Tap Into the Power of Your Heart
Explore the depths of your heart and tap into the guidance of your inner goddess as we commune in sacred sisterhood atop 3 acres of healing coral stone on the beautiful island of Puerto Rico.
For 4 magical days, you’ll activate and strengthen your connection to the innate higher wisdom of your heart through healing modalities including breathwork, meditation, plant medicine (ceremonial-grade cacao), intuitive dance movement, and so much more.
Heart Coach Shelsea Sanchez will lead the way as you venture within, but the expansion that will follow in your life as a result of this heart-opening experience will be all you.
We all have the intention to be successful, make a difference, and follow our dreams. But without living from our heart-centers, this journey can be overwhelming, stress-including, or even lead us away from our true, inner selves.
Nurturing and honoring our body - mind - spirit is vital when it comes to operating from the heart, but we’re not automatically taught to do this, and it isn’t always in congruence with our outer, daily world.
When you learn to shift into your heart, everything changes.
Living from the heart means going within, truly connecting with your inner self, and working through subconscious patterns and beliefs in a new, love-based way.
When you have the techniques and emotional tools to understand and work with your inner world from a heart-centered way, you’ll navigate life through a new lens. As you learn to go inward and truly, divinely honor and nourish yourself, you’ll find that your life is of your own creation, and that creating from your heart is your most powerful tool.
Work Heart // Play Heart | The Retreat was crafted intentionally to help gain access to a new level of healing and self-awareness through the power of opening, exploring, and living in-tune-with your heart.
just imagine...
Being in a state of complete flow…that feeling where your heart, mind, and body are one and you’re deeply connected with your inner self and those around you.
Not only is this expansion the transformation you’ve been craving, it’s a divine birthright that you’re worthy of energetically claiming.
reconnect with your heart
renew your vision of who you truly are
refresh your soul as you unplug from the day-to-day
this is for you if
❀ You’re ready to say YES to living a true heart-centered life.
❀ You desire to connect with your inner wisdom and surrender to a plan far greater than your own.
❀ You’re intrigued by heart intelligence and the wisdom of this lifelong inner intuitive guide.
❀ You crave genuine human connection and a supportive container of like-minded women.
❀ You’re open-minded to healing modalities and practices like breathwork, meditation, plant medicine, yoga, and light therapy.
❀ Your soul is calling you to dive deeper into your most authentic self.
I've created this retreat for the woman who feels ready to tap into her inner wisdom, to explore the inner space of her heart...
You'll gain access to a new level of healing and self-awareness through the power of opening, exploring, and living in-tune-with your strongest energy center: the heart. This healing is amplified by the communion of sacred sisterhood and the magic of the surrounding natural elements.
your retreat includes
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Daily guided meditation to tap into your inner world.
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Daily healing breathwork with certified facilitator Shelsea Sanchez to facilitate deep emotional healing.
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Heart-opening pure cacao ceremony led by certified cacao practitioner Shelsea Sanchez so you’ll receive ultimate heart-coherence effects.
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Massage (for those staying on property) with local Puerto Rican masseuse to relax and rejuvenate your body.
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Lucia Light Therapy with certified practitioner Jenna Rose helps you journey inward and experience deep peace and wholeness.
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Sound Healing led by facilitator Shelsea Sanchez to create harmony and repair disorders within your physical and energetic bodies.
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Yoga + Intuitive Movement so you can experience full mind-body-spirit healing.
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Guided heart-coherence workshops led by heart-coach Shelsea Sanchez and heart-centered therapist, Erica Thomason to teach you scientifically proven strategies for increasing heart-coherence.
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Heart-coherence measurements taken daily using state of the art equipment from the Heart Math Institute so you can gain a grounded connection to the power of your heart.
attendee pack included
Journal
Fair trade blanket
Commemorative retreat green bag
Heat-centered goodies + swag!
special events
Experience the culture of puerto rico with gastronomic plant-based Chef Vegan Pau
Breathwork dance experience
Special guest speakers
Heart opening cacao and sound bath
Ceremony
Goddess ceremony dinner
Ocean recharge activity
rainforest hike at El Yunque rainforest
Cold exposure cold plunge
about Shelsea Sanchez
heart coach
I’ve always been driven by inspiring and empowering others. After a decade of owning a luxury Dallas salon, I made the pivot to course creation, and after going through my own transformative wellness journey, which included meditation, breathwork, and yoga, I launched Commune and Bloom, a conscious lifestyle and wellness brand.
My mission is to facilitate heart-centered, nurturing environments where women can connect, collaborate, grow, and share together. Commune and Bloom embodies the paradigm of leading with love. In this reality, business is about so much more than just making money, and being a leader has nothing to do with being a traditional “boss.”
My passion is holding space for others on their journey of consciousness expansion. I LOVE helping others tap into their own power, greatness, and personal toolbox of wisdom that lies within. When you realize you’re connected to a power that’s greater than any challenge you could face, you realize your infinite potential. That’s what I want you to feel and know is inside of you.
I’m a 200 hour Registered Yoga Teacher and Breathwork Facilitator. I’m also trained in Holographic Sound Healing and am a Ceremonial Cacao Practitioner.
YOU’RE the one changing your life – I’m just the facilitator.
♡ Shelsea Sanchez
work heart // play heart
the retreat
recap
2/22/22
Our first inaugural retreat in beautiful Isabela, Puerto Rico was an incredible, transformative experience.
For three days, we gathered in sacred sisterhood to open our hearts, renew our spirits, and nourish our bodies.
As we tuned in to ourselves and the essence of the Earth around us, we reconnected with our heart-coherent nature through daily yoga, 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵 Workshops, play, and breathwork. We invited in vulnerability and authenticity, and we left with lifelong friendships and connections.
The ultimate purpose behind having this annual retreat in Puerto Rico 🌺 is to give back to the island. Over $10,000 was spent empowering Puerto Rico!
The Work Heart // Play Heart Retreat was the most powerful experience I've ever had in my life. Every detail was carefully thought out and magically put together. Shelsea and her team put so much of their heart into every activity from the breathwork and sound bath to the cacao ceremony, rooftop yoga, aromatherapy massage, Lucia Light session and so much more.
I created incredible friendships and came home feeling empowered and uplifted. I can't recommend this trip enough and feel every woman should have this kind of spiritual experience at least once in their lifetime!
Gigi B., Breathwork Facilitator
My intention for this retreat as a whole was to heal. Heal my heart, heal my insecurities, release and surrender. To come back home to myself. The sisterhood and sacred safe space Shelsea facilitated for us during Work Heart // Play Heart transformed me on a cellular level. I feel like I have literally rewired my brain. I’ve learned strategies and unlocked power inside of me that’s always been there, but now I know how to tap into it in a way I’ve never done before.
I am so grateful for these healers and teachers. I have fallen back in love with my own body, breath, heart, and the little playful girl inside. Shelsea’s guidance through breathwork was a major highlight for me. Her authenticity and heart pours out of her during these healing practices and creates such an atmosphere to receive breakthrough and true healing. She has such a gift and heart for women and I am still bursting with gratitude for all the wisdom and strength she flooded my heart with.
Madison B., Yoga Teacher
the breathwork experience
Breathwork is a powerful healing modality that involves consciously using your breath to bypass your mind and enter an embodied state of awareness (a non-ordinary state of consciousness). This practice opens the door to personal growth, awakening and transformation through improved mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing.
Your body carries a warehouse of stored emotions and dormant energy. Think of your breath as a portal into the body that clears out any of these suppressed energies! Imagine that your breath is like a broomstick, sweeping out all of the old energy out and inviting healing through bringing fresh oxygen to the body.
Breathwork has SO many benefits:
For the Physical Body, Breathwork…
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Increases energy and focus
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Alleviates physical pain
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Improves sleep, immunity, and digestion
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Optimizes body function and homeostasis
For you Emotional Well Being, Breathwork…
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Reduces anxiety and depression
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Boosts happiness, self-worth, and self-love
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Cultivates cathartic emotional release of trauma
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Breaks patterns of negative thinking, behavior, and addictions
For Your Spirit, Breathwork…
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Creates spaciousness, clarity, presence, and awareness
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Accesses non-ordinary states of consciousness
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Supports spiritual awakening and healing
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Connects you to Source and your Higher Self
ceremonial cacao plant medicine
You’ll partake in Pure Ceremonial Grade Cacao ceremonies and experience the benefits of this heart-opening plant medicine as a ritual. Keith’s 100% Pure Ceremonial Cacao is loaded with minerals like magnesium, copper, calcium, zinc, and potassium, and iron. In fact, cacao contains the highest known plant-based source of iron.
Cacao has been scientifically proven to release serotonin, tryptophan, and tyrosine, a.k.a all of the “happy chemicals!” It also contains Phenylethylamine (PEA), the “love chemical” and Anandamide, the “bliss chemical”.
Overall, Ceremonial Cacao is a powerful facilitator to guide you inward toward your heart, as it “cuts through the mental clutter, enhancing focus and concentration while enabling you to hear your heart, making self-expression, creativity and connection easier and more enjoyable.”
Shelsea Sanchez began drinking Pure Ceremonial Cacao in 2019, and has never looked back.
“When I discovered all the benefits from this superfood and that it was a heart opener,” says Shel, “I was so intrigued.”
“I would drink it occasionally in small doses, and then had a profound experience when I went to my first Cacao Ceremony in Tulum with my husband. To see my husband (who I always jokingly call an “open minded skeptic”), have a heart-opening experience, I knew I HAD to share this “heart medicine” with the world and become a Cacao Practitioner, which I did,” she continues.
“Adding this heart-opening medicine to my retreats has helped facilitate a deep level of heart-healing.”
meet Kiara Medina
experience curator + yoga guide
Kiara Medina is a creative, curious empathic leader and thinker. She’s passionate about purpose-driven brand building and storytelling, consumer products, marketing, and the health and wellness space.
Currently, she works at Kimberly-Clark (a global company that produces well-known and trusted brands like Scott®, Kleenex®, Cottonelle®, Huggies® and Depend®) as a Global Brand Manager leading key elements of brand strategies and using emotional intelligence to influence regions and key markets across the globe.
Her career focus is in CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods), with prior experience at JCPenney, ~Pourri, Compana Pet Brands, and most recently at Danone North America, working with iconic brands such as Dannon® and Horizon Organic®.
When not working, she can be found at a yoga studio bringing mindfulness into her daily life or at a new restaurant allowing her taste buds to experience something new – two practices that bring joy, connection and nourishment to her mind, body, and soul.
Kiara is a graduate of the University of Rochester with a degree in Business. She completed a 200hr Yoga Teacher Training accredited and certified by Yoga Alliance. Her heart was born (and still holds) in New York City, but she has made Dallas home with her husband, Ron, and two dogs, Ollie & Toby.
lucia light therapy
with certified facilitator Jenna Sanchez
Lucia Light Therapy is a journey through your subconscious mind into light and greater consciousness. The light science of the Lucia N°03 Light will elevate your consciousness by encouraging your brain to enter a field of alpha-theta waves. Your brain then signals your central nervous system to relax and restore in a parasympathetic state, where deep healing is possible as the light activates neural networks and creates harmonic coherence within your brain.
The benefits from Lucia Light Therapy sessions include:
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Reduced stress as result of down regulating your nervous system
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Deepened sense of peace, realization, and unity
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Increased creativity and ability to tap into the “flow state”
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Reconnects you to your inner Spirit
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Activates your Light Body
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Allows you to step out of time and back into yourself
Heart-Centered Lucia Light Facilitator Jenna Rose has a gift for creating sacred space for Light Travelers to regulate their nervous systems while journeying with the Lucia N°03. Jenna will lead you into heart-coherence as you prepare to experience the Light, guiding you toward inner healing, cleansing, and ultimately, into the portal of your own heart.
meet Jenna Sanchez
lucia light + heart-coherence facilitator
Jenna Rose Sanchez specializes in creating sacred space for individuals to heal energetically.
Jenna is a multidimensional meditation guide, herbalist, flower and gem essence crafter, dowsing and divination reader, and Lucia Light N°03 facilitator.She is attuned in both Reiki 1 and 2 and specializes in intuitively channeling energies to help people restore their own unique soul frequency.
The power of the planetary healing grid works through Jenna to help her offer unique healing for each individual.
Whether through cleansing with the Light, clarifying questions through Divination Reports, or clearing through the power of flower and gem essences, Jenna values bringing the unseen healing realms of the Universe to others.
sound healing
led by certified facilitator Shelsea Sanchez
Sound healing is the use of sound, or vibrational frequencies, to create harmony and repair dis-order within the body.
Everything in the universe is vibration – even things that seem like they’re solid are actually made up of vibrating particles. Sound also has a vibration, as do our bodies. When our bodies are in dis-order, it just means that our system or a part of our system is vibrating at a rate that is dissonant with orderliness.
To heal, we can introduce a sound that is resonant with order, which will infiltrate the disorderly system and begin to unlock a remembrance of what order and peace feels like. As the disorderly system changes, the sound that resonates with order will shift the entire system back into harmony. This transformative process is called entrainment.
We’ll be using sound healing as a group, which is especially powerful, as the resonance is that much stronger. Sitting in sacred sound with others is a healing experience that creates and illuminates powerful soul connections.
Work of Heart Heart-Coherence Workshop
Led by Heart Coach Shelsea Sanchez and Heart-Based Licensed Professional Therapist, Erica Thomason.
In 2021, Erica and I launched our Work of Heart 4-week online livestream course. The feedback we received on this course coupled with our own heart-expanding journeys through the months of course creation inspired us to create an in-person workshop experience within the Work Heart // Play Heart retreat.
This exclusive Heart-Coherence Workshop is designed to help you shift your inner focus from operating in survival patterns to embodying a conscious state of flow. You’ll learn how to lead with love in all aspects of your life as you gain courage, resilience, creativity, authenticity, and self-love.
Through this powerful series of workshops, you’ll learn how to uncover and embody your shadows and celebrate the dark and the light parts of yourself, to love yourself holistically and unconditionally.
You’ll gain skills surrounding topics like:
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Heart + Brain Coherence
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Self-Awareness
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Self-Regulation
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Conscious Communication
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Leading with Love
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Embodying the Essence of Your Heart
By participating in and committing to this Work of Heart, you’ll learn how to move beyond the illusion of limitation and express the essence of your soul vibrantly and authentically. As you practice the heart-centered skills you'll learn, you’ll radiate the energy of your heart-center into all areas of your life. You’ll become a magnet for radical, magical energetic abundance.
meet Erica Thomason
licensed therapist + heart-coherence facilitator
Meet Erica Thomason, MS, NCC, LPC, co-facilitator of our Heart-Coherence Workshop!
Erica is the founder of The Dynamic Child, an educational enrichment and parent support program, and serves children and parents at HOPE Child Center of Texas as a licensed therapist.
Her zone of genius includes coaching, educating, and caring for people of all ages using heart-centered modalities, and she has expertise in early education, development, social-emotional wellness, attachment, positive parenting skills, and mindfulness.
Through the years, Erica’s love for helping families has evolved into another passion: teaching women of all ages how to cultivate emotional wellness strategies through heart and brain coherence. She is the co-creator of the Work of Heart 4-Week Livestream Course with heart-coach Shelsea Sanchez, and loves educating about the power of the heart in group settings.
When Erica’s not helping others develop their emotional well-being, she’s spending time with her husband, son, and their two fur babies. You can also find her immersed in all things spiritual, including yoga and meditation. Regardless of the modality, Erica is continually exploring how to optimally work with our brain, body, and spirit to achieve the mind - body - spirit connection that we’re each seeking.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the retreat package include?
Your retreat package includes:
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accommodations for 4 days - March 23rd to 26th
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scheduled group shuttle to and from airport/retreat venue
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chef-prepared, plant-based meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) each day
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daily guided healing modalities (breathwork, meditation, yoga, sound healing, etc.) led by certified facilitators
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attendee pack (including yoga mat, journal, blanket, and tote bag)
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El Yunque rainforest hike, including shuttle to and from
How many days is the retreat?
4 days; March 23rd - March 26th, 2023
What do I need to bring?
Staple items to pack include:
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comfortable clothing for 4 days (yoga pants, sports bras, activewear, etc.)
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dinner and casual attire for 4 days
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bathing suit + towel
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yoga mat
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sunglasses
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reusable water bottle
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favorite pen or drawing/writing utensils
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sunblock + bug spray
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water/forest walking shoes
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waterproof bag for waterfall rainforest hike (optional)
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favorite healthy snacks (optional)
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yoga towel (optional)
Do I need to book my own flight?
Yes. Upon registration, you'll be added to a private Telegram chat group where you'll be able to coordinate flights with other retreat attendees if you wish.
What about transportation?
We will provide a shuttle to and from the airport and retreat venue, as well as for the rainforest hike day and any other group excursions.
What should I do to prepare for the retreat?
This retreat is all about YOU honoring and connecting to your heart-center. You can prepare for these 4 transformational days by thinking about what intention you would like to set for the retreat.
What if I'm coming by myself and don't know anyone on the retreat?
We can't wait to have you! Many retreat attendees come by themselves and leave with lifelong connections and friendships. This is truly a sacred time of sisterhood and connection.
Have a question that wasn't answered here? Send us an email or a DM and we'll get back to you.
