Breathe in the autumn air of these Tennessee Smoky Mountains as we circle in honor of feminine mystery. Reconnect with your sacred inner knowing. Explore the many facets of your feminine nature. Dare to be all of them.

During this women’s retreat, we’ll renew our self-trust, explore our depths, honor our expression and validate our embodied intuition. We’ll wake to meditation and yoga, express through writing and movement, and gather for stories around flames.

We’ll immerse in the magic and mystery of myths, focusing on the messages and insights they hold for us as women. We’ll heed the call to honor the wisdom we carry within our stories and voices and bodies, and between each other.

retreat highlights

• Inspiring location with panoramic mountain views
• Daily meditation & yoga practice
• Daily self-exploratory writing circles
• Evening ceremonial sacred storytelling sessions
• Scenic outdoor yoga pavilion  
• 3 delicious organic vegetarian meals/day
• 5 nights shared stay in charming yurts or furnished glamping
• Guided tour of on-site fauna
• Breaks for relaxing, walking, therapies and exploration
• Intimate Women's Gathering: Maximum of 10 participants

Amidst the Smoky Mountains

In the Foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, and amidst one of the world's most ecologically diverse regions, Seven Springs retreats center boasts seven natural springs on 126 acres of private land, providing the spaciousness to reconnect with nature. 

Seven Springs offers charming shared yurts with comfortable beds, inspiring mountain views, nature walks and delicious Ayurvedic vegetarian meals amidst soul-nourishing landscapes.

Inspired by the natural abundance all around, Seven Springs seeks to foster holistic sustenance for the individual and the community.

RETREAT OVERVIEW

"She is not to be classified. She is not to be controlled. She is the one who gathers seeds and plants them in the sand as dreams and calls forth rain. She is the one who embodies the Moon, honoring the cycles of life."

- Terry Tempest Williams

“May we let the stories move through us and whisper, in the vulnerability of our hearts, of the treasures we long to recollect.” 
- Melanie Champagne, retreat co-facilitator

Myths of Feminine Mystery

What if our yearnings pull in opposite directions? What if our lives move in cycles and seasons, not only in linear time? What if one long-held desire wanes, while another arises from nowhere? What if we need to get lost and wander? What if integrity means allowing your truth to change and flow with you? What if we run to and away, and still, towards our center?

Myths hold a hidden power: they gift us maps, keys, mirrors, legends and paths back to ourselves. They reflect the multitudes within us. They reveal insight into our deepest longings, greatest conflicts and vivid life energies. 

Myths give universal context to our most personal experiences. They open us to allowing life to flow through us, to recognize the sacred beauty of each moment, and to embrace the feminine mystery of regeneration.
 

As we weave these stories with our own experience, we glean a vaster sense of ourselves and our sacred feminine nature. When we look through the window of a myth, we see both beyond ourselves and deeper within.

In this women's retreat, you will:

• Gather with a powerful circle of women in rawness, vulnerability and expression.
• Reconnect with your body and intuition through meditation, yoga and movement.
• Experience the sacred rite of sharing stories between women around flames.
• Explore core tensions and themes that carry through our relationships with ourselves, others and our lives.
• Discover your truths moment to moment by connecting to your own voice.
• Rekindle urges within yourself that are aching to be heard and witnessed.
• Reclaim the power in the multitudes and regeneration that is inherent in feminine nature.
• Remember your vastness and the magic that unfolds when women circle together.
  
  Find out more about this even on the event page on www.thestorytellerwithin.com
  

Guests may arrive to Seven Springs on Thursday (check in is 3pm) to relax and settle in. After dinner, we will open our circle.

Sept 26th: 

3:00 pm Check-In

6:30- 7:30 pm Dinner

7:45 pm - Opening Circle & Storytelling Circle

Sept 27th - Sept 30th:

7:30 am: Wake-up

8:00 - 9:30 am: Medi & Yoga

9:30 - 10:15 am: Breakfast

10:45 am - 1:00 pm: Exploratory Circle 

1:00 - 3:30 pm: Lunch & Break

3:30 - 6:30 pm: Exploratory Circle 

6:30 - 7:30 pm: Dinner

7:45 pm: Storytelling Circle 

Oct 1st: 

7:30 am - Wake-up

8:00 am - 9:30am: Medi & Yoga

9:30 - 10:15am: Breakfast

10:15am - 11:15pm: Integration Circle & Close

11:15 - 12:45: Optional Relaxation

12:45-1:30 pm: Final Lunch 

We will finish by 11:15 am on Tuesday and you have the option to linger and enjoy the beauty of Seven Springs as well as lunch, if you choose.

Meditation and yoga will be held in the outdoor yoga pavilion, and we also have an indoor space available. Our sacred circles will rotate between outdoor and indoor spaces. Delicious ayurvedic meals will be served in the fresh autumn air.

On-site therapies are available during break times, as well as many opportunities to relax or walk in nature. We may offer an afternoon excursion during the event.

Breathe the fresh mountain air

Seven Springs is located near Maryville, Tennessee. The Smoky Mountains are the world's oldest mountains and one of the world's most ecologically diverse regions, featuring temperate rain forest climate with over 17,000 species of plants and animals. This amazing biodiversity is the backdrop for the abundant richness of Seven Springs and the rejuvenating spirit of this land.

Take in Nature

Seven Springs features an open air yoga pavilion built with local forest cedar that offers panoramic morning views of the Chillhowee mountains. The ground offer stunning hill perches, creekside spots, and gorgeous nature walks, with a resident master naturalist/ ecologist to provide a guided tour. The center is close to many natural attractions to further explore before or after the retreat.

Accommodation & Facilities

Most retreat guests will stay in well-fashioned shared yurts of 2 to 4 people, or a private upgrade is available. Each yurt is furnished with comfortable beds and bedding, electricity and lights, warm blankets for cool nights, tables and dressers. Yurts are the closest accommodation to the bathrooms.

Additionally, some guests will stay in large private glamping tents. Each large tent is set on a wooden platform and is furnished with comfortable beds and bedding and solar lights. The tents are located in a cool space amongst the trees. 
 

Shared bathrooms on the property offer two hot showers, two water-saving flushing toilets, and running water. 

Morning yoga will take place in the outdoor yoga shala. Women's circles will take place between the shala, outdoor classroom, and the 24 foot yurt classroom with labyrinth floor design.

Mats, props, cushions, and blankets for chilly mornings or evenings will be provided.

Treat yourself. Massage treatments from resident therapists are available in an outdoor massage pavilion.

Delicious meals

All meals will be vegetarian, varied and generously prepared by Ayurvedic chef Wendy who lives locally. All meals are served in the outdoor kitchen, as we take in the beauty of the surroundings. Our first included meal will be dinner on Sept 26th. Our final meal will be lunch on Oct 1st.

Afternoon snacks will also be provided. The kitchen is available for any additional guest needs.

Sustainable Living

At Seven Springs, you will be woken in the morning by drum or bells as we rise to practice meditation and yoga in the shala. 

Natural washing practices contribute to sustainability, and each guest washes her individual plate and cutlery. You are asked to be respectful of local wildlife (raccoons, skunks, bears) and keep food in designated containers, while treading lightly around local flora.

This is a real chance to disconnect and allow yourself to stay in the space of the women's gathering. There is no WIFI on the property, inviting you to connect with nature and within.

What To Bring

Please bring your own natural toiletries, a towel, and layers of clothing to suit varying temperatures during the day and night.

It may be a bit fresh early in the mornings and chilly in the night, so make sure to bring a sweater, jacket, and socks etc to stay cozy.

A headlamp is a necessity, and bring a pair of light hiking shoes and slip-on shoes.

Aimee Hansen

Creator, Storyteller Within Women's Retreats

Aimee chases big questions with butterfly nets, only to set them free again. She's always had an irresistible attraction to words and metaphors as a way of playing, provoking, revealing, exploring,  understanding and connecting.

A few years into a corporate agency, in 2003 she began sneaking away from her London office for creative writing classes at Central Saint Martins College, rekindling her childhood love of words. On a quest for more meaningful plot in life and a bigger adventure, she left London in 2008 and again in 2010, to travel.

By 2012, her travels guided her to Guatemala and back to herself. Her intensive studies with a mentor who called her "the storyteller" -  and her own passion for questions and insight -  started her on an ever curious and unfolding journey into the nature of perception. Her work explores the power of stories and invites a creative and playful adventure in the yoga of perception. She trusts in the mysterious sways of our hearts and the truth in our bodies, listening to what lights us up from within and moving, again and again, from this knowing.

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Aimee works as a freelance writer, dances with the muse at poetry, and scribbles into tricky spaces. She holds a 200+ hr yoga teacher certification. She is inspired and humbled by witnessing how something raw and honest in the human spirit aches to open, given the invitation. She began Storyteller Within retreats to share in the experience of exploring our humanity and stepping into our courage and vastness as women.

Melanie Champagne

Co-Creator, Co-Facilitator, Sacred Stories Women's Retreat

From a young age, Melanie has been fascinated by sacred stories and mythology. Through theater and literature studies, she discovered the evolution of cultures through art. Her calling to understand human’s psyche lead her to various fields from alternative healing therapies to psychology-astrology. 

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She passionately taught Meditation and Astrology for eleven years at Las Piramides Meditation Center in Guatemala. She is currently living in Canada and offering Astrology consultations for individuals and couples, co-facilitating heart focused retreats and holding space for embodied knowing in women circles. She is committed to support the expansion of intuition and preserve the knowledge of cycles. 

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For Melanie, mythological stories are medicine. They bridge the eternal with the present, the personal with the universal and facilitate the meeting of the different parts of ourselves: "May we let the stories move through us and let them whisper in the vulnerability of our hearts the treasures we long to recollect."

Jessi Luna, Yoga Facilitator
Jessi Luna is a board member of the Kula Collective and co-creator of Seven Springs Holistic Retreat, along with her husband Zach, built on the 126 acres of sacred land where she grew up as a child. 

Since a young age, Jessi has studied dance and creative movement. Yoga found Jessi over ten years ago, and since her first teacher training in 2008, Jessi has led retreats and workshops throughout the States, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, and Costa Rica. She completed her RYT500 hour certification in 2012 and now leads teacher trainings in these places she most enjoys to share, including Bali. 

Jessi teaches a Vinyasa based practice to combine elements of dance and natural movement with traditional yogic sequencing. She incorporates attention to rhythm of the breath, and allows for organic movement to flow in each pose. She is grateful for the journey of yogic creativity and loves to share this movement of bliss with others along the way. 

By Air: 

The closest airport is Knoxville International Airport (TYS). The airport is actually located in Alcoa and only 25 minutes from Seven Springs. We can arrange transportation services to pick you up from this airport, a $25 charge.

You may also consider flying into the Atlanta International Airport and taking a car to drive to Seven Springs. The Atlanta airport is about a three hour drive. 

By Car:

Please see the address below for the GPS location. We will provide additional instructions to ensure you arrive at the front entrance.

Nearby Attractions

If you have time before or after the retreat, there are many beautiful opportunities to soak up more of the surroundings.

Located less than 25 miles from Seven Springs is the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited National Park in the U.S. On your way you will drive through Townsend with a wonderful Visitors Center. Cades Cove is also a beautiful 11 mile loops to drive or bike on Saturday mornings when it is closed to cars. Abrams Falls is a nice 5 mile hike from Cades Cove.