Due to unprecedented concern regarding COVID19 and the potential effects to health and well-being we have sadly taken the decision to cancel 2020s planned Retreats.
To ensure a place for your family for next year register your interest now!
Have you ever longed for a deeper family connection, where learning and adventuring together create the life you all want to live?
In Transylvania, Romania
July 1 – July 14, 2021!
At Home in the World
Deep in the cultural heart of Transylvania, as the fading sun sets behind Zeteváralja Hills, lighting up the remnants of the once medieval bastion fortress in that unique transcendent dusk light, under which our accommodations lay, the sounds of the birds gently fill the air as they bid goodbye to the day.
Steeped in this ancient culture, with its timeless traditions, in this eden we have chosen (a stunning rustic, traditional Transylvanian Resort), you will take your next steps together as a family.
Set your compass, create and tell your own story, and learn to embrace the vision for creating the life of your dreams.
In the company of your newly made friends, you enjoy a meal of healthy organic foods grown and sourced locally. Later, you soak in the pool, and take in a sauna as your children play and laugh together with their new friends.
Transylvania is a magical place to spend 12 transformational days (and 13 peaceful nights)…
- Becoming clearer about the opportunities of realizing a deeper family connection to carry you through your journey of life together, and how to embrace the adventure.
- Utilizing family travel as a catalyst for growth and personal development.
- Learning to tune into your intuition so you can be more confident in following your inner wisdom.
- Crafting your own family story and vision for the future to give momentum and focus to your journey.
- Developing your capacity to handle new challenges and opportunities, increase your emotional resilience, and grow toward the transformation your family has been longing for.
- Gaining the practical knowledge to thrive sustainably so you can be At Home in the World wherever you are.
Imagine letting go of the fears, anxiety, and uncertainty around how you can generate a more joyful, meaningful, and sustainable life together, while FINALLY feeling empowered to create different possibilities for your family, – a life beyond what you could ever imagine.
So WHY join us?
- Because you don’t have to do this alone.
- Because you want to deepen the bonds between you and your family and you’re willing to invest the energies to achieve this.
- Because your family’s journey together is crucial for the future of the world.
- Because you want to enjoy the benefits of a supportive community of families who share empathy and commitment to each other’s journeys.
- Because by surrounding yourself with other people who are living their truth, you will gain the inspiration and motivation to live your own truth more fully.
- Because you want to benefit from the full experience of facilitators who have actively dedicated their lives to living and practicing this vision together with their families.
- Because you’ll come away with the tools, experience, and resilience required to inspire and sustain your family journey.
- Because you want to immerse yourself in the rich culture and story that is Transylvania with all its bountiful, magical treasures.
If this sounds like it would benefit your family as you take the next steps of your journey, consider this your invitation to join us!
Location
Transylvania – part of modern-day Romania is the setting for our retreat. Set in the ancient land of the Hungarian Székely People…
We wish to gift your family an authentic rustic Transylvanian experience. Close to nature and away from the hustle of daily life, we have strived to ensure that every comfort and convenience is awaiting your family. Blended with functionality for our learning program, fun, and a great mix of onsite activities, we have selected the perfect location.
Set amongst one of the most naturally beautiful valleys in all of Transylvania, you can choose to take that dusk stroll together with your family around the trails that wind in and out of quaint local villages and the majestic hills. Available completely and exclusively for our retreat, this stunning setting will keep the whole family engaged, relaxed and entertained, all in just the right amounts.
Your room, traditionally appointed in rustic Transylvania wood cabin style…
…has all the modern comforts and conveniences, including free wifi, refrigerators, and flat screen TVs, some with their own mini kitchens.
With a strong commitment to tradition and respect for the environment and local culture, the resort sources and supports many local artisans and traditional service providers. Equipped with a wide array of onsite activities, bike-riding, horse-riding, and kayaking on the local Küküllő River, are all an integrated part of the resort and its beautifully energetic, natural surrounds. On its tennis / football court, we can all have fun together, kicking the ball around, or playing that round of ultimate frisbee.
Maintaining a peaceful atmosphere integrated with its natural surrounds, the resort itself will play its part to facilitate your journey to deepened knowledge, relaxation, and memories that you will continue to cherish forever.
The Cuisine
We have carefully crafted a menu with an array of local delicacies and fusion cuisines, utilizing all the benefits of having locally grown, organic fruits and vegetables for your health and well-being.
Our menu is designed to energize you and leave your body and mind in a healthful state, while providing a tantalizing and unique locally inspired culinary dining experience. In this is included vegetarian, vegan, and raw options, to enliven your senses and enhance your experience.
Should you have any specific dietary requirements or concerns, we are more than happy to discuss these with you.
The Wonders
Transylvania is a location steeped in mystery and beauty, too often completely misunderstood for all the wrong reasons. It has actually been home to many nationalities, including the iconic Székely Hungarian people, of whom we will be their welcomed guests. It is also the birthplace of Bobi Kaponay, one of your facilitators.
Today, Transylvania is still a little known treasure of Central Europe, as yet undiscovered by hoards of tourists and a jewel of a destination for our retreat with all its offerings. Its natural beauty will only accentuate all the excursions and local activities that we have planned and provide you with a complete and immersive native Transylvanian Experience.
This will include…Visiting the surrounding forests and learning of their management and how to sustainably harvest their bounties, along with their medicinal treasures. From the mushrooms we will all pick, we will cook a traditional Hungarian Mushroom Paprikash in a cauldron over an open flame and serve it with freshly made Nokedli.
Making our own traditional Székely Potato Bread from scratch. As warmly welcomed guests in a local village home, we will mix and knead the ingredients by hand in a traditional wooden trough. We will then bake it in the home clay brick oven, built by the very hands of local artesian baker Maria.
We will then take our freshly baked bread to the remote hilltops, where we will learn the true secrets of the local shepherds, who will share with us their locally made bounties of freshly made cheeses and dips to eat with our piping hot bread, as we take in the stunning countryside that surrounds us.
The 1000 Székely Girl Festival…
…is the iconic and signature cultural gathering event of the year, held atop the natural and beautiful mountain knoll overlooking Csíkszereda below.
This festival embodies the essence and meaning behind the Székely People’s culture and you and your family will get to experience this first hand.
Young men and women wake with the dawn to make the journey from their villages. Drawn by horse-drawn-cart, they sing their local folksongs along the way, savouring the traditions of their cultural heritage.
This is a day of festivities that includes singing, dancing, culinary delights and the celebration of locally hand-made arts and crafts.
We trust the day will leave you with a cultural and life experience you will always want to remember.
Cultural Immersion
Our experiential approach to cultural immersion will take us on a journey rich in story, dance, music, and artesian culture that defines not only a region, but tells the living story of its people.
We have planned and organised for an experience that not many visitors to Transylvania truly get to live. We have created a balance of the meaningful, fun, and interactive.
Our nights will be lit by a traditional Székely Bonfire, gathering around its warmth, where the sharing of stories, telling of tales, singing, and playing of games are all part of the experience.
There will also be many opportunities for us to interact with and learn from the locals, understanding the significance and meaning behind their traditions, and the purpose and effect these traditions have in creating and maintaining local community.
All of this will culminate with our very own practical immersion, taking part in traditional Székely dance, learning the weaver’s pattern as you weave a traditional rug, understanding and integrating the stories behind the Székely motifs we carve into wood, and the meaning behind the patterns we paint it with and how they relate to our very own stories.
What we have envisioned for your family, is something we trust will stay with all of you for a lifetime. We trust that you too will take a piece of Transylvania home with you in your heart.
The Learning Program
So what can you expect if you spend 12 enriching days (and 13 peaceful nights) learning, exploring, and connecting with your family and new friends on an adventurous and immersive journey to Transylvania?
Well, what if you got the opportunity for a potentially life-transforming experience that would challenge you and your family to create the most fulfilling life you could all live together.
And what would it mean to you if you were inspired by those around you, gained the necessary tools, and the connections, to bring your vision to reality, deepening the bonds between you and your children on a path of life-long growth, learning and adventure?
Would THAT be worth coming to Transylvania for?
We feel that it would be.
Please keep in mind: this is a family retreat. We won’t be lecturing to you all day long from the front of the room, where you or the children are bored and mind-numbed. This is an immersive, fully-participatory retreat, mindfully inspired and completely integrated in its learning between adults and children. Here we will discuss and explore together some of the deepest questions about what it means to be a family, and how we can practically create the type of environment that will help us all to live a meaningful and loving life.
We have designed and tested our program of learning in a way that it is intentionally meant to take you on a journey from the high-level practical, to the grounded depths of emotional resilience, integrating intuition, story creation, mindfulness practices and the use of breathwork. Our children’s program is also fully integrated to engage and inspire your children so that play, laughter, thoughtfulness and a mindful approach is taken with every activity. Led by one of the world’s leading children’s mindfulness educators, your children, like you, will leave with new friends, new connections and a yearning desire for more.
IF THIS IS STILL NOT ENOUGH…
Together we will focus on:
- Practicing the art of tuning into your intuition or inner wisdom through a fun family game to help drive your family’s decision-making process.
- Getting clear on how each member of your family envisions your future and how will you bring together everyone’s needs to create a powerful family story as your road map.
- The vital role nutrition and well-being play in our overall family harmony, and how to use practices like family constellations, dreamwork and breathwork for greater health and vitality.
- How lifelong, experiential, inspiration-led, in the moment learning can change the way your family see the world and empower your children to see their place in it.
- Tools and techniques you can use to prevent emotional meltdowns caused by your daily circumstances, family dynamics, and the pressures of life, and how you and your children can recover from them quickly when they do happen.
- How travel can be used as a transformative experience to learn about the world, its people and how your family can be truly At Home In The World wherever you are.
After the Retreat
We will continue the journey along with you. It is always our intention to ensure that what you have experienced and what you have learned during the retreat will not be lost when you return to daily life. We are committed to helping facilitate a post-retreat experience for you and your family that is intended to assist you in establishing the ongoing practices necessary for you to realize your dream family life.
It is our intention to keep active and alive the friendship and connections that you will make, and to support and facilitate the needs of this newly formed community that we trust will naturally develop. We will create the community’s own gathering place for the sharing and development of ideas, the ongoing practice of what we have learned together, the creation of group ventures, group activities, gatherings, and assistance. All of this included in your experience at no extra cost.
Your Well-Being
Life is all about balance and we feel that your experience in Transylvania should be supplemented and accompanied by practices that will both enhance your experience and give you closer connection to your family and your own personal journey.
We have designed an engaging series of optional activities that you can take part in throughout the course of your journey and stay with us. These are integrative practices such as Family Constellations, Breathwork, Dream Circles, and active Mindfulness practices and meditations available to you everyday of the retreat.
These sessions will be guided by your co-facilitators, allowing you the space and freedom to embody your own personal experiences. While not a traditional part of Transylvanian life, a growing number of Transylvanian people are actively practicing the fusion of their culture with its deep roots, with these traditionally eastern practices to integrate in their family life and their spiritual beliefs.
All this, set amongst the stunningly beautiful and energetically thriving valley that is Zetevár, will open a door to your inner journey, where you decide how deep you wish to go
Combined with our healthful focus on mindful eating, and exploring other healthy ways of living, our intention is to facilitate the perfect environment for you and your family’s journey of growth and development.
What’s Included?
- All transformative and interactive mindfulness inspired learning sessions, roundtables, panels, discussion groups, conversations, and introspective activities necessary for your family’s transformation. This is the entire learning program with some of the most innovative and integrated activities and approaches to learning and mindfulness practice, with ample opportunity for personal reflection and integration.
- The entire children’s program, which has been carefully designed for all age groups. Mindfully integrated with the adult program of learning, it is intended to converge with and complement all the adult sessions.
- Your own personal family co-facilitator, who will be assigned to your family throughout the course of the retreat to ensure that your family’s experience is an exceptional one.
- 13 nights of accommodation on-site at our beautiful Transylvanian resort. (With ample and spacious accommodations for the whole family, set in stylishly appointed rustic wood log cabin style, with all the modern conveniences)
- 13 delicious, local, and organic breakfasts with an array of healthful options and choices.
- 10 delicious healthful lunches.
- 13 delicious mindfully created healthful dinners, sourced from local organic gardens and growers, intended to enhance your overall learning and retreat experience
- Access to the whole resort’s facilities including pool, sauna, spa, football and tennis courts, relaxation areas, playgrounds and more…
- Ample time reserved specifically for introspection, family integration, discussion, downtime, etc.
- The special cultural experience and excursion to The 1000 Székely Girl Festival.
- An outing to a traditional Székely Transylvanian home, where we will practice first-hand the arts, crafts and traditional practices of the Székely Hungarian People, including weaving, wood carving and traditional wood painting.
- 4 Excursions to some of the most spectacular, adventurous, and culturally significant locations in Transylvania, complete with all activities included.
- Expert guides, artisans and local stories to guide our experiences on our excursions
- Entrance fees to any excursion places we visit together in Transylvania
- 3 Culturally inspired onsite activities to engage, entrance and excite adults and children alike, including the making of our own traditional Chimney Cakes.
- Transportation from the point of your arrival in Transylvania to the resort on July 1, 2021.
- Transportation from the resort to your point of departure from Transylvania on July 14, 2021.
What’s Not Included
- Your round-trip airfare from home
- Transportation to or from our accommodation outside of the specified dates and times
- Meals or food you might choose to purchase during our excursions. This is intended to give you your own personal opportunity to try some local favorite foods while we are out and about. Snacks during the day will be provided.
- Horse Riding, Biking, or Kayaking Trips from the resort.
- Souvenirs, phone calls, any unspecified extra services, extra taxi services, tips, etc.
- Personal, medical, or trip cancelation insurance.
Transport & Flights to Transylvania
You must arrive into Transylvania, Romania on the morning of the July 1st 2021. There are numerous train or bus options that can bring you to either the city of Csikszereda (Miercurea Ciuc) or Székely Udvarhely (Odorheiu Secuiesc), either directly from Bucharest or Budapest, where we will pick you up and transport you directly to the resort. Alternatively there is Transylvania Airport, located in Maros Vásárhely (Targu Mures) where we will also send a transport to pick you up from. If you wish to be transported back by us to either of these points of departure, you must do so on the morning of July 14th 2021, departing the resort after breakfast. If you are not arriving at the times specified for our transports to pick you up, we can help you arrange your own personal transport to the resort at your own cost . If you are deciding to stay on longer in Transylvania, you will have to make your own way to your onwards accommodations.
If you want to come earlier or stay later for some exploring or have your entire trip arranged for your convenience – contact Lalika Kaponay at DestinatorTravel.com, our travel planner concierge. He can help you design a fabulous itinerary and ensure the most cost-effective, convenient routes, best modes of transport and most suited accommodations for your needs during your stay.
About Us
The Kaponay Family Journey…
Ten years ago, the Kaponay family together made a conscious choice to embrace change as the catalyst to creating a transformational way of living that constantly reinvested in learning and developing, together as a family.
This investment and their subsequent adventures has taken them to over 50 countries on 6 continents over the last nine years. Their passion from learning from all the families they met along their journey and their realisation for endless choice of possibilities for joyful living was the inspiration for creating this retreat.
Along their travels, they noticed the ever encroaching harmful ways stress, overwork, overcommitment and societal narratives, were taking families in separate directions and causing harm and disintegration to the health and well-being of families.
The Kaponay Family longed to share with families what they had learned. To create a framework by which families in their daily lives, could not only recapture that togetherness that was always theirs, but also, to help facilitate a way all families could, live and dream into being their own family story in the unique, dignified way in which they envisioned it.
This was how At Home In The World Family Retreats was born, and its very name embodies every aspect of this possibility as a constant in life.
To be at home with yourself is a core vital step to being at home with your family, and at home with the world, no matter where or how you live.
George & Bobi Kaponay are the inventors of The Intuition Game and the Labour of Love Process, intended to bring your life’s / family’s story or venture to fruition, with the clarity, direction process and the effort and inspiration needed to see it through.
Their family story over time is reflected in the echoes of the journeys they have taken, the lives they have touched and the way they live intentionally. This has inspired their twin children Réka and Lalika (18) to add their own unique contributions to their family stories. Réka Kaponay, their daughter, is a successful internationally published author and Story-Teller, with followers in over 100 countries. Their son Lalika is the founder of his own Travel Concierge Business DestinatorTravel.com.
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