This week’s Dance First Member Insight is from Nine Mountain Retreat!
Who We Are
Nine Mountain was built about 30 years ago by the creative community of Earthdance Creative Living Project, a radical collaborative of improvisers, makers and artists. The unique, towering post-and-beam building was originally designed to be a shared home for members of the collective. They built the house together, using trees harvested from the land. Nine Mountain served as a community house for families, couples and individuals for its first 3 years.
When relationships and vision diverged and the original collective began to disassemble and disperse, the collective decided to sell the property. Nine Mountain was sold to one family, then another, and landed with Ed and Nora Bolles, who built our wooden bunk beds and created a cross-country skiing and macrobiotic nutrition wellness-focused bed and breakfast, Nine Mountain Retreat.
Some years later, when the Bolles were ready to move on, they sold Nine Mountain to Deborah and Davio, Breathwork teachers with a deep connection to Earthdance (which by this time had evolved into a non-profit dance retreat center). Deborah and Davio turned Nine Mountain into a transformational retreat center, where they taught Breathwork and hosted workshops for other healing modalities and spiritual practices. They also opened the doors once more to a close working relationship with Earthdance, and the two adjacent centers returned to collaborating on hosting events together.
Deborah and Davio cultivated Nine Mountain for 15 years. They developed a rich legacy which they handed off in 2014 to the current ownership collective, Nine Mountain Retreats LLC. Today, Nine Mountain is run by a General Manager and rotating Resident Caretakers, and supported by the large network of beloveds who call this place home.
At Nine Mountain Retreats we intentionally craft a home space for learning, research and exploration in the realms of human connection, spiritual practice, social change, embodiment and the healing arts. We host, produce and facilitate group retreats, intensives, courses and workshops that support this work.
About Our Practice
The aim of our work is to support and engage in the development of global “regenerative culture” – a life-affirming, highly creative human culture, wherein human needs are interwoven with the rhythms and needs of the natural environment, enabling both human and natural ecosystems to regenerate in harmony with each other.
To this end, we particularly welcome native and indigenous teachers; to this end, we particularly welcome leaders in social change movements; to this end, we particularly welcome environmental activists, permaculture practitioners and deep ecologists.
Nine Mountain envisions a diverse network of resilient, interrelated communities spanning the globe, supporting a thriving human society that nurtures systemic health, radical self-expression, maintains ecosystem integrity, and inspires reverence for life.
