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Deepen your connection to your body and the natural world through healing qigong.
Join Cherie Goodwin Lippard for a nurturing day retreat in the exquisite meditation garden exploring the subtle field of chi all around us and within us, through gentle qigong movements to benefit your whole body, heart and mind.
We will begin with a short meditation, moving into gentle physical movements that are foundational practices for the health and well being of the whole body based on a medical form of qigong. These practices will be followed by a nourishing organic box lunch catered by Fork Restaurant. After lunch, a healing Cedar Enzyme Footbath and your choice of a luxurious 75-minute massage or organic facial followed by a sound therapy session in our field of hammocks.
The qigong is a perfect way to open the body to receive all the healing more deeply and profoundly. A retreat day dedicated to deep nourishment!
This All Day Vitality Boosting Retreat includes a 75-min. Massage, Cedar Enzyme Footbath, Organic Lunch & Informative Self Care Presentation!
Space is limited to 10, make your reservations in advance.
Cherie Goodwin Lippard has been teaching locally for many years and works directly with Master Ning, a master teacher in mainland China who was a healer and teacher at the well known medicine-less hospital in China. She also went through teacher training with Master Mingtong Gu and became a certified teacher which compliments her study of Chinese medicine and work as an acupressure massage therapist.
At the base of the Bohemian Highway, within a stone’s throw of California’s best coastal vineyards, is the tiny town of Freestone, tucked between the redwoods and the ocean. Blink your eyes and you’ll miss it—but consider it a destination for deep relaxation. Osmosis Day Spa & Sanctuary, founded by Michael Stusser in 1985, is a Zen meditation retreat here, at the center of which is a cedar enzyme bath experience.
A day at Osmosis begins with a welcoming cup of hot tea and a walk through the Kyoto-style meditation garden, whose labyrinthine paths are designed to bring you into the present moment. Based on the Zen parable of The Ox and the Herder, a metaphor for the experience of enlightenment, the ten-stage journey carries you through various elements of earth and water with opportunities to stop and reflect for as long as you’d like.
Zen Garden meditation space at Osmosis Day Spa. Photo by Kim Westerman
Designed by British horticulturist Robert Ketchell and built by the late Steve Stucky, once the Abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, the garden is lovingly tended by unobtrusive staff who will come find you if you lose track of time. After all, that’s the point.
The lovingly tended rock garden at Osmosis Day Spa. Photo by Kim Westerman
When it’s time, you’ll be led back to the main building for a tea service in a private room overlooking a beautiful tea garden that you’re also welcome to stroll in. The tea is infused with enzymes designed to aid digestion and mirror the experience your skin will have in the forthcoming cedar enzyme bath.
Next, we had massages in the couples room, a quiet space where two therapists work in harmony on your respective sore muscles, tailoring the treatment to your specific needs. There are also outdoor pagodas available for massage therapy, a good option on warmer days. Our massage therapists were especially attuned not only to what we reported our bodies needed, but also what they sensed through their own intuitive assessment.
After the deeply relaxing massage, we took a break for lunch, which was a generous salad of local greens and an egg, served at a picnic table by the creek.
Lunch by the creek at Osmosis Day Spa. Photo by Kim Westerman
At last, the main event: the cedar enzyme bath, a therapeutic treatment from Japan that is the only one of its kind in North America. Wooden boxes hold the deeply aromatic mixture of ground cedar and rice bran, infused with enzymes created by a biological catalyst imported from Japan that triggers fermentation, hence the steam rising from the “bath,” which is, actually, not wet, but rather humid from perpetual fermentation. And warm. Perfectly, relaxingly warm.
The cedar enzyme bath is the only one of its kind in North America. Photo by Kim Westerman
The cedar enzyme bath takes about 30 minutes, all told, and an attendant walks you through the process, coming in periodically to wipe your face with a cool cloth and give you a sip of water (as your hands are buried in the mixture). Then, she brushes your skin off with a little broom—yes, a broom!—before leading you into the adjacent shower.
So relaxing was our time at Osmosis that it seemed like a crime to get in the car and drive back to reality. But it’s a comfort to know that this sanctuary is always there.
Cherie Goodwin Lippard has been teaching locally for many years and works directly with Master Ning, a master teacher in mainland China who was a healer and teacher at the well known medicine-less hospital in China. She also went through teacher training with Master Mingtong Gu and became a certified teacher which compliments her study of Chinese medicine and work as an acupressure massage therapist.
