Sharing another few days of our life here in France. Summer seems to fly by so fast and I really feel like slowing down... Hope this video invites you to do the same.
I also talk a little bit about the upcoming second Virtual Alignment Retreat that starts end of September. The first group was such a wonderful experience and I am delighted to be hosting another group.
About the Virtual Alignment Retreat
Starting end of September, for 8 weeks, we'll go on a "virtual" retreat. Retreating from our normal lives for some time, once a week, each Saturday evenings at 8 pm Paris time. Virtually. Without leaving our home.
I believe you don't necessarily need to go on a holiday or to some fancy retreat center - although it is marvelous when you get a chance to do that.
I believe INTENTION is what drives our experience and creation.
Having the intention to once a week drown out the noise of your everyday life so you can focus on connecting to your soul and your being can make a huge difference to how you will experience your life.
As you practice being more present, you will learn more about your true desires, your goals in life, the path you are meant to be on and the things you want (and can) change in your life to live more mindfully and soulfully. And you'll instantly experience more alignment.
We meet once a week online in a (small) group video call in which we share experiences, meditate and talk about alignment and the things we continuously learn about ourselves about how to find more alignment and live more fully.
I will also share my lessons on how to find alignment, how to understand your calling and how to manifest the things you desire in your life. I have been transmitting what I've learned about this since 2007 and am putting the best of what I have created over those 15 years together for this retreat in an online academy that you'll get access to. With videos, meditations and assignments.
We'll work with easy and fun assignments that will help you be more present, feel inspired and feel fully alive. Reconnect you to your true self, your soul and your calling for this life. Week by week you'll feel more aligned and you'll experience more clarity on who you are, what you are meant to be doing and what you'd like to change in your life, work or business.
We'll be doing this in a group and will be sharing our insights and experiences with each other. Although there is no individual guidance in this retreat, there is plenty of room for you to share your questions, experiences, ideas etc. I love making each session as personalized as it can be.
I have worked online with small groups for over 7 years and absolutely love how much happens in these sessions and how each person in the group contributes to all others' process in their unique way.
I hope you'll join me!
When? How much? Where?
We'll start on October 1st with our first group session. The online Academy will open the week before so you can start working through the videos and assignments.
The group sessions will be every week on Saturday (8 pm Paris time). Your investment is 250 euros excl VAT (VAT may be added depending on your country of residence and situation). You'll get access to the alignment lessons online in the academy which you have access to 24/7 and we'll do 8 weekly group sessions. The sessions will be on Zoom, a video call tool.
You do not need to have any experience in meditation or finding alignment nor do you need to have any specific knowledge or background. Come as you are and discover more about yourself, your calling and where life wants to take you during this virtual retreat.
If you'd like to join or if you have any questions, send me a message on [email protected]
Love, Marloes
It's been nearly six weeks since we last had rain and you can see how nature suffers.
Our garden really looks so sad and we can't really water anymore and we're trying the best we can at
least to keep our vegetables going and it's just made us so much more aware even of how much we
take for granted. How much we take for granted in life and about how our planet works. But fortunately
they predicted some rain and then when we saw these clouds we were so happy so we quickly
closed all the umbrellas and brought all the furniture in and waited for the rain. And as you
can see the wind was picking up and we really had good hopes but as so often we're in a valley
and we see thunderstorms and rain all around us and it just doesn't reach our valley. So we only
had really a couple of drops for only about a minute. I filmed all of this while standing outside
and I did not get wet so we were kind of disappointed. But the temperature did drop for
a couple of days which was really nice for the garden but also for us and it also gave us the
opportunity to finally do the hike around the lake. The lake that I've shown before and I've been
wanting to do that hike for a long time. So we had it all planned you would take the hike and then
take a picnic so we were all packed up but of course took much longer than we wanted to. So by
the time we arrived at the lake it was already 7 30 and the hike is about two and a half hours
and all of us were more like okay maybe this is not a good idea we should do this some other time.
And then I realized there's this really cool place by the lake. It's an organic farm. Now we usually
don't eat meat or very very little but they have really good organic burgers and the boys really
wanted to try them. So we decided to try that place and it was such a pleasant surprise.
We bought some ice cream for dessert and then decided to watch the sunset over the lake and it
was just one of those magical evenings where you feel the world really is such a beautiful place.
I don't know about you but to me this summer feels like it's just flying by crazy fast and
sometimes it gives me this feeling of feeling rushed like I need to make sure that I take
everything out of this summer before it is gone. I feel the need to slow down. I almost want to
stop the time so I can make sure this summer lasts way longer. So one way for me to experience this
life in slow down pace is to literally slow down in the way that I do things. So take more time to
cook, take more time to drink a coffee, take more time to walk and be in nature and just slow down
like literally. So I decided when my youngest wanted to go see a friend I suggested we take
the bike instead of the car. It's maybe about 25 kilometer ride in total so I dropped my son off at
his friend, took a different way home and it was so nice because it made me think of my late
grandfather who in the 50s and 60s worked for an insurance company in in the countryside of
the Netherlands and he was always on his bike to visit his clients and I can just imagine how
just like I was doing right now he would cycle through you know the country on these small
country roads and then in the distance you see the church of the next village so you're going from
village to village or he'd stop you know he'd stop and have a coffee with people and then continue
his journey and it made me feel very connected to him. I think in our fast-paced modern world
we tend to romanticize the old days like we feel things are better in the old days. I definitely
know that I really have this longing to live a little more slowly and it's probably not even
true. Things probably weren't even much better and some things maybe were but the one thing I do
notice here in France is the many chapels and crosses you find everywhere in the middle of the
countryside. So originally France is a very catholic country so I can imagine that in the old days the
farmers would spend the days out at work and they had these crosses like you see them on the corner
of many pastures like in the middle of a village every small tiny village has a church. The
intention behind that must have been that people took time in the middle of their busy day
like the cross maybe was a place they would walk to and sit for a couple of minutes and maybe pray
if they were religious or just sit with their thoughts and just lay down the work and have some
reflection introspective time and I think in our busy world do we really take time for that
like we always have our phones blinging and our screens or people around us and it's just the
world is just such a busier place I think today and personally I try to stay very present and
mindful. I don't want to get dragged into this rush and in this hamster wheel of life and really be
very present and stay connected to who I am and to who I am supposed to be in this world.
The crosses kind of reminded me of that this was normal way back and it is something that I do it's
something that I've always done personally. I recently did a two-month what I called a virtual
alignment retreat and it was two months in a small group online where each Saturday we met up online
and talked about how we could live more mindfully, more fully, how we could experience more joy in
our lives and sometimes it is so much easier to feel more fulfilled, to feel more peaceful. We
tend to think we need to do big things and big changes but we've seen in this past group that
it was actually smaller things and it was just so wonderful. It was all women this time to have
these women from around the world make these little changes in their life and feel so much
happier and just be so much more present. So I will be doing this again two months every probably
Saturday night again Paris time. We'll come online and we'll do maybe meditation, just good talks
about life, looking at your life. There's lots of small and bigger exercises that we do to get more
insights about what you want to change in your life, maybe also your work or your business, what
you can change and how you can change how you look at things, feel about things and talk about things
and how you interact with others and the goal is just to feel very present, mindful, calm and happy
about where you are right now and where you're going. I know it's not very tangible what we'll
be doing but I know that this will speak to the people that will need to be in the group.
If you want to join us you're very welcome. The starting date will be the end of September. I'll
put all the information in the description box below and please reach out to me if you have any
questions about how you can join or whether this is right for you right now. I'd be happy to look
into that with you. The other thing that I really find brings me a lot of joy and also peace is
taking time to cook and really think of something that I want to eat today that truly nourishes my
body and soul today that I really feel like I want to eat rather than just getting it over with.
It's something we have to do every day and every day somebody's got to decide what we'll be eating
and I am really making an effort for myself to make that more fun and turn that whole thing
into an experience in itself and I have a lot of really good cookbooks and I like just sitting down
looking at recipes. I usually change them so I just go through the cookbooks and take some
inspiration from them and today I'm making a tuna salad. Again that's not vegetarian, I really do
realize that. My boys both have friends over so I've got a lot of mouths to feed and yeah I'm just
sharing that little recipe with you.
All right I'm going to end the vlog here. I do want to say though that I realize I haven't shown
any of the building works recently. There's a good reason for that. Olaf, my husband, has a Dutch
YouTube channel in which he shares all of the building works and he does that at his own pace
in his own way and I don't want to be sharing anything that he hasn't shown on his channel yet
so I want to respect the way that he does his things and the way he manages his channel.
So I haven't been sharing anything about that recently. I will be coming back with all of that
good stuff as well and the other thing is that I still have the kitchen that is finished, nearly
finished, that I wanted to show you so I've started filming a bit for that and hope to be
sharing that with you very soon. For now basically I think these vlogs are more about the daily life
and the things that I'm doing and the things that we're doing, our simple life here in the
countryside and I still do hope that you enjoy following our journey. Thank you again so much
for being here, for all of your lovely comments and it makes me feel so connected with so many
like-minded souls on the planet. So thank you for being here and I will see you very soon for a next video.
