One unique element of Lotus Peace Retreats is Deborah Lotus Allen and her perspective, unusual background and life experiences. She is a practicing Buddhist and follows the spiritual path of the compassionate bodhisattva. She was given the name Lotus White Tara (or Pema Dolkhar) when she participated in a refuge ceremony with Tibetan Lama Lodu Rinpoche of Kagyu Droden Kunchab, Center for the Study and Practice of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism in San Francisco. The name means Goddess of Love and Compassion, and it is definitely a name and path to gradually grow into and learn to walk comfortably and confidently upon. Ms. Allen thinks of it as her yellow brick road leading her to exactly what she and the world perhaps need most: love and peace. Soon after, while on a pilgrimage to the west coast, she began using the name "Lotus" as a way to honor her path, inner voice, resonance with this particular flower, and an abiding passion for botany, gardens and flowers. Eventually this path led her into the vision and mission of Lotus Peace Retreats & Coaching and Femme Fire Productions.

Lotus is also a highly sensitive person, intuitive empath and energy healer. She has trained in Reiki and Healing Touch modalities. This gift, in combination with her mindfulness, skillfulness, compassion, gentleness, passionate activism mixed with elder’s wisdom, makes her an excellent retreat and life coach. Indeed, coachness is an essential aspect of who she is. Also, her essential nature and spiritual path marry well with her interests and skills in mediation and peacekeeping, nonviolent communication, the art of listening, and co-creative group processes.

Lotus has studied anthropology and Native American Earth traditions and spirituality. She is a shamanic practitioner, leads spirit quests, sweat lodges, and sacred rituals honoring the Four-Fold Way. She studied at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Missouri for undergraduate work in Biology, English and Anthropology. She has formally trained with Mentor Coach Helene Van Manen of the Retreat Coaches Network and with Dave Buck of Coachville.

Lotus is a single mother by choice, a woman-centered feminist and a believer in the sacred feminine and grandmother wisdom. She is a spiritual warrior, a woman with a powerful heart-mind and a poet's sensibility. She Ioves supporting women and girls, activists and social change leaders in reaching for empowerment, prosperity consciousness, possibility and potential.

One of Lotus' deepest passions is building community and peace in the world by calling women, activists, and social change leaders into circles to retreat, share, heal, celebrate, and be renewed in rest, creativity, and inspiration. Thus, she is a professional certified retreat coach and a member of the Retreat Coaches Network. She is also a member of Coachville and continues to study and build upon her coaching skills with new courses and trainings. She is a personal life coach, small group consensus process facilitator, and also a certified mediator.

Lotus brings 20+ years of experience in cooperative, sustainable living within rural intentional communities. During this period, she visited many communities across the US and provided background support for a documentary -- "Visions of Utopia: Experiments in Sustainable Culture," produced by Geoph Kozeny. She also worked and volunteered for nonprofits as a group process facilitator, events organizer, board member, database and systems manager, certified mediator, program coodinator. She is also an organic gardener.

Prior to becoming a mother and a social change activist, making the leap into community, and working for nonprofits, Lotus spent 17 years employed as a legal assistant. Her strong organizational skills and legal background support her work in peace & justice. Some of the groups Lotus feels blessed to have had an opportunity to engage with have buttons below and/or are listed on her links page (an ongoing work in progress). They are all amazing. Check them out!

Lotus combines the theoretical stuff she has learned about collective living, ecological and cultural sustainability, transformative learning and change with her training and experience as a retreat coach, a vision quest guide, spiritual warrior and a council leader. She then weaves it all together with a profound love of nature and Gaia’s interconnected web of life. With her passionately felt belief in the vision and mission of Femme Fire Productions / Lotus Peace Retreats and because she is following a clear spiritual calling, Lotus is a powerful and effective leader and catalyst for change.