A Journey into the Dreamtime 3-day Spring Equinox Retreat
with Michael Hoffman
Awaken Your Spiritual Gift
Live Your Purpose
Align your Spiritual Gift & Career
Welcome to the Dreamtime!
Aboriginal Australians view the creation of the things in your life as the natural movement of consciousness from the Dreamtime to reality.
The things we create exist first as subjective energy states of consciousness such as dreams, intuitions, and ideas that move toward taking objective form in the external world.
Aboriginal Australians refer to the Dreamtime creation as the world being sung into existence.
In this spiritual retreat, we will access that place where dreams and visions become reality with an eclectic approach of dream interpretation, Dreamtime Shamanic Journeys, Sharing Circles, a Medicine Wheel, and a Sweat Lodge.
Aboriginal Ceremony allows you to experience your vision for your life in the Dreamtime so you can create it in your everyday life.
Australian Aboriginals dream their lives into reality in the Dreamtime. Once they dream it in their ceremonies and dreams, it invariably shows up in their lives.
Ceremony allows you to take things from deep inside you and bring them out so you can work with them.
Spring Equinox is the ideal time to awaken the new cycle of your life.
Spring equinox is the time of new beginnings on the Medicine Wheel. If you look at nature, plants are sprouting and animals are giving birth. The energy in nature is geared to awakening new spaces in your life.
It all begins with receiving a vision and intuitive feeling about the things you would like to awaken in your life in the coming year. All of the ceremonies, meditations, and sharing circles are designed to evoke a clear vision for your new life.
Then you can awaken a new way of life that is aligned with your spirit and purpose.
So in this retreat...
You can awaken your Dreamtime vision, understand what it's saying to you, and learn how to integrate it into your life.
Notice the three essential aspects of completing your journey into the Dreamtime: 1) Awakening your vision for your life in the Dreamtime, 2) Understanding what it's saying to you, and 3) Creating a practice to integrate it into your life.
Dreams and visions can only offer limited value if you don't know what they mean.
Don't get me wrong. Spirit and your inner consciousness are highly resourceful. They will use everything from your dreams and visions to random experiences to the oddly significant things that people say to you to communicate with you.
But the trick is understanding what these things are saying to you. Spirit often communicates to you in the form of symbols and metaphors.
I have seen it time and time again. People have these amazing spiritual experiences, channeling guidance, and psychic readings, and then totally misinterpret what Spirit is trying to say to them.
The good news is Spirit uses basically the same symbolism whether it's a dream, meditation, synchronistic experience, or a spiritual vision. I often refer to it as the language of life.
And that's what this retreat specializes in. First, it will create powerful spiritual experiences to receive your vision and guidance. Then we will interpret what it means to you and how you can effectively integrate it into your life.
So the new cycle of your life actually happens.
What if Spirit is trying to offer you a clear vision for your life right now?
Buckhorn Springs Retreat Center
A Journey into the Dreamtime 3-day Spring Equinox Retreat
with Michael Hoffman
This spiritual retreat combines Aboriginal Dreamtime spirituality, Native American ceremony, and Jungian dream interpretation into a guided, experience-it-for-yourself approach to receive a vision for your life, awaken it in the Dreamtime, and integrate it into your daily life.
What do you want to awaken in your life?
I’ve invested the last 35 years working in the trenches with spiritually-minded people to develop a spiritual retreat that allows you to awaken create a complete transition in your life. It's designed for...
- People who are 'over it' and ready to change an aspect of their life, but have not been able to find an effective-enough approach to pull it off.
- People who continue to struggle to bring the well-being and connection they experience in their spiritual practice into their relationships- ESPECIALLY their significant-other relationship. There is nothing more painful than experiencing loneliness in a relationship.
- People who are not finding a deep. meaningful significant-other relationship, but are rather dating emotionally unavailable people or people who want to relate on a superficial level.
- People who have not been able to offer a sense of purpose in a meaningful way that sustains financial livelihood. And...
- People who experience a transcendent flow-state when practicing yoga or meditation only to bump up against a disjointed, anxiety-ridden, Groundhog’s Day-esc, daily grind.
The Result Is...
A guided easy-to-follow "A Journey into the Dreamtime" 3-day Spring Equinox Retreat that gives you a crystal clear roadmap for bringing the sense of well-being, openness, and purpose of your spiritual nature into your relationships, work, and daily life.
CEREMONIAL GROUNDS, LODGING & DINING
Buckhorn Springs Retreat Center
Buckhorn Springs Retreat Center is on 124 acres within the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. It's nestled in its own small valley with a creek, old oaks, ponderosa pines, tall aromatic cedars, and open meadows.
We will be the only group of people that is on the retreat center during this retreat. This offers us a sacred space and total privacy and to do deep spirtual work. The Buckhorn meadow (above) will be where we build our sweat lodge and Medicine Wheel.
The Dodec (below right) is a 12-sided dodecagonal space that offers serene views of the meadow and Emigrant Creek. Sharing circles, meditations, and shamanic journeys happen here, and it provides a peaceful place to do yoga, dance, or tai chi during downtime. The wood for the floors and ceiling was directly sourced from the Buckhorn Springs land.
We will be sleeping and dining at the Buckhorn Springs Lodge (below left) which was built in 1864 and expanded into a lodge in 1892. Bruce Sargent and his crew fully restored the lodge in 1990 based on old photographs of the original lodge.
You will spend Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights in one of the spacious bedrooms with a king or queen bed (below bottom left). The lodge also features a large living room with comfortable leather sofas and beautiful deck to relax.
You will be a dining in the Buckhorn Lodge dining room around a custom elm and walnut inlaid table that seats sixteen. Meals will be prepared in the state of the art commercial kitchen. Fresh fruit, yogurt, oatmeal, granola, etc. will be served for breakfast. Lunch and dinner will feature hot meals for vegan, gluten-free and meat diets. Coffee and tea will be provided throughout the day.
Buckhorn Springs is located 38 minutes by car from the Rogue Valley International Airport in Medford, Oregon and 20 minutes away from Ashland.
HISTORY OF THE LAND: INDIGINOUS PEOPLE AT BUCKHORN
Hi-U-Skookem Medicine
Buckhorn Springs is located within the ancestral homelands of the Shasta, Modoc (Klamath), Takelma, and Cow Creek Umpqua peoples who lived here since time immemorial.
The land upon which Buckhorn Springs resides includes mineral springs which the indigenous tribes referred to as "Hi-U- Skookem" medicine. Tribes from all over the region referred to as "The Land of Many Lakes" would bring their sick to these mineral springs for healing.
Their method was to find a spot where the gas escaped, hollow out a sufficient space, spread fir boughs in it for comfort, and place the patient on the boughs, where he remained under watchful care until he became unconscious. He was then taken into a “wik-i-up”, or tent made of skins and boughs and there put through a course of manipulation until he recovered consciousness.
Then would follow a day or two of sweating and incantations by a medicine man. The Modocs and Klamaths manufactured water-tight baskets which they filled with water and put hot stones into them, filling the sweat house with steam almost to the point of suffocation. This treatment was continued until the patient was cured or declared incurable.
While these practices were severe, they insisted that it seldom failed to cure the most obstinate cases of rheumatism, asthma, kidney disease and stomach trouble. It was not unusual for patients to be strapped onto ponies and brought from distant parts of the “Land of Many Lakes” to be treated.
Even when the tribes of the “Land of Many Lakes” were at war with the tribes in whose territory these springs were situated, if pilgrims from east of the mountains succeeded in reaching the springs for medical treatment, they were not molested while there.
We honor and acknowledge the legacy of those who healed upon and stewarded this land for many generations. We respectfully intend to continue this tradition of harnessing the power and beauty of this land for healing and spiritual growth.
MEET YOUR RETREAT FACILITATOR...
Michael Hoffman
I have been facilitating ceremonies and spiritual retreats for participants to directly experience their essential nature and spiritual purpose for 35 years.
When I'm not playing the didgeridoo, exploring the Pacific Northwest, or interpreting dreams, I'm facilitating coaching sessions and spiritual retreats for people to awaken their spiritual nature and purpose into their lives.
I do this by personally guiding and supporting one person at a time to directly integrate their truth and purpose into their relationships, work, and everyday life.
I created "A Journey into the Dreamtime" Spring Equinox Retreat by combining Aboriginal Dreamtime spirituality, Native American ceremony, and Jungian dream interpretation into a guided, experience-it-for-yourself approach to receive a vision for your life, awaken it in the Dreamtime, and integrate it into your everyday life.
So join me for three days of ceremony in the Dreamtime at Buckhorn Springs Retreat Center in Ashland, Oregon to experience connection, purpose, and community.
Word on the Street
“Michael Hoffman’s “Metamorphosis” retreat helped me to understand that anything I want is possible. I now understand that my beliefs about my world, who I am, and what I am capable of have been limiting my life.
My future depends on me and me alone. All I need do is open myself up to possibilities. If I agree that anything is possible then I give myself permission to try and that makes it possible. Knowing that all is possible frees me to recognize when a door opens.
Previously I would have said to myself; “that isn’t possible, it’s my imagination;” or some such thing. Once I recognize that the door is ajar, I have the choice of walking through it or closing it (but at least I have acknowledged that it is open to me).
Mike not only helped me understand what actions were limiting me. I now have a plan and tools I can work with to help me break my cycle of limiting behavior and find support to help me make my dreams reality.”
Midge Geston
THE ITINERARY...
Day 1: Enter the Dreamtime
Arrival and check-in will happen between 3 and 5 pm on Thursday, March 23. Here are the events for our first evening together:
- 3 to 5 pm: Arrival and check-in
- 5:30 pm: Dinner is served.
- 6:30 pm: Tour of Buckhorn Springs Retreat Center
- 7 pm: Sharing Circle: What’s in your heart? Sharing circles involves sharing your heart and receiving guidance with a talking stick in a circle around the fire or in the Dodec depending on the temperature. This circle invites you to introduce yourself and asks, "What's in your heart? What have you been experiencing? What are you hoping for in the retreat?"
- 8 pm: Sharing Circle: Your Relationship with Spirit. Effective and lasting change begins by understanding what you truly value. This provides orientation for what you would like to awaken and allows you to align your life with what matters most to you.
- 9 pm: Awakening Ceremony: Enter the Dreamtime. The Dreamtime is a dimension of being. This ceremony opens the door to the Dreamtime so we can access our inner resources and connection to the earth and all of creation in both our sleep and waking hours during the retreat.
- 9:30 pm (at the Lodge): Guided Meditation: Enter the Dreamtime. Sleeping is a powerful time to access the Dreamtime. Bringing some intentionality into your sleep with this meditation allows you to activate and remember this dimension of being.
Day 2: Dreamtime Vision
This day is all about seeking your Dreamtime vision. We look to dreams, a guided shamanic journey, and Medicine Wheel, and Sharing Circle to receive our vision to provide guidance for our purpose and life journey.
In the morning coffee and tea are available around 6 am. Before we get going at 9 am or during free time later in the day, perhaps you'd like to do some yoga in the Dodec or a morning hike on the trail that begins across the footbridge over Emigrant Creek. Today's events are as follows:
- 7 to 8:30 am: Breakfast Buffet is open.
- 9 am: Guided Shamanic Journey: Seeking Your Vision. This guided shamanic journey guides you to seek and receive a vision for your new life. And relax! This journey creates a space and intention to receive your vision. It may come during this journey, in a dream tonight, or tomorrow in the Medicine Wheel. It likely will come when you least expect it.
- 10 am: Morning Dream Circle. In this circle you can share a dream to have it interpreted, ask a question, or share about something that's coming up for you. This is a time you can make sense of what you've been experiencing.
- 12 to 1:30 pm: Lunch Break
- 12:30 pm: Lunch is served
- 1:30 pm: Healing Circle: A healing circle is a ceremony that we do sitting in a circle combining our healing energies and focusing them on someone that needs healing. So far there are two people that will be offering energy. If you or someone you know could benefit from our healing energies, please let me (Michael) know when you get to retreat.
- 2 pm: Stone People Gathering Ceremony. Part of our Sweat Lodge tradition involves doing a Stone People Gathering Ceremony to honor the stone people before and as we gather the rocks that we will use for our Medicine Wheel and Sweat Lodge.
- 3 pm: Medicine Wheel Ceremony. The ceremony begins when we actually build the Medicine Wheel with the rocks that we gathered after lunch. Bringing consciousness and intentionality to the Medicine Wheel or wheel of life allows you to effectively navigate the developmental phases of the various changes, cycles, and aspects of your life.
- 5 to 7 pm: Dinner Break.
- 5:30 pm: Dinner is served.
- 7 pm: Sharing Circle: From Dreamtime Vision to Intention. The only sense of time that the aboriginal people of Australia have is the duration between dreaming something and it taking form. This circle explores how this cycle works in your life.
- 9 pm: Guided Shamanic Journey: Spirit Animal Dreaming. This guided shamanic meditation creates a space your to meet and connect with your spirit animal. It will teach you about its dreaming- that is its power, magic, and connection.
Day 3: Dreamtime Initiation
The focus for today is to initiate the Dreamtime vision we worked with yesterday. The primary initiation ceremony will be offering our prayers or intention in Sweat Lodge.
Much of the day will focus on building the lodge and the various ceremonies and traditions that go along with that. The whole day has a feeling of community and common purpose. Here is a listing of today's events:
- 7 to 8:30 am: Breakfast Buffet is open.
- 9 am: Rattle and Drum Ceremonies: Sounding the Energy of your Heart. The Rattle Ceremony is a place where you can express the subtle feelings of your heart non-verbally. We will follow this with a Drum Ceremony which is a place where we share our voices as a community and have our hearts beat as one.
- 10:30 am: Build Sweat Lodge. We will work with the willow that we gathered yesterday morning and begin to actually build our sweat lodge. We also prepare the space for a sweat lodge fire and an altar in front of the lodge. Building the lodge is embued with rich tradition and building the lodge together serves to bring us together for a common purpose.
- 12 to 1:30 pm: Lunch Break.
- 12:30 pm: Lunch is served.
- 1:30 pm: Build and Light Sweat Lodge Fire. This is a short beautiful ceremony where we put our intention and prayers into the "stone people" and symbolically light the Sweat Lodge fire which awakens the ceremony.
- 3 pm: Sharing Circle: The Things that No Longer Serve You. This Sharing Circle focuses on divesting from your old patterns, beliefs, and fears. It also prepares you for the second round of the Sweat Lodge which is a prayer to release the things that no longer serve you.
- 5 to 7 pm: Dinner Break.
- 5:30 pm: Dinner is served.
- 7:00 pm Sweat Lodge: Initiating Your New Way of Being. Offering your intention in Sweat Lodge initiates your new way of being. Enacting it in the Dreamtime ensures it will take form in your life. This rite of passage marks the moment that your old life ends and a new life begins.
- 9:00 pm: Sharing, Stories, and Smores by the Fire. Celebrating the ceremony and work we have done.
Day 4: Dreamtime Integration
The focus for our final day is integrating your vision and all the things you've awakened this week into your everyday life. A prayer wheel ceremony sharing circle and closing prayer of compassion are the vehicles to ensure that all of the value you have awakened here will go with you back home to your family, relationships, workplace, and community.
- 7 to 8:30 am: Breakfast Buffet is open.
- 9 am: Prayer Wheel Ceremony: Supportive Elements of your new way of being. The Prayer Wheel is a beautiful ceremony where you can identify and claim the various elements that you will need to take back into your life.
- 10:30 am: Sharing Circle: Integrating your new way of being into your life. A spiritual practice allows you to experience the sensation and feeling of the element that you are integrating on a regular basis so it can provide orientation for your life. By tuning into the sensation of the element on a regular basis, you can recognize it in the context of your daily life.
- 12:00 am: Closing Ceremony: Prayer of compassion for yourself. This allows you to stay aligned with your new element as you awaken it. Noticing is objectively observing when you are aligned with your spiritual nature, and when you are not. Reconnecting detaches you from what is distracting you and realigns you with your spiritual nature.
- 12:30 pm: Lunch is served. Final Breaking of bread together.
- 1 pm: Retreat is complete.
Buckhorn Springs Retreat Center
So what does it cost and how do I sign up?
You can register below by selecting one of the two payment plans desribed below. You can make three monthly payments or pay in full. When I pay for and participate in retreats that someone else facilitates, I think of it as investing in myself.
"A Journey into the Dreamtime" 3-DAY SPRING EQUINOX RETREAT
One-time Payment of $650
INCLUDES:
Register for RetreatStill Undecided?
You’re ready to directly experience your spiritual nature during this retreat if...
1. You’re just getting started with integrating your spiritual well-being into your relationship, work and everyday life, and you want to make sure it plugs it into your life right out of the gates by using only the most powerful, personalized, and easy-to-follow integration strategies.
2. You’ve been trying to integrate your spiritual well-being for months (or even years), but haven’t seen noticeable results in your relationship, work or daily life. If anything, the gap between your spiritual well-being and everyday life has gotten wider.
3. You already KNOW the spiritual qualities you want in your relationship, work, and life: Sure, you are open to some guidance as you go through the A Journey into the Dreamtime Retreat... but for the most part, you know what you want, and you are ready to enjoy it in your life.
4. You have no problem investing 5 hours per week as long as you know that every bit of energy you invest is a strategic and effective step forward in having spiritual well-being and connection in your relationships, work, and life.
5. In fact, you’re ALREADY investing lots of time and energy doing things like reading relationship books, doing yoga, meditating, and doing spiritual online courses.
Only problem is, without a clear strategy that ties them all together, you’ve experienced nothing but discouraging “is all this stuff really working?” results, followed by crippling overwhelm around what to do next.
6. You want something that works: You have heard about or even tried coaching or couples therapy before. You paid your money, invested the effort (and worst of all, got hopeful), only to land back in the same lonely and unfulfilling place.
You want a program that actually results in all this intimacy, purpose, fulfillment, and vulnerability you hear so much about.
7. You can envision all the things you have always wanted that will open up once you integrate your spiritual nature into your life. You can just feel the closeness in your relationship, the life purpose in your work, and the pure enjoyment and richness of everyday life. You’ve always known it was possible.
8. You’re excited to try the A Journey into the Dreamtime Retreat. Even if you’ve been side-tracked and let down before, you’re currently feeling a wave of renewed optimism.
You realize that by this time tomorrow, you can be plugging yourself into an easy-to-follow yet super-effective approach for truly enjoying and finding fulfillment in your relationships, work, and daily life.
If you caught yourself nodding your head to at least 5 of the 8 points above, then I absolutely CANNOT wait to meet you in the A Journey into the Dreamtime Retreat.
"A Journey into the Dreamtime" 3-DAY SPRING EQUINOX RETREAT
One-time Payment of $650
INCLUDES:
Register for RetreatStill have questions about the retreat? Perhaps with your specific situation?
If you have questions or would like to discuss your specific situation with me (Michael Hoffman), you can call me at 541-639-6246 or schedule a free retreat consultation with me via the button below.
