North Saanich, BC, Canada
Up to 12 in group
November 28, 2026
About this Retreat
Dr. Stéphanie Marchal is a registered psychologist working in Victoria. Her practice focuses on relationships, attachment, trans-generational trauma and transitions/transformations. She is a wilderness personal guide, and studied with Animas Valley Institute and Francis Weller among others. She works with people toward recovering their wholeness, uncovering their gifts, and applying these in their lives and for the good of their community. She has experienced wilderness as a powerful ally in these tasks.
She is personally interested in supporting deep and courageous transformations driven by the participants. One of Stephanie's focus is to support the weaving of authentic experiences and visions with the person's embodied life. She's a firm supporter of people's authentic voices and helps them be heard. She uses dream images, guided journeys and somatic practices to help clarify the thread to deep experience, and support integration and manifestation.
Visit Stéphanie's page: SacredWeaving dot org
Sarah Frizelle is a counselor in private practice in Victoria BC who offers wholistic counselling to individuals, couples and families. She has worked with individuals in roles of educator, psychotherapist and wilderness guide for over 25 years, sometimes combining all three roles in nature-based therapy or eco-psychology with individuals and groups.
Sarah works to support positive personal, family and cultural level changes. She embraces transformative learning and is dedicated to unleash the creative gifts and potential of people to heal and transform, in support of creativity, collaboration and innovation.
Details of this retreat
Led by Dr. Stéphanie Marchal, Licensed Psychologist in BC, and Sarah Frizelle, Registered Clinical Counsellor.
This series of daylongs are meant to be supportive and enchanted diving into mindfulness meditation with the natural world, with guides Stéphanie Marchal and Sarah Frizelle, both accredited Wild Mind Practitioners (Animas Valley Institute graduates), and long-time meditators. Together, we will explore how to be present with our breath, body, emotions, and thoughts with greater clarity and kindness, attune to the natural rhythms around us, find surrender in the care of the world, while becoming aware of our deeper motivation and support.
Meditation was originally deeply embedded in local cultures which were nature-based. Something happens when we sit with nature instead of apart from it.
Each daylong will include guided practices, teachings, and time for questions and reflection. You’ll learn foundational skills such as:
coming into the present moment
seeing things as they are
working skillfully with emotions
cultivating compassion and a wise, steady heart
allowing yourself to be held by nature and the World
We also explore how mindfulness can support us in meeting the challenges of our lives—and the world—with greater awareness and care .
Some sessions will include time outdoors, inviting the natural world—sounds, sights, and quiet sitting—to support and deepen our practice as well as deeper explorations of our relationship with nature.
Please do not hesitate to ask for scholarships - no one will be turned away for lack of fund.
Bring your lunch.
Free for teens (15 years and older) with a parent
Your guides' mindfulness ground:
Dr. Stéphanie Marchal:
Dr. Stéphanie is a registered psychologist and wilderness guide based in Victoria. She discovered mindfulness unexpectedly over 20 years ago, during a 10-day silent retreat in Nepal — an experience both challenging and deeply grounding that became the foundation of her work. Since then she's continued to deepen her practice, most often at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and is completing a two-year teacher training with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. She weaves mindfulness together with therapy and nature-based practice, as presence is what allows us to be in contact with what is true, heal, and love well ourselves, others and the World.
Sarah Frizelle:
Sarah is a counsellor in private practice in Victoria, offering wholistic support to individuals, couples, and families. Alongside 25+ years as an educator, psychotherapist, and wilderness guide, she has spent the last two decades deepening her own Vipassana and Tibetan meditation practice — the root from which both her guiding and her therapeutic work grow. She's dedicated to helping people access their own creative gifts as a path to healing and transformation, at the personal, family, and cultural level.
Verified
