Retreats offer:
- Six group support sessions with a gifted psychotherapist
- Three-hour long massage sessions
- Daily yoga or qi gong, meditation, and deep relaxation
- Sandtray (an experience in symbolic learning)
- Healing arts, music, and poetry
- Exploration of the healing power of sacred space
- Gourmet, primarily vegetarian meals
Examples of evening sessions include:
- Monday: Why we are here
- Tuesday: Choices in healing, in conventional therapies, and in integrative therapies
- Wednesday: Choices in pain and suffering as well as in death and dying
- Thursday: Making music with a gifted musician
- Friday: The healing power of creating sacred space in your home
- Saturday: What we are taking home with us
Commonweal has hosted more than 200 Cancer Help Program retreats. Most participants report a deeply powerful experience, many calling it transformative. The retreat often has profound effects on anxiety, fear, loneliness, helplessness, anger, and other distressing emotions that may accompany cancer
The Cancer Help Program is a learning experience, not a medical treatment. We don’t recommend therapies. All participants must be under the care of a qualified physician or other health professional.
Widely considered the premier residential retreat of its kind in the United States, the CCHP draws participants from across the US, Canada, Europe, and around the world.
Commonweal has more than twenty programs in health and healing, education and the arts, and environment and justice. Four of these programs may be of special interest you:
- CancerChoices is the premier source for information on integrative cancer therapies.
- Cancer-Fighting Kitchen is an online program that is the work of Rebecca Katz, a nationally known culinary educator.
- The New School has many cancer- and healing-related videos and podcasts.
- Healing Circles Global provides the deep health benefits of social support.