The AHI Retreat represents the institute’s first type of event open to the public. At the retreats, participants experience a program over a period of three to four days that reflects various approaches and contents of the individual departments. These approaches and contents are conveyed in lectures, workshops or discussions, and immediately tried out in practical exercises in the presence of the course instructors. In this way, the participants can relate the content directly to individual changes or experiences. The focus is on topics such as breathing exercises, meditation practices, yoga and other breathing-/mindfulness-based movement approaches, nutrition, counseling, artistic-creative improvisations or theater pedagogical exercises. The course participants interact with each other several times a day.
Since its foundation, two AHI retreats have already taken place. The first took place in September 2020, the second in May 2022, both times at Huldersun Academy in Einbeck, Germany. At the first retreat, the focus was on self-efficacy (the ability to overcome imponderables and challenges from within oneself) of the participants. The second retreat focused on the topics of breath and resonance. The content was structured in praxis rooms, impulse lectures, movement units and different types of meditation such as Zen, sound and movement meditation. Both events were intensively reflected upon by the participants as well as the staff in various ways after the event. Building on this reflection and the experiences of the first two retreats so far, structures were created at a conception weekend in October 2022 to be able to offer the AHI retreat twice a year starting in 2023. Here, the contents and research approaches of the institute are to be conveyed, experienced and further developed in an understandable and practically oriented way. In this way, the retreat is to become a fundamental and recurring offer of the AHI to the general public – far beyond the institute’s boundaries.