About the Retreat Leaders
Sheryl Alstrin, Facilitation Leader
Kirsten Milio, Yoga & Meditation Leader
Each one of us has a light flickering inside. Sometimes it may burn full of resolve and intensity like a splendid torch, and other times it may appear to be dim, with only a faint and delicate flicker. There is such beauty in sharing your light... Think about holding a candle in your hands. If you use your candle to light someone else's, you don't lose anything when you pull your candle away, and you've helped someone else to rekindle her flame.
Nurtured Soul Retreat is about holding a space for women to come and explore their own fire at whatever brightness it might be. The leader's role in the retreat is to both assist each participant in lighting her fire and facilitate a group where, as women, we can do the same for each other. Although both leaders bring years of experience in this type of work, their primary role is to hold the space for you to realize your own intention for the week.
Sheryl Alstrin
Sheryl has had a successful corporate career based around helping people find their own potential and facilitating groups to use collaboration as a way to make things bigger and better. Her degree and early experience was in Marketing, but it didn't take long to find her calling in the Workplace Learning & Development field. Most of her corporate training experience has centered around communication and interpersonal skills. In a corporate world that focuses on the bottom line, Sheryl has thrived in helping individuals light their own fires to not only do better at their jobs, but enjoy them more while adding to company's profitability. Her favorite part of being a "trainer" has always been facilitating sessions where people discover their own "a-ha" moments.
Sheryl's career has continued to evolve and grow over the last 5 years as she has continued to evolve and grow as a woman on her own journey. She embarked on the ultimate test of taking the leadership skills she had trained others to do and utilized them as a founder in a growing start up business in '05. She has successfully helped create a company culture around collaboration and empowering people where employees feel like their opinions and ideas are not only heard, they are often incorporated into the short- and long-term plans for the business.
Sheryl discovered yoga in the late '90s and has enjoyed finding ways to mix the inner nourishment she receives from yoga with her life in the corporate world. For the first few years, they stayed on opposite sides. The corporate job led Sheryl to the need for yoga to help find and maintain balance in an over committed life as a working mother. It was one evening in a class about 5 years ago that she had her own "a-ha moment'... while in triangle pose, her mind was at the blissful happy place of "ahhhhh, that's just what I needed"... and then she went with that thought a bit longer... "I love yoga. My body loves yoga. My life would be different if I had a daily yoga practice in my life..." She went from thinking she was too busy for such things to starting a new journey to integrate her nourishing and spiritual practice with her business life, and to share the contagious inspiration with others.
Since that time, she has continued to experiment with different types of yoga as well as meditation and other healing arts as a way to nourish the soul during hard times, and embrace loving kindness during joyful times. The magic of a special place like Belize, and the collaboration she found with Kirsten, led her to a path to create Nurtured Soul Retreat. She is confident participants will feel inspired, refreshed and more in touch with their own inner wisdom upon leaving the retreat.
In her own words...
"I am continually amazed at the magic that people helping people brings to the world. Being a facilitator is a rewarding role as I get to bear witness to individuals finding and using their own inner wisdom to collaborate with others and organically create solutions and find truths. Some of the most real experiences I've had the privilege of being a part of in the business world are when it comes down to true connections with people that are able to enhance a situation and make things better...In the corporate world, that can mean more cash on the bottom line. In our own personal lives, that can mean more meaning, connectedness and peace. And in the our communities and in the world... well, I think that's the magic that is needed in the world today."
Kirsten Milio
Talk to Kirsten about yoga, about Ak'Bol, about life in Belize with her husband and children, about creating a yoga community, and you will see her true gratitude for the life she has created that involves all the things that she loves. The dream to move to Belize started about the same time Kirsten started practicing yoga in the early '90s, although she remembers doing advanced poses on her own as a child. By the time she started teaching 10 years ago, the plans for the move and the resort were progressing and in early 2008, the vision became a reality with the opening of Ak'Bol, Belize's first Yoga Retreat and Family Eco Resort.
Experienced yoga practioners will quickly discover they are not at just another studio when they step out under the palapa over the sea to do a class with Kirsten. Her energy is calming yet inspiring, just like the beautiful environment she has created over the sparkling blue water. She is an instructor you can tell gets as much out of teaching as her students do out of learning from her depth of experience. She has a gift of helping other find the inner wisdom to listen to their own body in her class, to wipe their mind chatter and feel as though they have had a "working" sacred rest for the day; a self exploration; a freedom from withing; an uncovering of the layers of the mind.
Kirsten's style is described as eclectic and in tune with her participants as well as with the Belizean environment she teaches in. The sun, the waves, the wind, the mood of the students... she uses it all to create the magical energy in her classes. She was fortunate to be inspired by many magnificent master yoga teachers while training in Chicago: incredible healing from Ana Forest; sense of humor and sequencing from Richard Freeman-Ashtanga; creativity from Shiva Rea-Vinyasa Flow; well rounded yoga intelligence from Rod Stryker-ParaYoga; energetics and grace from John Friend; inner stillness-Erich Shiffmann; freedom of flight-Shannon Gannon-Jivamukti yoga; stamina and rewiring your mind- Baron Baptiste-Power yoga....and others. As the Ak'Bol community continues to grow, she is delighted to welcome more and more instructors to her beachfront sanctuary.
In her own words...
"I have come a long way on my healing spiritual path. Since my childhood, I have been struggling to be free and yoga awakens my freedom within and reconnects with my soul. When I had my first yoga class, I felt "at home". I knew that was what I needed, the healing work for me to uncover my true self that has been in the dark for so long. I know it works if you do the work. The journey can be hard... it can be scary and emotional and ugly. Yet I know there is beauty and freedom on the other side. I have been on both sides so I feel strongly about teaching this incredible gift we all have inside. It is a day to day balance and journey, yoga and all of its dimensions is a way of life for me. I couldn't imagine life without it and feel blessed I have woken up to it once again in this life."