A contemplative path of formation for women walking sacred thresholds —
A seasonal path of silence, somatics, and rose-lineage devotion rooted in contemplative mysticism.
“In the tension where we no longer know who and what we are… comes a Presence, Light beyond Light.
This unveiling of our own sacred feminine is nothing less than a reordering of knowing and being.”
— Beverly Lanzetta, The Monk Within
MONASTICA is a modern contemplative sanctuary—
a space of spiritual direction, embodied practice, and monastic rhythm for women who want to live with depth, coherence, and sacred attention.
You’ve outgrown the pace that once sustained you.
Your body is asking for truth, not strategy.
You want faith that can be lived, not performed.
MONASTICA is not a program for improvement or acceleration.
It is a place of spiritual formation where life is shaped slowly through attention, devotion, and embodied truth.
We do not rush here.
We do not extract the transformation.
We practice a rose-shaped way of life. What is ripe gives itself freely.
Today, we are inundated with messages around clarity, prosperity, and expansion. It’s easy to feel like we are falling behind or not keeping up with the hustle, even though we're riding the edge of overwhelm and burnout.
What if you are being called to another way?
What if alignment and calibration came from within? Have the social norms prepared the body to hold capacity for what is and what is becoming?
In MONASTICA, abundance is not measured by speed, visibility, or constant expansion.
Abundance is ripeness like a rose:
life forms slowly through attention and containment
it opens in its appropriate season
it releases what is complete
through integration, what falls becomes nourishment for what comes next
This is why our work is gentle and discerning, because what is holy is not forced.
Who is the Modern Monastic Woman?
The modern monastic woman is not defined by clothing, location, or visible piety.
She is defined by orientation.
Her life is oriented toward:
attentiveness rather than accumulation
devotion rather than urgency
fidelity rather than performance
interior authority rather than external validation
She does not seek to escape the world.
She seeks to inhabit it without being consumed by it.
What she looks like
Outwardly, she looks ordinary. There is nothing visually dramatic about her. She may be:
a mother, leader, therapist, artist, teacher, entrepreneur
married, partnered, single, widowed, divorced
visible in public life or quietly rooted in the local community
What is noticeable is how she moves:
She is less reactive
She pauses before responding
She does not rush to explain herself
Her presence calms rather than inflames
People often feel met in her presence, even if they don’t know why.
“Like still waters, via feminina gently flows in the cave of the heart, soothing the jagged edges of consciousness.”
-Beverly Lanzetta
MONASTICA invites us to via feminina, which means the path of the feminine.
The contemplative rose formation invites us to find stillness and silence — to reveal the sacred, in her own way.
This path supports the reclamation of her true nature and her quest for meaning and love.
Contemporary monasticism is a key to healing a broken and suffering world.
A path that requires us to let go, to be led into unknown, and undiscovered places.
What you can expect inside MONASTIC
Embodied contemplative practice (somatic prayer, breath, grounding)
Silence and listening-based facilitation
Spiritual direction-informed guidance
Ritual thresholds aligned with the Five Sacred Rites
Integration that prioritizes nervous system safety and sustainable change
This is not for everyone.
The contemplative rose path challenges our collective frenetic energy and unconscious programming.
This is slow work.
Work that bears real fruit.
Inside MONASTICA you are self-initiated into a contemplative path of the Rose Lineage—
The Rose Formation, within MONASTICA, is the monastery's signature group mentorship. We walk through 5 Sacred Rites, a universal pattern that provides us with a roadmap through the thresholds. A Christ illumined cycle woven into our bodies that remembers how we hold life, death, and rebirth.
It’s for women who:
are moving through a threshold (divorce, grief, identity change, vocation shift, leadership transition)
are tired of performing healing or “holding it all together.”
long for spiritual practice that includes presence within the body, mind, and spirit
want a contemplative path rooted in devotion, not hustle
are ready for formation that is feminine, slow, honest, and sustainable
have outgrown pressure-based growth
are in the ache of awakening, sensing a deeper calling but unsure how to cross the veil
The Anchoress is our Monastic Guide…she embodies a countercultural truth:
~That presence is more powerful than productivity.
~That stillness can serve the whole community.
~That a woman rooted in God is not absent from the world, but anchoring it.
Hear her words—
Stone does not silence me. It widens me.
They say anchoress means to withdraw,
yet I have not withdrawn. I have entered the burning center.
Through my narrow window, one to the altar, one to the village, I keep vigil between heaven and hunger.
In the stillness, Christ comes not as a single flame, but as a double radiance.
Holy Father—vast as winter sky, strength that bows.
Holy Mother—womb of dawn, softness that reigns.
One Heart. Two movements.
He, the seed descending. She, the dark earth receiving.
He, the pierced side. She, the river pouring from it.
And I, bricked into stone, am the soil of their meeting.
The Rose teaches me their way, a love through embodied devotion.
In winter, I prune. In spring, sap rises unseen. In summer, petals open in crimson prayer.
In autumn, even beauty loosens and falls.
Bare stem. Bare heart. Bare Christ. Cycle within cycle.
Christ is not only the Crucified. Christ is the rhythm.
Holy Father steadies the stem. Holy Mother bleeds into bloom.
Together, they root me deeper than stone.
My body is cloister and cosmos. The Word takes flesh here again and again.
The Rose does not hurry its opening.
Neither does God.
And when my cell becomes my grave, I will not fear the dark.
I have known the Father’s transcendence through surrender and the Mother’s gestation of renewal.
I have lived the Rose.
Every mystic emerging—
Every woman rising from the ashes of old systems—
Every heart choosing to trust the unseen resurrection taking place within,
What does it mean to stay rooted in love when everything known collapses?
What does it mean to grow in beauty when there is uncertainty?
She did not leave the tomb. She remained. She waited. She listened. She became the first to see the risen Christ because sh could recognize the divine in unfamiliar form.
To rise in the threshold is not to rise above it, but to rise through it.
Mary Magdalene became the apostala apostolorum, the apostle to the apostles, precisely because she was able to hold the ache of the in-between and still believe in love.
This is the rose unfurling.
Magdalene is the soul-map for every woman resting in her becoming.
Frequently Asked Questions
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The infrastructure of MONASTICA assures that we develop a deep spiritual foundation through the wisdom traditions, which hold embodied truths through divine knowing. We cultivate our interior space through presence.
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Getting started is simple. Reach out through our contact form or schedule a call—we’ll walk you through the next steps and answer any questions along the way.
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No. Monastica serves an interfaith community for spiritual exploration and deepening into the perennial wisdoms. Each soul passing through MONASTICA is invited to seek God on their own terms. They are invited to explore how to reconcile with faith traditions. Most of all, we support that an intimate relationship with the divine nourishes the human experience.
Within the perennial wisdom, we understand that:
There is in the human soul a natural capacity, similarity, and longing for this Divine Reality.
The final goal of all existence is union with Divine Reality.
There is a Divine Reality underneath and inherent in the world of things.
Our Rose formation anchors primarily in the Contemplative Christian Wisdom, a lineage resting in the universal Christ. Wisdom that is embedded in the human soul.
Lauren is an ordaining minister with Feminine Healing Arts.
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You can reach us anytime via our contact page or email. We aim to respond quickly—usually within one business day.
lauren@sacredlivingarts.com
I’m Lauren, Contemplative Rose Formation Director of MONASTICA.
Here’s a little about me…
It all started when I sat for my first meditation session at age eleven. I was hooked.
Over the years, this practice helped cultivate the musculature of staying with what is. Allowing stillness and the necessary integration of mind, body, and spirit to reveal the path forward. I became really good at crossing the thresholds. As a matter of fact, I welcomed them. I knew the growth and gifts they provided for my soul’s evolution.
In the hours of sitting in silence, I also became intimately acquainted with what we might call the frequency of Christ or the benevolent love of the Divine, which awakens us to the interconnectedness of all beings. That presence has stayed with me through all the thresholds in my life — head trauma, abandonment, sexual boundaries crossed, adoption, and divorce, to name a few.
I always felt like the access point to silence and stillness should be part of our social norms, built into our education, our work environments, and FREE to all.
This is where my sacred service began.
For the better part of 30 years, I have worked as a meditation teacher, somatic guide, interfaith spiritual director, and grief companion. I have helped women navigate thresholds of leadership, identity, and life transition. Guiding them to lead from presence rather than pressure.
As a mother of three teenagers, including one adopted child, and a woman who has walked the terrain of divorce and reinvention, I bring an uncommon depth of embodied wisdom to my work. I do not teach resilience as endurance, but as capacity—the body’s innate intelligence to adapt, stabilize, and carry momentum forward in alignment with purpose.
I have spent much of my spiritual exploration and training studying the mystics. My greatest evolution came through working with the Christian Wisdom school, which enlightened me to the common threads amongst the many religious traditions.
My Rose Lineage initiation further opened the portal to my sacred mission by helping me reclaim self-love.
My unique approach in working with women integrates desert wisdom, contemplative formation practices, advanced somatics, seasonal elemental body temple attunements, spiritual direction, and mindfulness foundations.
I teach that sustainable faith-filled leadership does not come from force or mindset alone, but from a body that knows how to hold the cycles of embodied presence.
We move through 5 Sacred Rites, which are thresholds of formation that arise at specific stages of the Rose, which mirror our own life, death, and rebirth cycles.