3rd Annual Belly Monster healing retreat

Join us on a journey to explore grief energy through movement, music, art, breathwork, and a connection to something greater than ourselves.

About this Event

Welcome to the 3rd Annual Belly Monster healing retreat!

More details please go to www.approachablehealer.com/belly-monster-2025

Immerse yourself in a transformative journey of healing and self-discovery at the 3rd Annual Belly Monster Retreat. This year, our theme is grief, and we invite you to explore various creative and spiritual approaches to healing.

Event Overview: Join us on Saturday, June 21, 2025, in Evanston, IL, for a day of workshops designed to help you process and heal with grief energy. Our retreat offers an accountable and supportive environment where you can connect with others and learn from experienced practitioners.

Workshops Include:

• Guided Healing: Bilateral Meditation for Grief: Led by Jenny, this workshop uses bilateral beats to guide you towards healing through connection with your higher self or others. Whether you believe in the afterlife or prefer to connect with your wisest self, this meditation will help you set the ideal intention for your personal healing journey.
• Art Therapy with Amy: Engage in creative strategies to confront and tame your 'belly monster.' Amy's art therapy sessions provide tools to process grief and integrate wellness practices into everyday life.
• Breathwork for Grief: A Healing Workshop: Led by Ruth and Steve

Grief is a profound and personal journey, often held in the body as unspoken emotions and tension. This Breathwork for Grief workshop offers a safe, supportive space to explore and release the pain of loss through conscious breathing techniques. Through guided breathwork, meditation, and gentle somatic practices, participants will be invited to connect with their emotions, process grief at their own pace, and find moments of relief and renewal. This practice helps to soften the weight of sorrow, allowing for clarity, acceptance, and a deeper sense of inner peace.

Led by an experienced facilitator, the workshop will include:

• A grounding meditation to create a safe container for healing

• Instruction on breathwork techniques designed to move stagnant emotions

• A guided breathwork session with curated music to support emotional release

• Time for reflection, journaling, and optional sharing in a compassionate group setting

• Soul Sounds workshop: led by Musical Mindset.

This intimate session features an intuitive acoustic sound healing set that celebrates the beauty of feeling what is alive within us.

Through the vibrant tones of the didgeridoo, melodies of the native flute, and soothing ukulele songs, accompanied by his overtone vocals, this sound journey will create a rich tapestry of sound that invites deep emotional connection and exploration. These instruments, steeped in ancestral traditions, serve as powerful catalysts for expression and awakening, connecting us to the wisdom of those who came before us.

This workshop is a sacred space where you can fully experience the depth of your emotions and connect to the essence of what it means to be alive.

• Courageous Embodied Grief: led by Becky Carter

Elements of grief weave their way through our lives and our bodies as we navigate different experiences of loss. Whether anticipated, sudden, cultural, ancestral, societal, or existential, each loss takes shape within us as we move through the cycle of life force energy and the counter vortex of death and grief. In this experiential session, participants will explore how they embody grief while recognizing and nurturing the capacity within self to endure the current of grief with courage and curiosity.

• DRIFT through grief: led by Peter Canellis

Using The DRIFT Technique (Deep Relaxation Induced by Frequencies and Tones), I guide you through soothing sounds from crystal singing bowls, zen therapeutic bowls, binaural beats, solfeggio tones, crystal tuning forks, pyramids, gongs, drums, and more. Each session is designed to release stress, tension, and anxiety, balance your energy, and cultivate a deep sense of inner calm.

What to Expect:

• Deep Connection: Experience the power of community and shared healing.
• Creative Expression: Participate in art therapy, writing to heal, and other creative workshops.
• Spiritual Healing: Collaborate with local spiritual healers and explore alternative healing modalities.

Don't miss this incredible opportunity to transform, heal, and grow in a supportive and nurturing environment. We can't wait to see you there!

Agenda


🕑: 08:30 AM - 09:45 AM
1st round of workshops
Host: Workshop providers: Jenny, Amy and Musical Mindset

Info: Workshop titles: Guided Healing: Bilateral Meditation for Grief, Grief Reimagined: Moving Through Loss, and Soul Sounds workshop led by Musical Mindset. Details on website: www.approachablehealer.com/belly-monster-2025

🕑: 10:00 AM
Workshop Rotation
Host: Jenny, Amy, Musical Mindset

Info: Guided Healing: Bilateral Meditation for Grief, Grief Reimagined: Moving Through Loss, and Soul Sounds workshop led by Musical Mindset

🕑: 11:30 AM - 12:45 PM
Workshop Rotation
Host: Jenny, Amy and Musical Mindset

Info: Guided Healing: Bilateral Meditation for Grief, Grief Reimagined: Moving Through Loss, and Soul Sounds workshop led by Musical Mindset

🕑: 12:45 PM
Catered Lunch

🕑: 01:45 PM - 03:00 PM
Afternoon Workshops
Host: Mighty Mike McGee, Becky and Ruth & Steve

Info: Grief to Grace: A Writing Journey, Courageous Embodied Grief, and Breathwork for Grief: A Healing Workshop

🕑: 03:15 PM - 04:15 PM
Workshop Rotation
Host: Mike, Becky and Ruth & Steve

Info: Grief to Grace: A Writing Journey, Courageous Embodied Grief, and Breathwork for Grief: A Healing Workshop -

🕑: 04:15 PM - 05:15 PM
Workshop Rotation
Host: Mike, Becky, & Ruth & Steve

Info: Grief to Grace: A Writing Journey, Courageous Embodied Grief, and Breathwork for Grief: A Healing Workshop

🕑: 05:15 PM - 06:00 PM
Closing Ceremony
Host: Peter Canellis: Saints and Angels Healing Through Sound

Also check out other Workshops in Evanston, Health & Wellness events in Evanston.