Our Story
providing a quality environment
for those seeking overall wellbeing
Body Mind Restoration Retreats provides a comprehensive restoration program designed to detoxify, nourish and assist your body and mind achieve better health and inner peace. These retreats were created to serve the ever-growing need to provide a safe and quality environment to eliminate toxins and deficiencies in the body. We work to give people the knowledge to clarify mental processes and allow the body/mind to realize the health it was naturally intended to have.
We look forward to serving you!
our founders
Body Mind Restoration Retreats were founded by Marcia Radin in 1993 after experiencing a dramatic healing from chronic fatigue when attending a raw foods program directed by Ann Wigmore, founder of the raw foods healing movement. With the blessings of Ms. Wigmore, over the course of the last 31 years, she has developed and refined the remarkable program to include — in addition to the raw foods protocol — yoga, rebounding aerobics, meditation, cognitive kinesiology (which includes refining the breath and healing visualizations) and saunas. Marcia also teaches many of the preventive medicine classes. She also designed and created the beautiful 66 acre facility where the retreats are offered.
Marcia attended the Juilliard School for the Performing Arts where she studied dance. She later was a soloist in the Lucas Hoving Dance Company. She served as the director of the Neighborhood Arts Programs for the city of San Francisco where she organized numerous concerts and performances. All this as preparation for designing the Body Mind Retreats and teaching rebounding aerobics which, despite her being 73 years old, few can keep up with!
She also studied dervish whirling (meditative dance) and became famous as a teacher and performer around the world for close to 50 years. In addition, she studied meditation for over 50 years and was ordained a nun.
Marcia’s husband David has been a student of Zen for the past 45 years. He was ordained a monk and a priest, though he prefers to share these teachings in a non-denominational, often humorous, style that makes them accessible. He gives a talk each evening on taking care of the mind, and gives instruction in very simple, basic calming meditation.
David is also a poet and songwriter with four albums and one book published. He was a good friend of Leonard Cohen, and Leonard highly praised his work and even produced one of the CD’s — a collection of original poems spoken by David and backed by music composed by one of Leonard’s composer friends, Patrick Leonard.
“People have the choice to take responsibility for their own well being. They only need to be shown how.”
Founder/Director Marcia Radin
Many guests at Body Mind Restoration Retreats come as part of their commitment to themselves to live a healthier life, but leave having had a transformative individual and cultural experience that truly awakens their soul. We are so proud to have connected with so many individuals through the years, having touched and nourished every single person.
our culture
Our guests initially seek out our retreats to realign their mind and body in a safe and quality environment, but they return year-after-year because of the experience. We create an environment that fosters and enhances a cultural energy necessary to enter a healthier state of body and mind. Our guests leave with the knowledge of how to achieve this clarifying process in their daily lives.
join a retreat
These retreats were created to serve the ever growing need to provide a safe and quality environment to eliminate toxins and deficiencies from the body. We work to give people the knowledge to clarify mental processes and allow the body/mind to realize the health it was naturally intended to have.
the center
Our retreats are held at the beautiful and peaceful Ithaca Zen Center, a 60-acre facility in the Finger Lakes Region of upstate New York. The grounds feature two spring-fed ponds, wood-fired saunas, a dining hall, meditation center, studio space for yoga and aerobics, and a wide range of custom-designed residences all nestled in the heart of a serene forest.
“The retreats have massively reduced heavy metal poisoning that has plagued me most of my adult life crippling my circulatory systems and heart. Better, the skills and information I absorbed have changed by lifestyle immensely.”
“When I arrived two years ago my blood pressure was 205/100 on medication. Today my pressure is 120/70 without taking medication. Thank you David and Marcia and staff for giving me the tools for my health transformation.”
“What an amazing experience! My joints feel so much better. I can feel myself “melting away” in a good way. A great staff, great foods prepared with so much love in a soft green paradise. Thanks so much!!!”
