Skip to main content

Join Us For a Walking Weekend Retreat
at Nettle’s Farm on Lummi Island

September 11-13, 2020

Escape the routines of daily life and ongoing economic and societal upheavals for a weekend of respite and retreat on Lummi Island in Northwest Washington.

Walking Into Acceptance will be a time to tend to your life and connect deeply with yourself. Physically distanced group discussion and activities will be combined with direct experiences to help you shift from survive to thrive and develop your own methods and practices to bring these qualities into your day to day life.

Lodging, meals, and our home for the weekend will be the restful and relaxing Nettles Farm. Meals from the farm and surrounding waters will be prepared by the award winning chef and food innovator Tim West. The retreat will be led by Steve Hindman, a body-based experiential coach from Seattle, Washington and Telluride, Colorado.

The COVID-19 cleaning protocol at Nettles Farm is rigorous. All blankets are enclosed in their own duvet covers, which are washed along with all other bedding after each visit. We have a Green Tech 3000 air purifier in each suite, which is overkill for the spaces. Before and after each stay, we ozone bomb the air for 2 hours. This poisons the air and attacks bacteria and viruses wherever air touches them, rendering them dead. You can be confident that the rugs, couches, and really all surfaces are disinfected when you arrive. Naturally, our cleaning staff wipes down common surfaces as well.

Walking Into Acceptance

  • Combines practical insights from neuroscience and neurobiology with direct experience to activate your restorative networks and systems essential for deep rest, greater creativity, wider perspectives, and personal insight.
  • Will increase your ability to be present with the sensations, feelings, and emotions of your life. This process of embodied transformation helps you to access the joy that lives in your tissues and to move gracefully through the hope and grief that’s here & now. These embodied skills are needed now more than ever as what “normal” continues to drop away. and help you live into the joy and hope that’s here now and the grief and sadness as what was normal continues to drop away.
  • Is your chance to put aside your familiar roles and the constant demands of your daily life for 3 days. To explore the identities you inhabit, sort out those that align with your deepest values from those that don’t, and then choose what identities you want to commit to enhancing and developing in the future.
farmhouse suite entry

About Steve Hindman

Steve has worked with hundreds of clients over thirty years as a body-based experiential coach, helping them clarify and reach their goals and dreams—on skis, bikes, or in kayaks. He works as a private ski instructor in Telluride, CO each winter and lives in Seattle, WA in the summer.

Working with a select number of one-on-one coaching clients, Steve offers workshops and retreats throughout the year, including immersive ski retreats in Telluride. His coaching, retreats, and workshops focus on creating sustainable change through experiences. This process of embodied transformation helps clients align their thoughts and actions with their heart’s desire, which range from creating a new career or relationship, improving job or sport performance, communicating more successfully with co-workers and loved ones, or finding time to recharge and relax each day.

About Tim West

Tim West is a Slow Food chef turned Social Entrepreneur and Food Futurist. He cut his teeth at the Culinary Institute of America and in the kitchens at The St. Regis Hotel in NYC while co-leading the Edible Education Project teaching cooking and farming classes to kids and seniors with dementia with his identical twin brother, Chris.

Since then he’s served as U.S. Delegate to Slow Food’s Terra Madre, worked at U Mass to design a plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, and opened Cafe 6 at Facebook headquarters in California where he discovered the hackathon model of rapid prototyping which led to co-creating Food Hackathons as a means to build out the global food entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Through True West Ventures, his consulting and educational events company, he has designed learning journeys, spoken on panels, advised startups, placed executives and worked with a variety of corporate and non-profit clients.

Itinerary

Friday Evening will start with a beach walk, followed by a welcome dinner from the land and surrounding waters of Nettles Farm.

Saturday Morning will start with a wonderful breakfast of fresh roasted coffee and Nettles Farm eggs, after which we will look at the neuroscience of being present and focus on sensing our external and internal environments as we walk to come present with and accept who and where we are right now, which is where any journey starts.

Saturday Afternoon, after a casual lunch, we will walk deeper into who we are right now and explore who we want to be in the future by walking into our current identities and sensing what does and doesn’t align with our heart’s desire and our most cherished values.

Saturday Evening will feature appetizers and drinks on the deck, followed by dinner harvested from the farm.

Sunday Morning, will once again start with a healthy and flavorful breakfast, before we will walk into the future we long for and commit to doing now what our future self will look back and thank us for.

Sunday Afternoon will be a time for integration and a light lunch, and end by 2:30 pm to allow time to travel home with ease and comfort.

Between focused group sessions and individual experiences, the weekend will also offer opportunities to explore and enjoy the farm, the island, and surrounding waters.

Walking and other activities will be at your pace. Ideally you should be comfortable walking casually for 30-45 minutes, but you needn’t be an avid walker or hiker. If that level of activity is not available to you, quiet time on the porch, in the garden, or on shorter walks will work just as well. More strenuous excursions will be available, but optional.

Details & Logistics

Date: September 11-13, 2020

Meals: All meals will be provided from Friday dinner to Sunday lunch. There are outdoor cooking and sitting places that allow for social distancing.

Getting There: Lummi Island is 120 miles north of the Seattle-Tacoma airport, 100 miles north of Seattle itself, and about 60 miles south of Vancouver, BC. A short ferry ride is required from the mainland. This weekend takes place during a 3 week period known as drydock, when the car ferry is in the shipyard, and a passenger only ferry makes the 5 minute crossing. Masks are required on the ferry, and on the van ride to Nettles Farm.

More Information: Upon registration, an information packet will be emailed to you with more detailed driving directions, what to pack, how to prep, and details on the meals and how to inform us of any food sensitives and allergies you have.

Cost: $1295 per person includes all lodging, meals, and excursions.

Our COVID Protocols:

  • If we must cancel an in-person training due to COVID, all participants will be offered a full refund
  • If you register and then decide that you need to cancel your registration due to COVID, you will receive a full refund
  • If you have pre-existing immune health conditions, we recommend the highest level of precaution before deciding to attend.
  • We will be taking the temperature of everyone each morning of the training.
  • Everyone will be asked to wash or sanitize hands at all breaks. We will provide sanitizer and washing stations. We also recommend that you bring your own sanitizer
  • Doorknobs and shared surfaces will be sanitized at every break.
  • We will keep windows and doors open, as the temperature allows. A portion of the training will take place outside in the open air. Bring layers.
  • Individuals are expected to communicate their personal comfort levels and boundaries in regards to physical distancing and sanitation, and all participants and leaders are required to respect the boundaries and requests made by any and all.
  • A physical distance of 6’ may not be able to be maintained during the entire weekend due to circumstances or simply the flow of people and events. If your boundary and comfort level is violated at any time, please opt out of the situation.
What we ask of you when traveling to the training:
  • COVID-19 Testing. It’s not a requirement, but we urge you to get tested before you come and inform us of the results. If you test positive you will be eligible for a refund.
  • At all public spaces, restaurants, gas stations, air travel use maximum precautions such as washing your hands frequently and wearing a mask.
  • Do not come if you show symptoms i.e. temperature, soreness, coughing, etc. We will refund you if that is the case.

For more travel advisories and information, please refer to: