This is the third year for our Refill Retreat!

Join where we dive into ancient movement and meditation practices, as well as intuitive ways of connecting to our inner resources, sharing space together to explore more of what we really are!

Through Qi Gong, movement, and dance, we engage with ourselves in a way that supports a peaceful mind and relaxed resilient body.

In this context, Qi Gong is the practice of following the bodymind-system's natural and universal ways of movement. Improving the free-flowing and effortless qualities of movement that are found in playing/dance and natural ways of moving. We share a selection of ways to enter into this effortlessness through exploring your own body's patterns and becoming more aware of the natural breath and movement already happening. How would it be to let go into what awareness can be, and see what happens? Letting go of rigidity, and finding balance in our inner structure?

Our wish is to create the perfect space to both rest in movement and feel renewed and refreshed through being more present with the body and its own flow and internal energy.

We will share ways of nurturing and calming the body and mind through restorative practices based on Qi Gong, dance and movement. This will also serve as a good foundation to meet stress and resistances in everyday life, and also prepare the body and focus to meet the new year, potentially also deepening the practice through an optional ice bath session.

Ice bathing is optional each day of the week, as a supplement to the Qi Gong practices to open and integrate further through the body.

We invite you to explore a different kind of gathering of connecting yourself, softening into our bodies and spending a joyous time together.

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You can expect

Breathing deeper into your body and connecting to your body’s natural flow
Moving every day
Moments of deep stillness and softness
Joyous moments with other people both in classes and outside the scheduled sessions
Becoming more “online” within yourself

Sam Wuest

Sam Wuest is a certified Daoist Gate Wudang Arts teacher and a 25th-generation lay disciple of the Chunyang Sect of Wudang Daoism (Daoist Name: 信罡; Xin Gang), having studied in immersive settings with Lindsey Wei and Li Shifu in the Pacific Northwest and China. A former apprentice of master Japanese Acupuncturist T. Koei Kuwahara, Sam has served as team acupuncturist and massage therapist for Columbia University and ran an acupuncture clinic & teaching Taiji, Qigong, & Meditation in Southern California. Before becoming an acupuncturist, Sam coached college and professional track and field athletes and was a Division 1 athlete and national high jump silver medalist in 2024. Sam practices Daoist and Chinese Medicine, teaches Taiji and Qigong, and coaches other embodied movement arts in San José, Costa Rica. He also teaches online classes to connect the worlds of athletic/movement professionals and Traditional Chinese Medicine as Meridians Move.

Sam believes in finding spontaneity & softness through strictness & structure.

Qigong is the embodied practice of returning to and then optimizing the energetic aspects of the human body. Using structure and strictness, we create the conditions necessary to recharge and recuperate our physical essence, and once that is filled, the energetic body starts to develop and spontaneously align as it fills the body with Qi.

Rooted in Daoist Alchemical principles and practices, these practices are designed to created softness in the body by finding a strong structure to relax in, to create spontaneity by adhering to strict principles of naturalness and non-governance (Wu Wei). What seems like a paradox actually brings us closer to the true core of what it means to be a human being, breaking us out of our conditioned mind and ways of being to experience something much larger than ourselves in movement & stillness.

Alexander Aarø

Alexander has had a daily practice of movement and therapeutic work since 2013, is a trained Dancer with pedagogy, instructor in the therapeutic movement method Gyrokinesis in addition to having taught Cuban salsa, partner dance, improvisation and other dance traditions since 2007.

He is also a trained coach through Leadership by Heart and Qigong Healer through Robert Peng Qigong (also called White Light Qigong).

Alexander has long been interested in how the body should be able to function optimally and how having an active and moving everyday life should feel good and with an excess of creativity and movement.

He is also studying music now at Vancouver Island Univercity and will play during the sound journey at the retreat.

He has been doing ice baths, cold showers and cold exposure since 2016, inspired by his own grandfather who started ice baths at the age of 50 to counteract the ischias pain and continued with this until he was 90 years old.

Alexander looks forward to sharing some simple focuses the group can explore together to deepen the understanding, contact and experience of one's own body.

Alexander also offers Qigong massage and energy treatment during the retreat.

Get in touch to set up a time for this at alexander.aaroe@gmail.com or any other inquiries