My Personal Retreat @ Ojai Soul Arts with Ronda LaRue

I have recently returned from my 3 day retreat with Ronda LaRue (you have gotta love that name, and it's her real one too!) All I can say is this is a woman who can help you move heaven and earth!

Along with my friend, Raven's music I moved mountains! It was incredible.

So I arrived and I really didn't know what to expect. I was communicating with Ronda via email for the past few weeks and she had a sense of what I wanted and who I was, and she 'got me' and understood me through the emails.

So I arrived, after driving past her place several times (its a hidden sanctuary). I pulled in and all you could see were trees and this little stream.

What a delight Ronda is! She and her 2 dogs greeted me and took me to my 'cocoon', my home for the next few days. She showed me around and told me where things were and that I had a 'real' bathroom off the healing room and that the healing room and the bathroom along with my cocoon were mine and I could do what I wanted, when I wanted. She told me it was 'timeless' and that I didn't have to stick to a routine I could be as free as I wanted. So much so, if I wanted a spa naked in the middle of the night then that is what I could do!

She left me, and I sat at my little table and just cried! I sobbed. I had no idea what I was sobbing about, but I just had the urge, and I learnt along time ago never to fight that urge to cry.

I unpacked and an hour later I was meeting Ronda in the little meditation room and we went through my chakra's and I listened to my 'soul' and what my soul wanted. I had so many visions in each chakra, I had a different vision and it was the child in my coming out. Incredible.

Ronda encouraged me to draw then and draw and paint and colour and stick and play. Just be a kid. I loved it, it was amazing what I did.

For 3 days Ronda and I shared an hour or two in the morning and also the evening and the rest of the time I was on my own. Soul searching, cut off from the outside world as much as I could. Really left to delve in deep and discover me. Anyone who tells you this work is easy, well they are lying. It was the hardest time emotionally, but I fed my soul, which I have now had to start calling my 'essence' as soul is too small a word for my being.

Just incredible. On the final day I sat with Ronda and we talked about how I was going to release all that I had worked on and move on. I hadn't got a clue, but within me, my essence, it wanted a cleanse. A true cleanse. I didn't want to say it, but I wanted the hot sauna and cold plunge. Noooooo!!!!!



The cold plunge

I mentioned it to Ronda and I also told her I needed to burn some of the work that I had done and we decided that we would do it on top of Meditation mount one of Ojai natural vortexes at Sunset!

As the time approached and we were preparing things for the ceremony I was getting nervous, very nervous and I wanted to back out. I didn't want to do it. But I started to prepare and nothing was getting in the way of this. I started with a bubble bath and put on some clean clothes (I'd been living in the same comfort clothes for 2 days). and we met at 4.30pm and sat and did a short meditation and then we got everything together and went to the mountain.



The Sunset

There she left me to do my ceremony while she meditated. I started to burn the work I had done, wishing it well and giving it love and I thought I was going to start a fire with one piece it just went up like lightening!! I cried so hard and then I laughed and then I cried even more.



The ashes of my life

Then we headed home to do the cleanse. Now this was the part I was dreading!!! We prepared and then 10 minutes later we were sitting in the sauna, saying prayers to those we loved and needed to embrace, every time we squirted water on the coals.

Finally it got too hot and Ronda decided to go first and do the plunge, which I am glad about because I would never had done it, but I did.... HOW INVIGORATING!!!! I loved it!!!

We did it again and then toasted the cleanse and the ceremony with a glass of wine and then dried off and went upstairs to the house to meet Matt, Ronda's partner who was preparing our meal.

We spent the night chatting about life, work, friends and family. It was so beautiful and such a beautiful end to a magical trip.

We did our final session in the morning and it was incredible just to know that I had found my true essence. Words cannot describe the feeling.

Ronda is so humble, kind, considerate and most of all 'normal'. People used to expect me to be the tie-dye psychic, and I though Ronda was going to be a little airy fairy for me, but no. She was normal. We all chatted like old friends on the 'last supper'. I feel so honored that I did this retreat with Ronda and I feel so privileged to have been taken in to their home the way they invited me.

Matt and Ronda are special people with special hearts and I have be shown so much within me. I feel liberated!

I will in a few days post the podcasts of our sessions and also the video's that I decided to record as I was going through my journey. There will be a nominal charge for these as they are my inner thoughts and feelings.

If you are interested in one of Ronda's retreats which I can highly recommend then please click here or go to www.ojaisoularts.com.

Enjoy your journey!!

Lisa xx

Please click here for the pictures