This summer, Wild Women Tribe is horsing around.
The women’s adventure and meditation group will hold a six-day retreat involving shamanic meditation with a herd of horses on Sept. 18-22. Preceding that, a one-day workshop version of the retreat is also slated for July 20.
Those are in addition to several other single-day mindfulness hikes, “wander” workshops and longer retreats planned for summer and later this year. A six-week trail hike series runs Wednesdays starting this week through Aug. 14, for example.
The workshops and retreats combine meditation with movement and creative activities to create a social space for women in nature centered around self growth.
Each course is designed to focus on a particular central theme, such as finding one’s identity, accessing balance or finding flow — that’s according to founder Renée Huang, who started Wild Women Tribe in 2018.
Those themes are then incorporated throughout the day’s proceedings, typically through a hike, yoga, foundation movement or embodiment exercises, often set to music.
“Each workshop has a distinctly different feel,” Huang said, “and yet there is a template of sameness of a structure, if you will, that infuses each of the experiences: And that is mindful time outside.”
Building a meaningful connection with nature in a creative way is a consistent through-line practice: Burn release ceremonies, for instance, have participants write something on a piece of paper and burn it, releasing it.
Huang formulated these concepts after a career in journalism and marketing.
“I was a trained journalist,” she said. “I worked for Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, before I moved to Mexico, where I spent almost a decade of time developing marketing and public relations services, catering to the luxury hospitality and destination industry.”
In 2018, Huang was facing personal challenges that led her to seek deeper relationships with other women.
“I really felt a strong desire to connect with women in the outdoors,” Huang said, “and I wasn’t finding any sort of group like that around me.”
She partnered with coaches, facilitators, therapists and yoga instructors for day-long events — Wild Women Tribe was born.
“I think that we as a society have been very conditioned to be outwardly seeking approval in order to validate our own self worth,” Huang said. “And so as we move through life, we tend to create a checklist of things that would signify accomplishment or success or validate our worth. And I think it’s really important for women to come back home to themselves as a gauge of their own worth and their own experience, and come back and tune in, inwardly, in order to feel a sense of peace and alignment with oneself.”
The practices that comprise the workshops, or wanders, are not unusual, Huang said. They’re familiar concepts like self care and taking care of onesself before others.
“But really sometimes it takes being in the presence of other women who are moving through similar experiences to find that sense of community and camaraderie to feel like ‘I’m not alone in this seeking of a return to self,'” she said.
The single-day horse meditation workshop, which is slated for July 20 from 9 a.m.-3 p.m., will allow attendees to “sink into presence with a herd of horses” with the help of equine therapist facilitator Alejandra Lara, Huang said.
Lara is a Park City-based trauma-informed therapist who works with horses and humans. She’s experienced at working specifically with women’s groups, as well as veterans with PTSD, according to Huang. The day will involve a hike, yoga, lunch and then time with the horses.
The idea is to feel a conviviality with another creature, which can help cultivate mindfulness in ourselves — recognize the wildness seen in a horse and pair that with one’s own internal experience of wildness.
“They are these beautiful mirrors for us of our emotions and our vibrational reality, how we show up,” Huang said.
The Sept. 18 retreat, “Inward Insight and Wisdom,” will expand on that horse experience with more time and more facilitators, who will present different tools and practices for mindfulness toward self care and growth.
“It involves shamanic course meditation over a series of five days with Alejandra and a herd of horses,” Huang said, “and also some shamanic Earth medicine, tools and practices led by Marissa (Zelenak), who is one of the leads at Shamanic Twist over in Kamas, and then some art therapy sessions with Jill Johnson, who is a trauma-informed art therapist who used to own the Paint Mixer in town.”
Nonprofit rescue ranch REINS in Oakley will host the courses, according to Huang, which means the horses have rebuilt a trust in humans — they’ve had to do their own mindfulness exercises. A portion of the Wild Women Tribe’s proceeds will go to REINS.
Huang herself will also lead some writing workshops as part of the retreat. She’ll teach participants about rewriting old stories people tell themselves about their own lives, as well as how to look at the role of particular words and thoughts that make up internal lives.
“Beliefs and thoughts form the backbone of a reality, what we actually experience in the world,” she said.
There are other workshops and retreats planned for later this year, too, Huang said, such as an upcoming Wild Child mommy-daughter day focusing on creativity and flow. Daughters ages 8-11 can accompany their mothers 3-6 p.m. for a hike, somatic movement class, a light snack and an art workshop.
The six-week trail hike series starts Wednesday 9-11:30 a.m. and runs for six weeks until Aug. 14. Huang will lead women through trails with a new movement facilitator each week, such as Ayesha Haskell who specializes in somatic movement. The course cost is a sliding scale $40-$55 suggested donation, Huang said.
Then, in November, Huang will host a five-day yoga retreat in Hawaii, entitled “Shadow and Light,” and then another five-day retreat to Oaxaca, Mexico in January. These more-premium retreats help participants really separate from the noise of modern life.
“It allows you to step even deeper into the work without as many of the day-to-day distractions,” Huang said. “Your senses come alive, and you’re seeing things from the eyes of curiosity because you’ve never been to a place before, and so going to a destination allows that deeper connection into your process.”
To learn more about Wild Women Tribe and sign up for available workshops and retreats, visit wildwomentribe.net.