Re-Imagine Tulum
March 5-12, 2025
by Isuini Martial Healing Arts & Dandelion Medicine Liberation Co-op
Introduction
What once was a minute town has become one of the top destinations of the world. There are no surface rivers or streams; however, just below the ground lies a vast underground system of the world’s largest underground river.
Humans have been visiting these caves for over 13,000 years. Many of these caverns eventually collapsed creating what we know today–cenotes–the subterranean caverns and their natural sinkholes, which serve as the entrance to this spectacular world. The Mayans believed cenotes were the entrance to the underworld, where their gods and spirits resided.
The ancient Mayans were king astronomers, measuring time and the cycles of the stars. Many of their most important buildings were aligned to correspond with them. The ancient Mayans were philosophers, mathematicians, artists, architects and warriors. It was they that first understood the concept of “zero” and they who first cultivated cacao, papaya, and corn. They developed complex and accurate calendars and perfect pyramids of immense size, all while western Europe remained in the dark ages.
Mayans have always known that Tulum was special, that it is magical. In fact, Tulum is the largest of just three coastal Mayan cities, where high priests once trained and for reasons unknown this great civilization left this sacred land. Some say it was warfare, others say that the Mayans may have exhausted resources around them.”
– The Dark Side of Tulum, Rachel Apple (2019)
But has this great civilization really left?
What stories does this one highlight?
What stories does this one obscure?
Program Overview
1 week retreat (6 days, 7 nights)
Isuini Martial Healing Arts invites international advocates for the Earth and conscious Human development to retreat, reset and re imagine the way we organize our social relationships in an intimate collaborative sanctuary setting tensely situated within the greater and fraught context of ecological collapse and relentless development and construction of an ancient Mayan pilgrimage-hospital site.
The aim of this program is to offer an intersectional retreat space and laboratory that brings together artists, organizers, activists, and collective capacity builders to honorably commemorate an ancient exchange and migratory pathway. This retreat welcomes diverse participation and centers the needs of BIPOC international community members, especially those with roots in Latin America.
The program will ensure that all participants are welcomed and fortified with bilingual contextualization and foundational methods and skills for understanding and navigating reflections and engagement with the Yucatan Peninsula. The facilitation begins before the retreat via an online session that aims to deliver anthropological tools and intention setting for the work to be held through an indigenous and de-colonial perspective.
Once settled on site, participants will meet for early morning Internal Martial Arts sessions with Yunuen Rhi who will teach a daily practice to connect to the work in the program. It will help participants focus and ground on the terrain while providing them with embodied methods for navigating the realities of traveling there, being a bridge across differences and to level out burn out, compassion fatigue, and physical-emotional imbalances within.
This laboratory is a space for celebrating the coming together of clear centered minds and bodies to sprout new possibilities for a collective expansion. Jenna Torres will help ground the information received and channeled through creative writing practices in connection with the place after observation and local interactions with informants at ancient and current ceremonial sites,
At the end of the retreat there will be a closing ceremony, a debrief dialogue, and a celebration-offering.
Re-imagine Programming
Guided Reflection
Disentangle your vivid imagination from tethers and shackles with creative support and direction.
Engagement with Land & People
Practice listening more deeply to the spirit and needs of the people and places you encounter; learn to approach the land and its waters with unique respect for its power, gifts and historical importance. Tulum and Playa del Carmen were hospital sites to heal people walking to and from present day USA and Canada to Central America. Cozumel island was a major pilgrimage site to honor the Ixchel the moon goddess energy.
Exchange
Allow for more aligned engagement with people and places that you visit to transform the way you give, receive and relate.
Rest
In-house Meal Preparation
Repurpose your internal resources, and let us cook for you some of the time while you are here. Give your imagination more time to unfold and percolate, so you can connect and lend materiality and immediacy to longstanding or emerging ideas.
Tai Chi Treatment & Therapy
Tai Chi Treatment™️ is a two person system that decalcifies the joints and lengthens the structure through gentle intelligent traction. Tai Chi Treatment™ is based on traditional Tai Chi Chuan and ancient Taiwanese bone setting. It’s great for alleviating pain, stiffness, injury and misalignment. It’s a rare method that utilizes internal martial arts power and offers immediate results:
- improved structural alignment
- improved posture
- cleared blockages & densities
- increased awareness of body and breath
- reset sprains
- reduce scoliosis discomfort
- increased comfort & mobility
- increased overall sense of spaciousness in the body
This treatment is offered as an add on and costs $250 for full body treatment lasting 1 hour 45 min.
Tera Hertz Frequency Therapy
Tera hertz Therapy uses tera hertz waves to match the vibration frequency of human cells. The therapy helps blood flow with normal healthy cells absorbing the tera waves while dormant cells are reactivated. As a result, damaged cells are repaired leading to improved healing times in areas of trauma, leaving the patient feeling more energized. Regular usage of the therapy strengthens and induces the DNA organic molecules, enhancing self-repairing body cells. The principal treatment is to invite capillaries to enhance the body and cells to function healthily. Tera hertz frequency may help with the following:
- helps reduce fatigue
- improves sleep
- reduces varicose veins
- reduces pain
- relieves muscle stiffness
- reduces inflammation
- clears eczema, mosquito bites & other skin problems
- supports joint health
This treatment is offered as an add on and costs $90 for full body treatment lasting 45 minutes. First two retreat sign ups will receive each a complimentary treatment.
Martial Healing Arts
Lineage-based Movement
Learn from and understand the importance of lineage-holders & teachers–keepers of important information and transmissions. Practice in community with 5th generation Ma Gui Baguazhang instructor, Yunuen Rhi, as the start of a challenge to train everyday as a habit.
Transform
Learn how to listen to and change your body with the Baguazhang internal martial art system, a technology and living lineage from China that carries the secrets of body transformation from enlightened Buddhist and Taoist masters. Unblock the self-healing capacities of your body and how it relates to Restorative Justice through the notion of Cuerpo-Territorio (body as land).
Location
Casa de Luz in La Veleta, Tulum
Privately Mexican owned villa with 6 bedrooms, a dining room, terrace and outdoor pool that is harmoniously integrated into a beautiful landscape. The location of this particular Villa is less populated and calm.
La Valeta is a neighborhood of vacation homes walking distance from restaurants, bars, and holistic centers. The property is located 6 minutes from downtown and 15 minutes from the beach by car.
Accommodations
6 rooms with a maximum occupancy for 12 people.
Room 1: two queen size beds, air conditioning, ceiling fan, safe, closet, full-bathroom, mirror, high speed internet connection.
Room 2: two queen size beds, air conditioning, ceiling fan, closet, full bathroom, mirror, high speed internet connection.
Room 3: two queen size beds, air conditioning, ceiling fan, closet, full bathroom, mirror, high speed internet connection.
Room 4: king size bed, air conditioning, ceiling fan, closet, full bathroom, mirror, high speed internet connection and balcony.
Room 5: king size bed, air conditioning, ceiling fan, closet, full bathroom, mirror, high speed internet connection and balcony.
Room 6: king size bed, air conditioning, ceiling fan, closet, full bathroom, mirror, high speed internet connection and balcony with a hammock.
Additional Sanctuary Amenities
- pool
- fire pit
- garden
Activities
- Sian Ka’an Mayan floating canal visit
- Muyil & Tulum archaeological ceremonial sites
- Sanctuario de Cruz Parlante- Felipe Carrillo Puerto with a local expert
- Cancha Maya contemporary ceremonial site in Tulum
- cenotes/ sinkholes
- beach visits
Costs
1 week retreat (6 days, 7 nights) -$3,300 USD
*Early Bird Non Refundable $600 deposit due by December 31. $900 Starting January 2025
Pay Here (Click to link):
Zelle– dml@sweetlivity.com, Venmo, Pay Pal, Cash App
Installment payments due prior to the retreat: $1200 or $1350 usd per month, depending on the initial deposit.
Cost inclusions:
- accommodations (shared occupancy), limited single occupancy options available (additional fee of $25 extra per night)
- 80% of meals prepared on site
- site visit entree fees
- facilitated pre-retreat preparation meetings
- ground transportation from and to the airport (Cancun or Tulum)
- ground transportation for retreat programming
Cost exclusions:
- international round-trip flight
- you will be responsible for about 10 of your own meals (this leaves room for you to eat out, grocery shop, cook)
- travel insurance (required), passport fees
- visa
- excess baggage fees
- laundry
Facilitator Bios
Yunuen Rhi is a consultant, anthropologist, wellness coach, artist, and researcher-writer. Their Mexican and Korean roots have led them to cultivate Western, Eastern, and Native medicine pathways as an antidote for unifying the fragmented personal and collective bodies. They offer artists and traditional work settings creative bridges for self-healing, accountability and empowerment. As a fifth generation Ma Gui Baguazhang instructor they do constant research on the body as a source of self-healing through lineage based practices. The service work they did for healing ceremonies with Nespelem, Mixteco and Apache elders for communities across ecologies and borders has provided a framework for helping individuals in group settings access self-healing strategies and pathways. Their work aims to help people activate, fortify and develop a deeper connection to natural systems and resources as a method for healing fragmentation, burn out and inter-generational trauma. Bringing this unique amalgam to work and creative settings can open new pathways for individual and systemic change that can create spaciousness and fluidity within and between clients, minimize compulsive patterns of relating, deepen connection between community members, and diversify strategies and practices for organizational movement that is grounded and impactful.
Jenna Rollins is a poet, activist, blossoming entrepreneur, and superpower; she takes the hard lessons she’s learned through living at the intersections of many identities and crafts beautiful art to tell her story. Some of these identities include, Black, Woman, Mother(ing), former foster care youth, and many more. She is a worker-owner of the co-op Dandelion Medicine Liberation. She believes we all have our own stories to tell and that we all need rest and a space to reset, grieve and release so we can grow beautiful things in grief’s place. She sees grief as a necessary tool for us to be human in our quest for justice in an unjust world for Black and Brown people. Through the art of storytelling, sharing perspective in deep vibrant and authentic ways, she has survived loss (her motherhood, her childhood, her liberation, her autonomy), racism, misogynoir, and capitalism. For her grief is social justice and social justice is grief.