StoneSong Retreat Information

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Jonathan’s Circle

holds its annual

StoneSong Retreat

at the StoneSong Awareness and Nature Center (western Maryland, near Flintstone).

We’ll build a sacred community.

We’ll  explore the place our human erotic lives hold in  the greater life of Nature.

We’ll create personal and communal rituals.

We’ll share in heart circles.

We’ll  celebrate as faeries, tricksters, and bards.

We’ll exchange our stories.

We’ll allow ourselves and one another times of simple unstructured relaxation.

In all this, we’ll weave the connections that expand the possibilities of our lives.

A Spiritual and Erotic Retreat

Experience a gathering of men ready to explore the erotic and spiritual treasures at the core of our deepest, most authentic selves. This embodied community will gather in the rolling mountains of western Maryland at the StoneSong Nature and Awareness Center near the town of Flintstone.

During the retreat, which is capped at 20 participants, we will celebrate the power of self-pleasure to open the heart. We will use the joy that arises from our own bodies to help us create an environment of full acceptance for one another and ourselves.

Start the day together with conscious breath, yoga, stretching, meditation, and mindful self-pleasure. Share what is moving within you in our daily heart circle. Find joy, generosity, and healing in heart-centered, respectfully-structured erotic exploration with your fellow travelers.

Building Sacred Community

Ritual practice and play
are central to our retreat. 

Good ritual uses tangible objects and embodied practice to express and expand our awareness of what is moving inside us—as individuals and as a community—as we bond. 

One of the first things we do is sit together in circle  and tell each other about the personal meaning of the objects we’ve brought with us.

Next, we create a communal altar using those objects. 

If the idea of an altar is unfamiliar, maybe even uncomfortable, then don’t think of it as an altar. Just think of it as a visible focal point for what we’re bringing to the gathering.

We dedicate the area where we gather as a space consecrated to what we build together throughout the retreat.

We will adorn the area with materials that will enrich  the space: colorful fabrics, sacred images, and beautiful objects with personal meaning.

Creating and Releasing the Mandala

One of the major pieces of building our community involves creating a mandala together.

In Tibetan Buddhist practice, the mandala is a two-dimensional diagram of a three-dimensional temple. It is a tool for visualizing your spiritual aspirations. 

For us, it’s also a way to affirm the union of sex and spirit, and the image we create symbolizes the safe, sacred erotic space we continue to build together. It’s an expression of the temple that we’re building together through the entire retreat. 

The mandala is also an expression of the impermanence of all things: when Tibetan monks complete their work, they dedicate it and then immediately destroy it. Similarly, we’ll place the mandala on a bonfire before the retreat’s end.

Embodied Freedom and Erotic Generosity

In every retreat we’ve facilitated, we’ve witnessed the magic of men creating for one another a place of complete acceptance and safety–where all our interactions are a way of saying,  “You are safe. You are seen. You are sacred.” In offering that gift and receiving it back, we heal our souls, and we repair the world.

The freedom we discover allows us to be spontaneous, to take risks, to make surprising discoveries, both within ourselves and with others. We let down our defenses. Our innate capacities for kindness and empathy blossom. We experience the joys of deep gratitude. We delight in the pleasure and fulfilment we can bring someone else.

Sometimes we find all this in simple permission to walk naked through the natural world. Sometimes we find it in knowing others will celebrate the fullness of our erotic longings. We always find it in confidence that others will respect our personal boundaries and the choices we make about how to engage and when to withdraw into our own space.

Activities

During the mornings and afternoons, you’ll have rich options for how to spend your time. You can just unwind and chill, go for a clothing-optional walk in the woods, chat, exchange massage, read, and on and on. Each day there will be multiple options of structured activities to choose from, led by members of the community. 

In past retreats. these 90-minute experiences have included discussions of topics like Eros and Aging, Gender Stereotypes and Gender Freedom, Body Image and Body Shame, Your Upbringing and Sex, and Erotic Toy Show and Tell. Experiential sessions have included experiences like Non-Sexual Touch, Service to the Land, Techniques for Heightened Self-Pleasure, Respectful Erotic Sharing, and Ejaculation as a Mindful Choice.

There is also space for retreat participants to offer sessions, and we encourage it! If you have a passion surrounding a particular topic or issue, share it with your fellow retreat participants. Those sessions have provided great opportunities for sharing information and bonding.