


Benefit from gentle, exceptional movement classes that encourage you to move in more flexible, effortless, and empowering ways and learn to tap into your body's potential, finding
innovative strategies that help improve your posture, balance, and tonality regardless of age or fitness level.

 

Delight in our delicious and beautifully prepared, organic, gourmet New Year's Eve buffet dinner, followed by a celebration party, sharing in music, dance, and joy with participants and staff.

  

 

This retreat is facilitated by Kushi Institute staff 
whose experience and talent span a large 
range of macrobiotics, movement,  
meditation, and transformative modalities.  


New Year Banner

Retreat Highlights  


Nine Star Ki:

Michio Kushi introduced the Nine-Star Ki approach to understanding the movement of energy, both in ourselves and in our environment, in his Boston lectures in the seventies.  Originating from the "law of eternal change" and embodying many ancient Asian philosophies, Nine-Star Ki shines a clarifying light on past events and future probabilities.  It is a powerful tool for personal growth.

 

In this workshop, with Edward Esko, you'll gain:

  • Practical information designed to provide an understanding of your own personality and your relationship with others
  • Greater knowledge to benefit your health, relationships, finances, and success
  • Guidelines for making the most of challenges and opportunities that await you in the coming year
 

Cooking Classes:

Expand your knowledge of the physical, emotional, and spiritual dynamics that underlie macrobiotic health with two cooking classes designed to engage your senses, stabilize your metabolism, and leave you feeling nurtured and delighted.     

 

In these two workshops, with Bettina Zumdick, you'll gain: 

  • Informative tips and recipes designed to give you a broader understanding of food energetics and cooking styles that can maximize health benefits  
  • More satisfying dishes to astound your family and friends, loaded with valuable nutrients, health-boosting enzymes, and the savory and sweet tastes perfect for holiday events       
  • Guidelines for counteracting the stress and over-stimulation that can come along with holiday festivities, to help you remain peaceful, grounded and happy   
  • Hands-on experience making holiday delights so delicious you'll want to make them again and again to share with family and friends. Experience fun foods for the New Year and gain a greater understanding of how macrobiotic menus can add to  your spiritual and physical well being, leaving you feeling satisfied, healthy, and peaceful.     

 
Meditation and Contemplative Practices
:  

A retreat from our regular lives can bring about a new way of looking at ourselves and our world, opening spaces within us where deep and powerful discoveries and changes can occur.  This can bring about " joyousness", positively and profoundly affecting our health in mind, body and spirit, enhancing our relationship to our inner self and our external experience with others. More and more scientific studies are confirming that meditation brings about greater well-being and actually changes the capacity and physicality of your brain!  

 

In these workshops, shared between Bettina Zumdick, Misha Forrester, and Olaf Fischer you'll have  opportunities to:   

  • Explore a variety of meditative practices that include following the breath, moving meditation, chanting, and guided visualization
  • Develop moment-to-moment awareness, observing and witnessing your thoughts, feelings and sensations  
  • Utilize mindfulness-based strategies that may help dissolve critical, habitual ways of thinking and acting that often judgmentally hijack your bliss
  • Slow down your breathing rate, blood pressure, and heart rate to discover how mindfulness can cultivate positive, emotional states in ourselves and others, to become more patient, kind, accepting, and compassionate, thus improving overall mood and health and producing lower stress responses.    

Movement Practices:

Develop optimal, functional movement:

Align your hips and spine, balance with both feet, and connect from your head to your toes using your whole body through Feldenkrais Method Awareness Through Movement®, and Bones for Life®, internationally acclaimed therapeutic systems of health and growth that importantly increase proprioception (the sensory modality in your brain that gives you awareness of your body's internal responses and self-regulates posture and movement).  Based on the principles of physics and biomechanics, an empirical understanding of human physiology and the connection between mind and body, this method provides a modern day, practiced program for the perennial ideal of a healthy mind in a healthy body.  The guided lessons can dramatically improve range-of-motion, support a stronger and more stable skeleton, as well as provide you with a better self-image. 

 

In these workshops, with Misha Forrester, you will be guided in:

  • Slow, gentle, pleasurable movements designed to communicate between muscle, bone, and brain for increased neuroplasticity 
  • Building a capacity for greater body wisdom, coordination, ease and grace; better posture; and if you have been experiencing pain or stiffness, reduction in both, by using the whole body and by responding, knowingly, to your own movement cues 
  • Developing weight-bearing strategies to build stronger bones, better circulation, and confidence in moving and walking upright -- a great planned program for the New Year! 

To read about the Feldenkrais Method® click HERE and enjoy the articles on the right side; also, view this YouTube demonstration.   

 

Restore and balance your flow of energy:

Daily, early morning exercises will focus on an array of gentle stretches and meditations to cultivate good health, mental clarity, and spiritual development.  Michio Kushi recommends these routine movements as a method to harmonize the body.  Many of these techniques and postures,  including breath work and self-massage, are part of well-known disciplines such as as shiatsu, acupressure, do-in, and yogic exercises and asanas, all designed to establish and maintain greater chi (life force) development.    

 

Follow Olaf Fischer and Misha Forrester using a variety of gentle stretches, tapping, and directed, sequential movements to   

  • Stimulate circulation, lymph fluid, and strengthen and tone organs and tissues for wellness and increased vitality
  • Improve muscle tone for greater strength and stamina  
  • Reduce stress and tension for greater sense of calm and inner focus  
  • Cleanse your breath for a stronger universal life-force   

    

New Year's Eve Gourmet Buffet Dinner  

Featuring an abundance of sensational dishes, our New Year's dinner is designed by macrobiotic chef and cooking teacher, Amber Maisano, and will be prepared by Amber and our team of other expert chefs from the Kushi Institute kitchen staff. 

      New Year's Eve Celebration Party  

 

Ring in the New Year with other Kushi Institute guests along with our staff at this celebratory party, which will include music and dancing, snacks, and a midnight toast.    

  

FULL DAILY SCHEDULE - CLICK HERE

  

  

OPTIONS DURING YOUR STAY:  

  

During breaks in the program schedule enjoy strolling along our scenic country roads. According to the weather, feel free to bring your walking poles, running shoes, cross-country skis, and/or snowshoes.

Private sessions
(not included in program tuition) offered during the week include: Nine-Star Ki, Restorative Massage, Shiatsu, Macrobiotic Consultation, Menu Planning, Feldenkrais Functional Integration®, and Energy Healing. 
   

 

 

  

Retreat Facilitators      

Bettina Zumdick
Bettina Zumdick

Retreat Topics 

  New Year Cooking Classes 

  Meditation 

   

    

 

Kushi Institute Senior Macrobiotic Teacher and Counselor Bettina Zumdick  is a native of the Baltic Sea area of Germany, where she started Macrobiotics in 1985, and simultaneously studied Food Science at the University of Muenster.  

 

She has taught and counseled Macrobiotics and other Body-Mind-Spirit related subjects such as meditation, chanting, and intuitive counseling in Europe and the United States for over 25 years.  

 

Realizing the complex interconnections between body, mind and spirit, and through her own healing journey from Lyme disease, Bettina knows that it is possible to improve your health and to deepen the quality of all your experiences in life. It is her intent to share the knowledge and wisdom of this path for better health, vitality and being able to pursue your most passionate dreams in life.

   

Private Sessions Offered: Macrobiotic Counseling, Macrobiotic Menu Planning, Energy Healing   
Olaf Fischer
Olaf Fischer Kushi Institute Executive Director
Retreat Topics
  Morning Exercise
  Meditation Visualization
 

   

 


Kushi Institute Executive Director and Teacher
Olaf Fischer
has been involved in the Macrobiotic movement for more than twenty years, including nine years as Executive Director of Kushi Institute.

 
His interest in Macrobiotics began out of curiosity and a desire to help people in their healing process.
He has lived and studied the macrobiotic life style with eminent teachers of Macrobiotics such as Herman and Cornelia Aihara, Cecil Levin, David and Cindy Briscoe, and Michio Kushi.

Olaf had his own Macrobiotic Counseling practice in San Francisco, California, offering services such as counseling, cooking classes, personal chef services, and body work for many years before taking over as director at Kushi Institute.

 

Olaf is licensed by the Empowerment Institute of New York, and is an experienced empowerment workshop leader, teaching visualization and meditation practices. He strongly believes that practicing a sensible Macrobiotic dietary lifestyle which includes visualization and meditation can lead to a fulfilling, healthy and happy  life. 

Private Sessions Offered: Shiatsu  
Misha Forrester
Misha Forrester

Retreat Topics 

  Feldenkrais  Awareness

  Through Movement®

  Bones for Life®

  Contemplative Practice   

 


Guild Certified Feldenkrais Method
®,
and Bones for Life® practitioner, Licensed Massage Therapist, and yin-yoga instructor, Misha Forrester shares her time between the Kushi Institute and a private practice in restorative massage, Feldenkrais Functional Integration®, and teaching Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement®.  Her clients include those with cancer, osteoarthritis, and fibromyalgia; with movement impairments such as MS, Parkinson's, stroke recovery, shoulder issues, and hip replacements; as well as yoga teachers, dancers, and those wishing  to increase mobility and performance.

An effective method for reclaiming childlike flexibility and ease of
movement, Feldenkrais® private sessions and
public classes are transformative, resulting in greater movement reorganization and alignment that makes long-term connections between brain and muscle, nurturing the whole self. 

 

Misha's background in natural healing modalities, in addition to being a meditator, is evident in her therapeutic workshops which often compliment other mindfulness trainings.


Private Sessions Offered: 
Restorative Massage, Feldenkrais Functional Integration®

 

Edward Esko

 

EdEskowith symbol 

Retreat Topics

  Nine Star Ki Analysis   

 

Kushi Institute Senior Macrobiotic Teacher and Counselor Edward Esko is a key personality in the macrobiotic diet /health revolution. Edward trained extensively with Michio Kushi, and in 1972 he became vice president of the East West Foundation, a non-profit macrobiotic educational organization founded by Michio.

 

Edward has lectured in over a dozen countries, guiding thousands of people toward better health through the macrobiotic diet.Authoring and editing more than twenty texts on macrobiotic philosophy and cooking, many of which have been translated into languages other than English, he was honored with the Aveline Kushi award in 2006 for his contributions. With Michio, he co-authored, among others, Macrobiotic Approach to Cancer (1982), and Nine Star Ki (1991). Edward has served as a Kushi Institute faculty member since 1977, devoting much of his energy to the Kushi Institute's Macrobiotic Leadership Program.

 

Private Sessions Offered: Macrobiotic Counseling, Nine Star Ki personal profile 

 



  

 

 

 

Kushi Institute  



Campus Road and Trees


Image Kushi Institute Campus


Kushi Institute
198 Leland Road
Becket, MA 01223

 



 
  

 

Fees

  • Program fee:$600

      EARLY BIRD SPECIAL:

    • $25.00 OFF when paid in full from September 16 to November 1, 2012

Fee includes the full program and all meals.
Arrival time by 3:30pm on Friday, December 28; program ends after brunch, 12 noon Tuesday, January 1st  

.  

 

  • Housing options:Below prices are NOT per night - they include all 4 nights!    
    • $75 - Small single room in North Hall with shared dormitory style bathrooms.
    • $75 ea - Shared double or triple room (per person) in North Hall with shared dormitory style bathrooms. 
    • $125 per person - Shared double room (per person) in the Main House with shared bathrooms along the hallway.
    • $250 - Single room in the Main House with shared bathrooms along the hallway.
    • $430 - Private Bath. These rooms have either 2 or 3 single beds, and can be used either as single room, or for friends or family wishing to share the room. 


  • Economical airport shuttle - only $50
    Each way between Bradley International Airport and Kushi Institute, inquire when registering   

  • Private session fees and information click here.

  

For More Information
or to Register
    


800-975-8744
 

Int'l 413-623-6457

 




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