El Nopal (The Prickly Pear) Retreat
2026 Dates: TBC
2025 Dates: Closed retreat mid-June to beginning of July
"If you can practice while distracted then you are well trained"
El Nopal (The Prickly Pear) Retreat offers a week-long respite to engage in somatic and felt sense learning
El Nopal (The Prickly Pear) Retreat offers a week-long restorative and philosophic engagement in companion to somatic and felt sense learning with Laiwan and guests.
The weeklong retreat is located beside a popular and active sandy beach in Mexico (West Coast Pacific Ocean side).
The confirmed guest faculty member joining us is recent MFAIA-PT Program Director, our beloved JuPong Lin.
The pre-requisite to attend El Nopal (The Prickly Pear) Retreat asks that you have studied in the MFAIA Program at Goddard College with Jupong Lin or Laiwan or under a one-to-one individual mentorship.
Applications by artists and writers engaged in anti-oppressive, decolonial, anti-racist, biodiverse multi-species investigations will be prioritized.
Costs
Shared Studio Apartment / Room for Two, with two double beds, full kitchen, full bathroom with shower, and balcony overlooking resort grounds, pools or with possible ocean view, is $800 USD per person for seven days stay, including administration and coordination fees.
A room of your own is possible at extra cost, please inquire with Laiwan.
Full laundry washer and dryer will be available for free to do your own laundry as needed.
There will be a common living room where, when needed, we can hang out as a group with a large balcony, a large dining table for group meals together as well as a large kitchen with full cooking/ refrigerator/ washing appliances.
The 2025 retreat application is now closed. El Nopal retreats at this time will be by invitation only.
Image courtesy of TruthSchool.org
Our special guest will be our recent MFAIA-WA Program Director and faculty member JuPong Lin. As many of you know, Jupong is an independent artist-scholar and cultural worker who dances with horseshoe crabs and makes ceremony with cranes. She is dedicated to hospicing the dying colonized world using the arts to imagine and create futures of joyful co-becoming. JuPong is currently dreaming with a family of Land Lovers of converting a school bus into a mobile greenhouse-art-science lab and school. We want to explore in and with communities of different places, how to make stories of many worlds-to-come that honor beloved heartplaces; how to share foodways and other cultural practices that resonate with ancestral traditions yet resist the lure of nostalgic notes that obscure the political and social exigencies of the moment.
Retreat explorations can include:
meditations with sunrise and sunset
raising vibration & resonance
deep listening
walking scores
playful energy
metamorphoses
land and water vibrations & habitats
co-becoming & emerging community resonances
restoration, creativity & imagination
bodily rest & somatic re-energizing
quietude
well being & joy as resistance
sharing abundance
Each attendee is responsible for:
1. Return airfare from where you live to Puerto Vallarta International Airport
2. All Travel & Medical Insurances (El Nopal Retreat cannot be held responsible for any medical issues during your stay. Travel Medical Insurance is required for you to attend)
3. Taxi to and from resort (shared taxi is more cost effective)
4. All food and beverage costs (on the first day we will go to the large grocery store to let you stock up your fridge so you will not need to eat out for every meal to save costs).
5. All charges, taxes and fees related to the room you stay in (eg. room service, daily cleaning fee that is about $5 USD per day, any other charges related to the room eg. damage that you may have accidentally done).
Additional notes:
* For your own comfort bring noise cancelling headphones, hotel events can sometimes be noisy;
* Bring small denomination pesos (20 and 50 peso notes) to tip workers and locals, including the Indigenous vendors and children;
About the Studio Apartment:
About El Nopal (The Prickly Pear) Retreat
El Nopal Retreat’s unique vision is to explore co-becoming by sharing and raising vibrational resonance and dynamic energy among creative practitioners, artists and writers. Through joy, sustenance, pleasure, rest, awareness, expanding vocabularies in felt-sense somatic intelligences, through training in practices of expansive consciousness, expansive perception and meditative pattern awarenesses, the retreat will encourage spaciousness to be found in even the most designed and predetermined entertaining and distracting of spaces.
Often residencies and retreats are located in rarified or pristine locations of spectacular or near wild nature. Such retreats choose to be separated or isolated from human folly and busy-ness so that participants can stay distanced, focused and unfettered by the mundanities of everyday human life or everyday distractions. Yet, what if we become skilled in creative practice and creative presence any where, even in the most predetermining sites for consumption and pleasurable behaviours such as a beach resort?
The teaching "If you can practice while distracted then you are well trained", a Buddhist practice articulated by Pema Chodron in English, becomes central in our learning together.
Some prickly pear patterns may arise and these are welcomed to be examined through kind and gentle conscientiousness.
Community Life Agreements
Prioritize to nurture kind, generous and gentle relationships to build community.
Respect your own boundaries.
Respect your roommate’s / colleagues’ boundaries.
Notice how you invest energy and how you expend energy.
Prioritize peaceful, joyful, restful, somatic, spacious energy regeneration (building awareness of wasteful energy use).
Prioritize what is health-giving and healing, what may be generations in the making.
Open consciousness to internal patterns and internal narratives that arise.
Articulate them to yourself - write them down.
Agree to be open to discuss issues that arise with retreat participants.
Respect the following agreements in our community life:
Through our actions, we will maintain a safe and unthreatening environment.
We will respect each other’s limitations and physical needs.
We will respect the local ecosystem and environment, including for wildlife habitats.
We will comply with the laws of the local land with regard to alcohol and other substance use, smoking and other activities.
We will comply with the resort policies regarding alcohol and other substance use, harassment and assault, and facilities use.