Back to the Roots

Psyche & Co. presents · Retreat

19–29 September 2027ChinaDates TBC

Granite peaks of Huangshan's Xihai Grand Canyon

Returning to the Way: Laozi, Zhuangzi and the Chan masters among China’s sacred mountains.

Psyche & Co. presents ten days in China with Andrew Harvey, going back to some of the oldest roots of contemplative wisdom. The Tao Te Ching, the Zhuangzi and the Chan Buddhist tradition have shaped how much of the world thinks about stillness, nature and the art of not forcing. Here we meet them in the landscape that gave them their images: mountain, water, cloud and pine.

For people who spend their days holding other people’s struggles, these teachings offer something rare: a way of acting that does not exhaust itself. This retreat asks how the old Chinese sense of flowing with the Way can steady us now, and how it meets Andrew’s call to a mysticism that acts in the world.

The place

The Tao Te Ching is traditionally credited to Laozi, the ‘Old Master’, said to have written it at the request of the gatekeeper Yinxi as he left through the western pass; modern scholars see it as a text that grew over time, with partial versions on bamboo slips from the late fourth century BC. The Zhuangzi, from the late Warring States period, gave us the dream of the butterfly and a deep distrust of fixed categories. When Buddhism took root in China, it met these Taoist ideas, and from that meeting Chan grew, the tradition that later travelled to Japan as Zen.

China’s sacred mountains carry this history in stone and forest. The Wudang Mountains in Hubei are one of the four sacred mountains of Taoism, with a temple complex inscribed by UNESCO in 1994 and a long association with tai chi. Huangshan in Anhui, with its granite peaks, sea of clouds and pines growing straight from rock, inspired poets such as Li Bai and a school of ink painting. The itinerary, including which landscapes we visit, will be confirmed.

Taoist temples among the forested Wudang Mountains

Karst peaks rising above the Li River near Guilin

The teachings

The Tao Te Ching as a book of practice: wu wei, the art of not forcing, and what it might mean for those who help others for a living.
Zhuangzi’s freedom: the butterfly dream, the play of perspectives and the loosening of rigid ideas of who we are.
Chan and the meeting of traditions: how Buddhism and Taoism met in China, and what that meeting can teach about dialogue between paths.
Mountains as teachers: why Taoist and Buddhist practitioners went into the hills, and how landscape can still re-order the mind.
Water, emptiness and the feminine: the Tao Te Ching’s images of the valley and the mother, held alongside Andrew’s work on the Divine Feminine.
Non-forcing action: how a still centre can feed Sacred Activism rather than withdraw from the world.

A sketch of the days

ArrivalGathering, welcome and an opening evening on the roots of Chinese wisdom and the intention of the journey.
Days 2–4Laozi and the Tao Te Ching: readings, reflection and slow walking, with an introduction to wu wei.
Days 5–6Zhuangzi: play, perspective and freedom, with time in the landscape.
Days 7–9Chan and the sacred mountains: meditation, silence and the meeting of Taoism and Buddhism.
Day 10Integration: bringing the Way home into work, relationships and action.
DepartureClosing circle and farewell. This is a sketch of the days; the final programme will be confirmed.

This is an outline to give you a feel for the days. The final programme, teachers and timings will be confirmed with the dates.

What you'll take home

A working understanding of the Tao Te Ching, the Zhuangzi and early Chan, and how they shaped one another.
Simple practices of stillness and non-forcing that can sit inside a busy working life.
A gentler, more sustainable relationship to effort, especially for those in caring work.
A felt sense of landscape as a teacher, and ways to keep that relationship alive at home.
Fresh language for talking with clients and colleagues about acceptance, flow and change.

Who it's for

This retreat is for psychotherapists, psychologists, counsellors and others in the helping professions who want to draw on Chinese contemplative wisdom in their work and their own lives, and for thoughtful laypeople drawn to the Tao, Zen and the old dialogue between mountain and mind. No prior study of Chinese philosophy is required; we read the texts together. The journey involves travel and some walking in mountain terrain.