"Thank you for helping me see the hell I created for myself, and how to make small changes today to ease the pain. I have a sense of hope again, and know I have what it takes..." ~ Eating Peacie

Eating can be a deeply troubling experience to some of us.

The urge to reach for food, or eat when not hungry, or think about food obsessively, or create plans to starve oneself or diet are all so difficult. A battle is underway. We are not peaceful eaters.

Eating for emotional and psychic reasons seems normal. Eating industrial foods seems normal. Food is everywhere in many of our cultures in the world. Food can be comforting, distracting, temporarily satisfying, and even feel like a drug.

It is possible to experience peace with food, eating, your body, your mind. You can stop acting on your cravings. When we eat adequately and we stop eating the foods that catch us into our over-eating patterns and when we pause the cycle of think-feel-eat….the urge or need to eat off-balance dies away.  

Really.  

Warning: this retreat is not about nutrition although you will address your actual way of eating on the very first day and as the days unfold, you will give yourself a peaceful menu. This retreat focuses on understanding and finding empowerment and freedom with emotions, impulses, cravings, fear, powerlessness and self-criticism. It’s a retreat about noticing, and awareness, and watching thoughts that scream at you to eat (or diet), rather than following them like they’re in charge and commanding you to comply. 

Even if you’re an expert in diet and exercise….people who come to Eating Peace can learn how to work with the act of eating so they never have to over or under-eat again.

Eating concerns can dissolve for us all. There is a way any of us can find peace and balance, whether we've experienced binge-eating, anorexic restriction, bulimia, gaining and losing 10 to 100 pounds over and over again.

With a clear and peaceful balanced way with the actual food, with deep intimacy and connection with yourself through self-inquiry and dissolving stressful thought, there is no need to eat, or to think and feel, in an unbalanced way. The war you've been waging with eating, your weight and certain foods (and feelings) can end.

In the Eating Peace Retreat, you can experience a deeper approach to understanding your own behaviors, actions, cravings, and dynamic with food.  

In this immersion together, I offer exercises and stories that I found personally shifted my way of thinking about food and eating. You might experience slowing down enough to truly enjoy your food and relax in your body.

Here is what you’ll encounter in the Eating Peace Retreat with Grace:  

• How to identify and be with what you’re thinking and believing that leads to eating off-balance
• The process of awareness and relaxing your mind, beginning with self-inquiry, that interrupts the cycle of reaching for food, obsessing about food, managing food and eating, or feeling guilty about food, eating or your body
• Accessing a new feeling of rest and awareness when it come to hunger, fullness and your emotions
• Mindful eating practice and following your inner guidance and commitment around balanced whole and healthy food
• Feeling the body and resting with it, being with it, without judgment. Noticing our sensations and welcoming them all. The somatic experience of feeling, without terror or condemnation, or disgust.
• Moving meditation – you will attend a special event on Saturday morning. You'll get to practice taking care of your own body, to have fun, and be with the body freely with a feeling sense throughout the retreat–-and to identify your stressful thoughts when they arise.
• The Work of Byron Katie is our primary way of working with thoughts, being with self-inquiry and deep investigation of the patterns we are stuck in, and how to break out of them. We’ll use some important exercises to sink into our personal awareness of what’s going on with eating, food and self-judgment or self-care.
• You'll have a map and experience you can take with you to continue your journey in your daily life after retreat  

"In the Eating Peace Retreat, I was immersed and captivated from the beginning. It was fascinating to see how everything was relevant. I gained so much insight into myself and my eating disorder. I found the group to be great fun and very connected. And Grace...I found you to be so full of insight, respect, kindness, wisdom. It always felt like you had time for everyone, you treated us all differently, yet you treated us the same. Your laugh and dancing will stay with me always. I feel this helps me going forward and that there is so much love and acceptance and a way to direct it back to growth. In my head I am singing that song from the Dubliners 'O Grace just hold me in your arms and let this moment linger'. Thank you so much for what you've given me." ~ retreat participant

Eating Peace Retreat is more than a retreat about eating, and more than a retreat for those suffering from eating woes and problems.

This retreat is about finding liberation from having to think, push, adjust, fix or endlessly find the "right" answer for food, your body, or your mind.

It is about noticing that while food and eating is the thing that appeared for you, in your life, it isn't really about food and eating at all. It's about fear, stress, thinking and believing.

The mind is looking for a place to rest. It's been imagining there is no rest, and if you stop thinking that all hell will break loose. This retreat helps us notice how much we've imagined, and to realize we really can stop believing our "images" and that we are OK.

When I was 14 and went on my first diet, that was the beginning of MORE stress in my attempt to control what I was eating. Don't we really want for it to not even be something we're concerned with at all? What is peace? For me, it's NOT feeling compelled to manage what's going in and out of the body in a way that feels off-balance, stressful, aggressive.

What I really wanted was to feel happy in my body, and calm. Whether I needed food in the moment, or I did not. No matter what emotion was arising.

For me, Eating was the path to liberation. Isn't that crazy? But you may sense this is true for you, as well. Addiction and suffering has led many people into surrender, awareness and letting go of the war. It's true about eating as much as any other compulsion.

One of my teachers along the way, Adyashanti, used to say that we are really just addicted to our thinking. It takes all kinds of forms, in my case binge-eating, obsessive thinking about eating and food, and concerns about the body.

To step out of the mind's efforts to solve this problem is the most wonderful peace. Quiet, gentle, spacious peace.

In this retreat, we'll be silent together, we'll eat together, you'll have quiet time alone, we'll share honestly, we'll inquire together.

We'll ask "who am I?" and "what is really Not OK right now?" We'll get to notice the home we've been missing, and trust what is. Even if there is heartbreak. Without believing our stories....peace. Eating Peace and peace beyond belief. "

For those wanting to stay onsite

(limited spaces):

Our Eating Peace Retreat November 11-16, 2025 meets at a beautiful retreat house in Seattle, Washington on Queen Anne Hill. It is not too far (2.5 miles) from the space needle and downtown Seattle. This place is chosen to allow full relaxation and luxurious rest and space in a traditional and popular Seattle neighborhood, so you can nourish, respect and forgive yourself and your mind.

There are 8 private rooms, and one shared room with 4 queen beds (2 up high reachable by stair steps) and 2 ground level, bunk beds.

You are also welcome to commute from home or nearby. If you would like to look at all the photos to reserve your own room, here is the direct link to airbnb we'll be staying in for our retreat house.

Please choose your best option, and write to grace@workwithgrace.com to request to book your accommodation. You'll receive a link to your chosen lodging. Your stay is for 5 nights. Check-in 4pm on Tuesday, November 11th (our program begins at 6:30pm), check-out at 11am on Sunday, November 16th.

Write to Grace right away to confirm your room--this is on a first come, first serve basis.

• Book HERE King bedroom (three two available) Note: Room Sharing OK, the first person uses the secure link to reserve, the second person submits the "tuition only" link to book their spot, then let Grace know you are sharing the room. You can work out splitting the room cost independently.
• Book HERE Queen bedroom (2 available) rooms are booked
• Book HERE Full bedroom (1 available) room is booked
• Book HERE Queen bunk bed shared bedroom (available for 4 women)

Don't miss out - the countdown is on! Reserve your spot now before time runs out. Join us for an unforgettable experience.

Directions to this location

From Seatac: take the link to downtown Seattle

We will have a WhatsApp group for everyone enrolled so people can pair up for traveling.

Suggestion is to travel so that you arrive at Seatac by 2pm on Nov 11th, to give you plenty of time to get to our retreat house and check in. The first evening session will begin at 6:30pm on Nov. 11th.