A Planning Retreat for Conference

The Minnesota T’ai Chi Chih teachers are hosting the conference this year. When we had a one-day retreat last year, one of our brainstorming ideas was to have a conference planning retreat.

We envisioned ourselves doing a practice and then meeting all day. In the meantime we started to meet in our smaller committees for planning. We discovered that planning over a three-day period might not be necessary. Then we were getting phone calls and emails from teachers — Do we have to plan all day? I don’t want to plan all day, I need a retreat! And then I got a phone call from Alba Cordasco, the co-chair for the 2007 conference. I invited Alba and Janet Oussaty to the retreat.

The retreat started with 27 teachers. Sr. Antonia used Justin Federman Stone’s Spiritual Odyssey book throughout the weekend for our focus of discussion. On Saturday, we met through the day focusing on our practice and discussions after meals. In the evening the committees reported on what had been done. We reviewed the tentative agenda for conference and got great feedback. We gave Alba and Janet materials we had developed and what we had received from previous hosts, so they had the information for 2007. The meeting generated a great discussion about why we go to conference, what we expect from conference and how that should affect the planning. The chi intervened and we had the retreat that we needed.

From the evaluations, everyone enjoyed the time together and only a few people wanted more planning time. We were focused on conference planning but as a community we got more than that.

1. We had new and experienced teachers giving the committees feedback on the conference planning and agenda that was very helpful.

2. Several teachers had breakthroughs with their practice. It was a relaxed but focused weekend and folks seemed very present to their practice.

3. We had an impromptu discussion about what we needed to do for our local teachers. We tentatively mapped out a direction for our efforts. From the evaluations, teachers wanted to continue retreats, wanted time to plan for our community and wanted students included. The most immediate need was determined to be a Seijaku training for teachers.

4. The retreat allowed the 2007 conference chairs to see how our planning process evolved.

5. It was great to use Justin’s writings as the focus of our discussions.

The feedback gave the committees ideas how to proceed, what was good and what wasn’t. It gave all the teachers present a time to feel really part of the planning process. And it gave us time to focus on our personal practice and discuss how we want to proceed as a community.

I had to bring bad news about the hotel and after discussion, one of the teachers thought of an idea that “fixed” the problem, which actually made the agenda better than our original idea. A roadblock turned out to be an opportunity for a better conference. Having a retreat with a component for planning opens up the attendees to their practice and to the needs of the community. We will probably continue to have yearly retreats with a planning session even when we are not hosting the conference. And it just might help us think about those roadblocks differently.