Banjar Bangkilesan

Our first full day of the retreat and boy did we kick off with a bang!! I woke up at 6am (thank you, time change!) and watched the sunrise by myself over a cup of coffee, what a start to the day! We then had a yoga session with a local instructor that was very grounding and felt amazing after so much time on an airplane. We had a delicious breakfast buffet and then our first official session! Our coach Emily does a beautiful job of incorporating mental health and spirituality in so we started with some individual journaling to get our heads in the right space. It felt freeing to release stressors, concerns and thoughts that I haven’t created space for in the craziness of my day-to-day life.

Next we got to tour the rice fields and gardens to learn about the process of growing rice! We got our hands (and feet) dirty getting to experience planting the rice ourselves. We cooled down with some fresh coconuts!

After that we got to enjoy a Balinese cooking classes! We “made” multiple dishes and although I am not a big cook, I really enjoyed it. My favorites were a tuna canapé and chicken satay! Whenever we weren’t actively cooking, it was wonderful to get to hear the stories of the different women and all about the businesses they have grown!

We got a short break to cool down in the pool and refresh before our final 2 events of the day! One was our next business coaching session where Em taught us hugely impactful tools. One was the Hedgehog, an exercise to evaluate if your business is in line with your mission, your unique talents and economic engines. The next was the flywheel which helps to identify what propels your company forward and how to better evaluate where your focus should be as well as where bottlenecks exist. As they say, it’s hard to work ON the business when you spend all your time IN the business and that’s exactly why see are here. Having time to step back and look at the big picture is refreshing and already helping me to identify next steps.

We ended the day with a tour of a Balinese compound, an authentic Balinese meal and dance performances. Wouldn’t you know I was first to get pulled on stage 😂 The dancer said “just follow me!” which was far more complex than it looked lol!

The day ended getting to dig deep with my phenomenal roomie Jenn on next steps for our businesses, our fears and our dreams. Having trouble winding down after such an amazing day. ❤️Read more