How Surrender Unlocks Deep Personal Growth

Summary
In this insightful interview, Roxanne Chaput shares her expertise on transformational retreats, the importance of inner work, and how surrender and trust are essential for genuine growth. Holly Porter and Roxanne explore the deep processes behind true transformation, leadership, and self-awareness, especially in the context of retreats and personal development.




Takeaways
Difference between transformational and inspirational experiences
The importance of integration in transformation
Leadership rooted in self-mastery and embodiment
The role of surrender and trust in growth
Disconnection from self and the need for holistic healing



Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Retreats and Transformation
02:59 The Essence of True Transformation
07:01 Surrender as a Catalyst for Change
11:11 Navigating Burnout in Leadership
15:39 The Craving for Healing and Connection
18:55 Building Trust in Retreat Spaces
22:50 Final Thoughts and Reflections
23:36 RNR Outro Final.mp4
24:14 RR.Gift.RetreatRnR.com.mp4


🔗 Connect with Roxanne Chaput
📧 Email: the.global.luminary@gmail.com
📧 Email: roxanne.chaput@icloud.com
🌐 Website: www.roxanne-chaput.com
🔗 LinkedIn: Roxanne Chaput



🔗 Connect with Holly Porter | Retreat RNR 
📧 Email: holly@hollyporter.com 
🔗 LinkedIn: Holly Porter | Retreat RNR 
🎵 TikTok: @retreatrnr 
▶️ YouTube: @intlretreatassociation
📸 Instagram: @retreatrnr | @hollyporterinternational 
📘 Facebook: HollyAnnPorter

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to All Things Retreat Podcast. I'm Holly Porter, your host and CEO of Retreat R. With over 25 years of experience in designing transformative retreats, I'm here to share insights and inspiration to help you create extraordinary experiences. Whether you're a pro or just starting out, you'll find valuable ideas here. Enjoy the ride. Let's dive in. Hello and welcome to the show today, everyone. Hopefully that you've joined us before. And if it's your first time, then double welcome. We're glad that you're here. We talk about all things retreat here, and we are sponsored by International Retreat Association, which is a new association and the only one of its kind in the industry of retreat. So if you want to check that out, it's International RetreatAssociation.com. Really long name, but we are going to be interviewing Roxanne Chapu, and she's a leadership steward supporting founders, executives, and visionaries in strengthening the inner architecture beneath how they lead, how they relate, and move through responsibility. Her work employs emotional intelligence, embodiment, relational depth, and multidimensional leadership, guiding leaders towards deeper internal congruency and human connection. Welcome to the show, Roxanne. Ah, such a pleasure being here, Holly. I'm excited. So we're gonna have a great conversation. I already know because we've been chatting way before. And uh she's gonna bring us all her leadership um experience and and great uh great stuff. You said you were more in the corporate world, right? Yeah, uh yeah, about several years ago. That's you know, when I before I had my first near-death experience, I was in the corporate world and you know, working as an executive and working in executive leadership teams. And, you know, it's fascinating. Like it was beautiful, but there was also a piece that was missing in terms of what I came here to agree to align with in terms of how I would, you know, become a servient leader. Yeah. And just so y'all know, since some of you know know me, know I had a near-death experience during COVID. So that just came up in our conversation. So I thought, oh, that's that's a great connection that we have together as well. Because I think a lot more people have had near-death experiences than we think, and good for us. I guess, I guess good that we survived, I should say. Yeah, amazing that we survived. Yeah, no kidding. There were yeah, many days I shouldn't I should have never survived. So I'm I'm I'm here and and this is part of the whole journey of what we're doing. So I appreciate you coming in and helping that uh come true here. But okay, got some questions. You ready? Yeah, absolutely, Holly. Let's do this. Okay. So retreats are often described as transformational spaces. From your perspective, what creates true transformation versus a temporary inspiration? That's a question to start out with. I love that because you know, so many times, like through the retreat space, you kind of hear a little bit more of like retreat weekend warriors where they go and they get like a little bit of that inspirational aspect. And you know, it does obviously change, you know, a degree of their life of how you know their perception is or how their perspective forms afterwards, or you know, the introspection that kind of happens with that. But again, like the transformation piece isn't really, you know, expanding from there. It's more of, you know, a momentary thing or a monthly thing. And then, you know, behavioral patterns start to revert back into the old way of living because that's where the comfortability is. And when we go through transformative experiences, it's something that changes within us. And it's something that once you see something different or experience something differently and you know something differently, opposed to just, you know, feeling it but not really allowing that integration piece to happen, it's very easy to revert back to the old ways of being. But when you know something different and you feel something different and that integration piece happens, you can never go back to the same way of living in the same way of being. And I'm sure, you know, even just through our own near-death experiences, once you know something greatly different, you can't revert back to old ways of being. And that is a huge difference of, you know, transformative experiences opposed to more inspirational experiences. So when we're going through, you know, retreat process, it's really important for the leader as well, is that they've done the integrative process. They've done the integrative work to be able to go through their own transformative process so that they can be able to embody and to teach from that perspective and not just from perception or perspective or from woundings or experiences, but to actually go through the integral process of where they've come through into the retreat space. And that's the differentiator. Yeah. So I just came back from an event that that the um International Association, Retreat Association sponsored, and they were, I have to be honest, they they were poo-pooing the word transformation and how overdone and overused. And and I understand where they were coming from. However, you and I know a little deeper transformation when you've had a near-death experience, right? I can't think of a different word other than that to explain, maybe. And I I feel like I probably should have spoken up, but I didn't. I just was listening and and kind of absorbing everything that was being said. But I feel like anyone who is attending in a retreat is going for some kind of transformation. Otherwise, why would you go? Like if you just want to go hang out with girls, go on a girls' trip. They're looking for that on that. Yeah, and they're looking for you know deep restoration, they're looking for regeneration, and they don't know how to vocabulize that. They're just looking for the experience to be able to embody it so that they can understand it and then understand what that actually is. And I think there is some nuances where we want to, you know, think of words of like inundation and that we utilize it too much, but in reality, transformation is the transformation. Like what you go through is the transformative process. And, you know, like we can put nuances around it and we can put, you know, make it so that it's just, you know, the communal language that happens in retreat spaces, but it has been the language because that's what happens in a true retreat space, is that you're gonna go through a deep transformation, you're gonna go through reconnection to yourself, remembrance of yourself, regeneration of yourself, and the regenesis of yourself. Yeah. And that inform goes through a rebirthing process. So when you're leaving your retreat space, the person that you've come in to be is coming into a higher alignment when you're leaving that retreat space because you understand and you have a deeper understanding of who you are and what your purpose and your intentionality is here. And that is the transformation of just the mindset. That's the shift. Yeah. Funny you say shift. So my book is called Near Death Shift, and it's surrender, hope, intuition, faith, and transformation. So I always say, you know, the the first letter is S and the last is the T, which is surrender and transformation. And I feel like you can't have one without the other because in in order to get true transformation, you need to surrender at some point for the change, for the transformation, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, you know, that surrender piece, Holly, that you're touching on is that, you know, a lot of times we go through life and we're very much into a patriarchal, energetic framework of like doing, progressing, hustling, and all of these things in terms of our mentality. So to learn how to come into our feminine energy of that feminine patterning of our own holistic energy, and to be able to come into a place of deep surrender and receptivity, that is a huge place where transformation happens. But when you go through a dark night of the soul or through a transitional process, you need to be able to surrender. And that refractory period happens less, less and less and less. The more that you allow yourself to evolve and to grow and to expand through change, right? That's part of the evolutionary growth of the soul. So when we learn to surrender, we're saying I trust my path, regardless if I know everything that's happening around me or why things are, you know, coming apart so that they can maybe be rebuilt to be even better. I also have to surrender that I'm trusting my path and where I'm being guided. And that's where that trustability comes in as well with the surrender. Yeah, that's so true. Well, many retreat leaders, I feel like that they they're holding space for others, but they're privately navigating their own burnout and fragmentation, which is this whole industry has so much fragmentation. Um, what it what wisdom would you offer someone like that? Yeah, absolutely. I think when we, you know, I think, you know, owning a business as you, as you also own a business and leading other businesses as well, you see that the leadership is, you know, the pivotal piece of how an organization is ran and the cultural dynamic that is created from that. That also translates into a leadership space. So if I am leading from a fragmented place, from a place of burnout, I'm not able to be able to give my vulnerability of not from a wounded place, but from a place that has been healed. And when we're not, you know, conducting a retreat from places of like of being self-healed, we're also leaking and we're we're leaking that energetic vibe like vibrational frequency into the retreat space. And, you know, the nuances of our words, the way that we calibrate ourselves, the way that we interact, the way that we open in terms of vulnerability without dumping onto other people. That's a huge thing in terms of energetic transparency that happens, right? When we think about, you know, I've hosted a lot of silent retreats. Silent retreats is about being able to hold the space, to hold the embodiment, to allow somebody to go through their own self-reflection and their own introspection, but also being able to support and guide them through further, you know, inquisition within themselves. And that is the space of a leader, not to model it, but to steward and to guide it. Yeah. Well, I I've said on this show several times before with other guests that you you probably should never teach something that you haven't come through yet. When you're in the middle, it's uh same with speaking. You know, I'm a speaker. Yeah. Don't get on stage until you've found the solution for yourself. Don't teach something until you're at the other end. First of all, you don't know how how you're gonna fall apart. You don't know how you're gonna handle it. I mean, you the worst thing probably that could happen is you'd be at a retreat and you're in doing some big deep work with people and then you fall apart when you're supposed to be holding that space. Yeah. Or you're in tr and you're in trigger state, right? You're not in activation state. So the space of a retreat should be activation, right? We're looking to activate their highest alignment, we're looking to activate their soulful body, the emotional body, the mental body, the physical being, right? So when we are going to into states of triggering, now we are in a state of wounded, like we're in our fight or flight because we're going into a wounded pattern of behavior, right? So when we think about, you know, even speaking or what we tend to do in terms of teaching and the evolvement of that is that we need to understand and fundamentally know what our own self-mastery is. So to be able to walk that path, not to be able to speak from that path, but to be able to have walk from that path, to be able to teach from that path, and then to be able to embody that path in our teachings. And that is, you know, the quality and the depth of the differentiation between retreat leaders, those that have actually walked the path, those that have only read about the path or have had, you know, some type of tangibility or tactileness to the path, and then people that have actually immersed themselves into the path and actually have been through the integration process of the path and know what it takes to get to the other side. That's what a retreat is. It's meant to bridge something of where they are to be able to be where they want to be. So when we are able to be in that space, right, as a leader, then we can bring them to the other side of the bridge and that life transforms from there. Yeah. And their own self-work ends up expanding from there and unfolding from there, you know, obviously their own choice and their own will. But that is the intentionality of a of a retreat. Yeah. Well, there's so much nervous system um deregulation right now, or that needs to be regulated. I like I I just found out the other day, I thought it was so interesting why I didn't know this before, that pickers, meaning like I'm a picker, you know, if I have skin, I'm gonna pick it. Um I know that's a weird thing, but I didn't know that that is a nervous system deregulation. And I was like, that makes so much sense. And I kind of learned it from my dad. My dad's a huge picker, you know, he'll pick scabs, he'll pick, you know, whatever. He's always his fingers are always a mess. And I was like, okay, maybe some of that's a learned behavior, but I thought, wow, I mean, I know my because I have long COVID from all my issues, I know that my nervous system's shot and I've got constantly be working on it and doing things to regulate it. So the question I had around that, that was just a little side note, uh, that we're seeing more retreats centered around healing and spirituality and nervous system regulation, um, along with conscious leadership. Why do you think humanity is craving these experiences right now? Because they're disconnected from themselves, they're disconnected from their soul essence, and they're disconnected from their emotional body, their mental body, and their physical body. And, you know, a lot of people will challenge me on this, but I said, you know, look at self yourself in the mirror and tell me, you know, objectively, what do you see and what do you witness and what do you pull apart and what do you segregate and what do you have divisiveness within yourself? And, you know, if you do something, how do you address yourself? How do you speak to yourself? All of these components come in together and how we are disconnected to ourselves. In reality, we are love, we are, we are peace, we are neutrality, we are beauty. And when we have all of these things that have been conditioned or inherited and all of these patterns of behaviors and belief systems and core values, and we allow that to dictate who we are and create separation within us. When you think about, you know, a young child, you've raised eight, you know, I've raised three and I've adopted two, you know, like there's a peace when you see children. Like children absolutely adore themselves. They love themselves, especially little girls. They'll look at themselves in the mirror and they think they're the best things since sliced bread. But then as they progress, right, that divisiveness, that separation from themselves happens. And as boys, the emotional body gets separated, soulful bodies get separated. You can't express yourself this way, you can't express joy this way, you know, you have to have societal, you know, normalizations that have to be conducted. So all of these things create divisiveness and separation. And then you had a hustle mentality on top of everything that you always have to be constantly moving, going, you know, you can never be in a state of rest without guilt, you can never be in a state of flow without, you know, some type of bracing of something going to happen, you know? So when we have all this divisiveness that's happening within us, we are looking for unity. The soul is asking for unity. It's asking to come back together to lead with love, to lead with peace, to lead with inner fulfillment, joy, and happiness and bring those elements in, still feel our emotional body, still go through the densities of life, have sadness, have anger. All of these things are really important. But to come back to a place of regulation and centralization within ourselves and harmonization, we're looking for harmony. We're looking for liberation, harmony, we're looking for identity. You know, a lot of the times what happens is the soul has cravings, you know, it has desires, it wants to have security, it wants to have stability, it wants to have community, it wants to have love, it wants to have, you know, identity, it wants to have all of these things so that it can be calibrated. It wants to have purpose, right? All of these things is what brings people into these retreat spaces because their soul is guiding them to this, their intuitive knowingness is guiding them, saying, hey, there's something that isn't right here. How can we bring this into alignment? And that's why they'll have resonance with something that can bring them back into the holistic self. Yeah. Okay. How how do you personally navigate conversations when there are strong emotional triggers or ideological differences? Yeah, I think there's always going to be ideological differences. I mean, upbergings, the way that our perceptions are formed, our beliefs are formed, our core values are formed. But I also know that truth is paradoxal. Truth, your truth is your truth, my truth is my truth, my experiences are my experiences, your experiences are your experiences. And the intentionality is never to curate my truth as somebody else's truth or for somebody else to embody my truth. And I deeply respect that. And I think there needs to be a respect for that. It's not about ego, it's not about wanting to be right or that there's only one way. As humans, we want there to only be one way, right? We only want there to be one truth, one reality, but that is not, that's not the truth of life. There's many different truths that exist out there, but how can we mutually respect somebody else's path and somebody else's experiences? But also, we can also show each other different things. We can show each other different perspectives and we can offer different, you know, purviews and belief systems and patterns that are more that can serve them, you know, like there's there's nothing wrong with that. But you also have to be willing and you also have to have openness. But my job is not to control the narrative or to push somebody to believe something that isn't in their core value to believe that, and that's okay. Yeah. Agree to disagree if all else fails. Yeah. Agree to disagree, right? Yeah, yeah. What do you think creates trust quickly inside of a retreat environment? I think the way that someone holds energy, the stability of their energy, the groundedness of their energy and the presence of their energy, to know that they are present, that someone feels valued, that they feel seen, that they feel heard, that builds trust very quickly, right? When we come in with humility, and we come in with empathy and compassion and love and truth, right? And truth of if I see a pattern of behavior, I will gently nudge them and guide them to look at that pattern of behavior and to be able to speak honestly with them for their highest good. Never at a place of judgment, never at a place of, you know, that there's hierarchy in terms of energy or spirituality, there isn't, right? We are all the same. We all have different gifts and embodiments. What you have gifts and embodiments with, those are things that you bring into retreat spaces. What I have gifts and embodiments, that's what I bring into retreat spaces. So building trust and knowing that there is a safe space and a confidential space that they can share and they can open in terms of their vulnerability that allows trust to quickly develop. Yeah. What's a practice that you do during a chaotic season that helps keep you grounded? Honestly, I love being on my mat and doing deep somatic movement and deep breath work. Like I do a lot of breath work, more meditative breath work, not meditation. Um, more meditative breath work that I come right into my soul self and I learn how to maneuver my body to release things that are also into the physical body, you know, like everything that happens in our life comes through our energetic field and it hits our physical being, it hits our emotional being, our mental being, all of it, right? Everything is interconnected. So I'm very cognizant that I know when I need to clear something. If I become destabilized or I feel off-centered and I don't feel inner peace, or I'm feeling anxiousness, or I feel, you know, a lot of fears that are starting to perpetuate, I know that I am not centered in that now moment. I know that I need to be truthful with myself. And I know that I need time to just ground myself back into my reality and not the energetic transference that's happening in the world, not everybody else's worries and fears. And as an empath, a lot of times we filter those emotions through our own body, no matter what is happening around us, right? So I have discernment of knowing where my energy, you know, starts, where my energy ends, where somebody else's energy starts, and where somebody else's energy ends. And that's really a pivotal thing for me. Yeah. I I love uh recently I'm way more into senses, our our sense, five senses. And I've noticed um when I pay attention to like, you know, what I'm seeing, what I'm smelling, what I'm hearing, what I'm touching, like really, I mean, I when I was in the hospital for my 70 days, there was several times I had no senses. I lost all five senses. And so I was happy when they put me in a coma. I was like, yeah, wake me up when it's over, you know? But it I realized now how important our senses are. And I think when we lose just one of those, they say it heightens others, but it's like, wow, if we can pay attention to all of those, I think, like even in a meditation and thinking about that and pay being cautious of our smells and our houses and just different things. I don't know. Those have been thoughts that I've had come up in the last few days recently, and I'm like, yeah, I'm really gonna pay more attention to that. So I love how I just love how the like the universe and energy works because I'm literally writing a piece right now about our sensorial intelligence and like how our senses and our sensuality and all of these things are like critical, right? And so I love that we're kind of touching on this, but you know, our sensorial intelligence is is so vast and it's so interconnected, but it's interconnected with everything. And that's how we intuitively also, you know, when we channel or when we, you know, have transmissions or when we have information that just pops into our mind or into our field, all of these things are through our sensorial body, right? So to be able to smell that something is slightly different or a smell that you're like, mm-hmm that's connected to something that happened prehistorically, all of these things are there for us to keep healing that through, also, right? Through the sensory bodies, you know, hearing and the way that we we see things, the way that we smell things, taste things, the way that we energetically feel things, not even just the physical body of the sensation, but how we feel how energy changes around us. You enter a room, you know, someone has good energy or they don't have good energy. All of those things are always giving us information and their dialogue and communication to us at every given moment. Yeah, yeah, so true. Well, okay. I know we could probably talk about all this forever. I'm sure our listeners are like, what, what? So I'm gonna put all your information to contact you in our show notes so our listeners can go find you and um any any last words that you would like to share. You know, I'd love to just say that, you know, if you're feeling called to go within yourself and to discover yourself even more and to, you know, remember pieces of yourself that you feel maybe you've lost along the way, that these are the spaces that allow you to have those moments of reflection. And, you know, no one here is here by accident and everything is intentional. So, you know, find purpose wherever you feel that resonance with. I love that. That's a great, a great way to end. Well, thank you so much, uh Roxanne, for being a great guest and having uh uh some of the hard questions that uh go deep on, and sometimes there's just never enough time. I know. Thank you, Holly. And everybody, we'll see you on the next show. I hope you enjoyed. Bye for now. Thanks for joining us on this episode of All Things Retreat. We hope you're leaving with new ideas, fresh inspiration, and the motivation to take your retreats to the next level. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. It helps us grow and reach more retreat leaders like you. And if you have any questions, topics you'd like us to cover, or just want to say hello, send us an email at infobreetreatrnr.com. Follow us on social media to stay connected and catch all the latest updates. Until next time, remember, great retreats start with great intentions. Let's make them extraordinary, one step at a time. Thinking about posting a retreat. Before you dive in, let's make sure you're really ready. Grab your free RU Retreat ready checklist and find out if you've got everything in place from your purpose to price it to your audience and agenda. Don't yes, get clear. This quick checklist will show you exactly where you stand and what you need to make your retreat. Click the link below in the show notes to grab your guests and take the first step toward hosting.