The Experience at
The Edify Retreat
Included On This Page:
Description of ACTIVITIES
HOUSING & FOOD
FAQ
Workshops are interactive lectures on various self-improvement topics directly applicable to your current state in life. Each assigned presenter carefully ponders and prepares their workshop based on the group’s needs. Participants of the retreat can volunteer ideas for workshops, and some of the most impactful moments of past retreats took place during their presentations. A workshop could involve journaling, guided visualization, discussion as a group or one-on-one, breath work, drawing, listening, even dancing or singing. The goal is to inspire new insights about your life and add practical tools to your self-improvement arsenal.
Some Workshop Examples from past retreats:
– The Hero’s Guide To Mapmaking: Building A Map For Your Life’s Journey
– Finding, Following, and Sharing Your Passions: Lessons Learned Through Hoop Dance
– You Are The Magic: Discover Your 10s, Visualize Your Story
– The Power of Interpersonal Leadership: How Recognizing Self-Deception Will Transform Your Relationships
– Transforming Your World Through Breath-Work: Unlocking Emotions & Energy To Heal, Get Clear On What We Want, and Step Into Our True Divine Power
– The Expression Circle: A Space for Honoring Honesty
– Embarking On Your Dream: Using Mindful Stratagem To Begin a New Chapter, Overcome the Fear of Your Potential, and Discover Your Personal Power
– In The Beginning Was the Word: A Discussion On How Our Core Beliefs Shape Our Perceptions of Ourselves, Others, and Our Potential for Impacting The World.
Amid the hustle of every day life, it can be challenging to find time to write down what we are discovering about ourselves. At the retreats, we make time to be still and ponder on meaningful things we may not otherwise take time for. These prompted journaling activities can be referred back to again and again after you leave the retreat and move on with your life.
EXAMPLE EXERCISE: You are given twenty minutes with a simple journaling prompt: Define success in your life in the most specific terms you can. What does your greatest life look like? Write down categories like Health, Career, Personal Goals, Family Life, Social Life, etc. What does it mean to succeed in these areas to you? And, in the next six months, how far will you go to reach that definition?
Simulations entail using our imaginations to act out high-stakes situations in a group setting for the purpose of transformative learning. Each simulation has symbolic meaning and significance that has the potential to deeply move a participant. In these activities, we can dive into our reactions under physical and emotional stresses and gain perspective that will improve the choices we make each day. After each simulation, we debrief what happened, reconnect with each other, and write down individual discoveries.
EXAMPLE: Imagine you are on a sinking ship with twenty people. You all want to escape to safety, but theres a problem. There is only one emergency lifeboat with only ten seats in it. You now must elect a captain as a mediator and decide amongst yourselves who will live and who will go down with the ship. You are working under a time limit.
Whenever you bring good people together, meaningful conversations ensue. Often these spontaneous interactions are what spark some of the greatest realizations at events like The Edify Retreat. Many of the other activities at the retreat often involve heavy thinking or a good deal of emotional energy, which is why we also create space and time for people to relax, debrief, and talk with their new friends.
Meaningful group discussions happen when everyone is invited to participate and no single person dominates the conversation. Our retreat leaders and workshop presenters facilitate group discussions all throughout the retreat with the goals of learning from each unique perspective, encouraging people to effectively articulate their thoughts, and creating an atmosphere of vulnerability, openness, and understanding.
EXAMPLE DISCUSSION: In effort to unleash our potential for creation, we dive into a discussion about how one reaches their potential on a daily basis. A moderator opens up questions like the following: What is potential, and how do we measure it? When have you felt like you reached our potential? What is our true intention behind striving for greatness, and surpassing our potential?
The practice of mindfulness has been around for thousands of years, and the far-reaching benefits of its formal and informal practices have been preached by many people over the centuries. Mindfulness practices are now found in practically every area of our modern lives, including, but not limited to, healthcare, academics, the arts, sports, and business. At the retreat, many in our leadership team are trained in leading meditation, breath-work, yoga, qui gong, etc. and we bring principles of mindfulness into nearly every activity.
EXAMPLE MEDITATION: After a morning workout, a trained peer-instructor guides us in a loving kindness meditation focused on releasing tension, setting intention, and filling our souls with gratitude and love for all. We leave feeling ready to give our all to the day, with grace in our hearts.
Dance and music have always been part of human cultural celebrations and rituals. At the retreat, bring your instruments and your dancing shoes because at any moment we may all bust into a spontaneous dance party or jam session.
At The Edify Retreat, we value physically challenging experiences, communing with the earth in meaningful ways, renewing one’s connection with the body, soaking in the beauty and majesty of nature, and learning to work together with other people. All of these are skills one can cultivate while outdoors. The earth can be healing, challenging, and motivating all at the same time. Adventure is essential to strengthening the human spirit.
EXAMPLE: After waking up before dawn, and driving to our location, we set out on a seven mile hike with group activities, moments for reflection, physical challenges, and other invitations along the way.
Life is simply too short not to experience absurd amounts of fun and challenge with people you love. We strive for a transformational yet playful atmosphere at the retreat. There will be time for buckling down and getting serious about our life goals as well as for laughing, messing around together, and playing games.
The Edify Retreat is massive slumber party style every night, with separate housing spaces for the men and women. Be ready to share space with others in the room you’ll be assigned. Depending on the number of beds and the number of participants at a given location and your preferred sleeping situation, you may be asked to bring a sleeping bag or cot to sleep on. Otherwise, we will do our best to get a bed for everyone there. Arrangements are made prior to arrival.
Three meals a day are provided by our team of chefs (our delightful “house moms”) on site. As a part of registration, you will be asked to fill out a list of dietary needs or restrictions, and we will accommodate you as best we can. Participants are encouraged to bring their own water bottle. Snacks will be provided, but feel free to bring anything you’d like to share.
That’s a good question. This is definitely something that sets us apart from other events in the realm of personal development events. At The Edify Retreat, we aren’t hiring out experts to come and share their wisdom. That’s not to say we won’t do so at future events. With this retreat, however, we believe that we young people have profound wisdom within us to impart to each other. Now is the time to step up and share what you’ve learned along your life’s journey. Now is the time to lead out, not once you’ve made your millions, written your book, accomplished your bucket list, etc. You have infinite, priceless lessons to bring to the table that could change lives right now. We envision a model where attendees of the retreat will take part in the ever-shifting set of presenters at each retreat, if they so desire. Theoretically, if you come to this retreat, you might find yourself giving a workshop at the next.
We love adventure. We love new horizons. We know the power of entering a new space in order to gain fresh insight and inspiration. All of us share a love of nature and wish to continually explore the rich beauty of our country. Most of our participants and leaders are from Arizona, California, Utah, and Colorado, at least for now… So far, we’ve held retreats in southern Utah, northern Arizona, central Colorado, and northern Utah. If you know of another inspiring location, definitely let us know. We would love to go!
If we were, we’d need to charge much more. Just check out our price breakdown above. We want to be fully transparent with you about where your money is going. On another note, comparable personal development events are running hundreds of dollars more than ours, even ranging into the thousands. Project Edify was born of a desire to make life-changing experiences readily available to everyone our age. However, we’ve learned the hard way since our first retreat in 2020 that breaking even each time will drain the life out of this movement. This project, while incredibly important to us, is supplemental to our individual career and educational pursuits. This isn’t our main thing, but we want to be able to serve you high-value experiences through Project Edify well into the future.
We get that finding the money can be tricky. We know you have housing, food, and gas to pay for, and inflation has not been friendly. We are in the same boat. However, if experiences like this were just free, their sense of value would fizzle out. Growth requires sacrifice. This is a chance to get creative and consider what is worth doing in exchange for a transformational experience. Maybe you’ll take extra shifts at work, sell some things on ebay or etsy, go on a sales blitz, take on a few babysitting jobs, donate plasma, or wash someone’s sports cars. Perhaps you’ll go to someone who is willing to sponsor you in your efforts to grow, like your parents or grandparents for example. Send them the website, tell them what this is about, and express why you think this might help you. Suggestions aside, you are worth investing in. Your future self (to whom $500 is an easily worthwhile expense) will thank you for it.
Literally all of us are single.
Currently yes. The Edify Retreat is for unmarried adults between the ages of 18 and 30. But we have future projects in the works for other demographics, including married people both old and young, youth under 18, and parents of Edify attendees.
We aim for a number between 25-30 people each time, but our maximum count for a session of The Edify Retreat is 35, including leadership. We’ve found that this group size is prime for both connection and diversity, neither too big nor too small. It also seems to be the biggest possible group size that still encourages full engagement from each person, allows for high-quality group discussions, and fits everyone comfortably in one house.
If you will be traveling to the retreat from out of state, you have a few options to make getting there a bit easier. In the weeks leading up to the retreat, you will be able to coordinate carpooling and road trip groups with other attendees from your area. For those flying in, send us your itineraries as soon as you receive them, and we will schedule group transportation to and from the airport.
A detailed packing list will be provided after you register!
Send in your application via our website and await a call from us.
You’ll then be personally invited to the retreat and sent the link to register.
Fill out the registration form and pay to reserve your spot at the retreat.
Registration will be open either until April 1, 2023 or until our session fills up.
We’ll send a welcome packet with all the details you’ll need.
Check your inbox each week until the retreat for preparatory readings and activities sent by the Edify team.
Find your purpose.
Clarify your vision.
Face your challenge.
Share the fire.
Answer The Call. See You At The Edify Retreat.
© 2022 PROJECT EDIFY, LLC