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Reconnect With Your Capacity to Care: Healing the Healer Retreat
In the quiet depths of sacred land, far from computer screens, patient charting, diagnostics codes and to do lists; a transformation awaits healthcare providers and caregivers who give so much of themselves that little remains.
Your Healing Roots Team
April 14, 2025
Many of us dedicate our lives caring for others. We listen, comfort, treat, and support. Yet in this continual outpouring of energy and compassion, many of us find ourselves emotionally drained, fatigued, and experiencing what the medical community has clinically termed "burnout." But this sterile word hardly captures the profound depletion that occurs when our wellspring of care begins to run dry.
As healthcare providers, caregivers and healers ourselves, we understand the challenges you face in maintaining your capacity to care while navigating the demands of modern life and work.
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The Healer's Journey
Healthcare providers, caregivers and healers share a common experience—the slow erosion of our capacity to connect deeply with those we serve. Not because we care less, but because we've been caring so much without replenishing our own sources of strength.
Many of us have tried conventional approaches to self-care: meditation apps, weekend retreats, therapy sessions. While valuable, these often address symptoms rather than the root cause of our disconnection.
What if the answer isn't found in another mindfulness practice or self-care regimen, but in reconnecting with something more fundamental—the living world itself?
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Returning to Our Roots
Your Healing Roots retreats was born from this question. As Mara'akate—initiated healers called to the Wixárika tradition—we are oriented by indigenous wisdom that has stood the test of time. At the same time, we are shaped by a modern rational perspective that upholds its own standards of success.
Life holds contradictory values and the soul reconciles them. We have witnessed and experienced the transformative power of direct, personal and communal relationship with the living world that has sustained humanity for millennia.
This isn't about adopting new beliefs or religious practices. It's about recognizing the essential dilemma of human beings and developing reciprocal relationships with spiritual forces that govern this realm. It's about recognizing that as humans, we are part of an interconnected web of life. When we separate ourselves from this connection, something essential begins to wither.
Our 5-day retreat is designed as a journey back to these fundamental relationships—a return to the roots that sustain life.
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The Retreat Experience
On sacred land, participants immerse themselves in experiences that open pathways to reconnection:
Ceremonial Space: Throughout the retreat, you'll be held in a ceremonial space around a sacred fire—a gathering point that has brought humans together since time immemorial.
Individual Healing: Each participant receives personal healing and counseling sessions with our resident physician/mara'akate healers, Dr. Lisa Lichtig and Dr. Patrick Hanaway, who bridge western medical understanding with traditional wisdom perspectives and practices.
Community Learning: Small group circles create intimate spaces for sharing and integrating new awareness, reminding us that healing happens in a social field.
Experiential Practices: Moving beyond intellectual understanding, you'll engage in experiences that create embodied and spiritual connections with the natural world.
Ongoing Support: The journey doesn't end when you leave the retreat. Five monthly follow-up video calls support your continued integration and practice.
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Beyond Burnout: A New Paradigm
This retreat isn't about adding tools to manage burnout—it's about transforming your relationship with yourself, others, and the living world in ways that naturally increase your capacity to care and connect.
When we feel the world, the world feels us. This reciprocal relationship creates a foundation for healing work that doesn't deplete us but actually energizes and sustains us.
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The Practical Details
When: July 27th - August 2nd, 2025
Where: Blue Deer Center - Catskill Mountains, Margaretville, NY - 3 hrs from NYC, 2 hrs from Albany.
As a sacred place, Blue Deer offers a spiritual home for shared experiences of transformation and healing in relationship with the divine natural world.
Includes:
5 days of immersive experiences in nature
Individual healing sessions
Small group learning circles
Farm-to-table meals that nourish body and spirit
Lodging in a rustic, charming farmhouse
5 monthly follow-up integration calls
Cost & Registration: See Blue Deer’s Website
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Who Should Come?
This retreat is specifically designed for healthcare providers, healers, and caregivers (which probably means everyone) who:
Feel something is missing in their personal or professional lives..
Experience emotional fatigue from caring for others.
Sense a disconnection from their original calling or purpose.
Are open to exploring new perspectives on healing.
Seek sustainable ways to maintain their capacity to care.
• • •
The Invitation
We invite you to move beyond the noise and listen to the call of the world. To discover that life itself is here to help you thrive, connect, and care in ways that are sustainable and deeply fulfilling.
Your healing roots are waiting to be tended. Will you answer the call?
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Your Healing Roots was founded by Dr. Lisa Lichtig and Dr. Patrick Hanaway, physicians who have integrated traditional healing wisdom with modern medical practice. As initiated mara'akate (traditional "shamanic" healers) in the Wixárika tradition, they serve as emissaries of an ancient lineage dedicated to helping humans live in better relationship with themselves, each other, and the natural world.
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