Renée Trudeau

Renée Trudeau (also published as Renee Peterson Trudeau) leads self-renewal retreats for women and writes about self-care as a spiritual practice. The eldest of seven, she spent part of her childhood in the Sierra Nevada after her parents left city life for a simpler one, and she worked for years in communications and career coaching before the deaths of both parents and a brother in close succession turned her towards this work. She has studied yoga, insight meditation and conscious movement with many teachers and has been coaching since 1990.

In 2002 she began Personal Renewal Groups, monthly circles where mothers met to practise looking after themselves; the model spread abroad, and her team went on to certify several hundred facilitators. Her books, The Mother's Guide to Self-Renewal and Nurturing the Soul of Your Family, grew from that work. She has presented at Kripalu since 2008 and at other large retreat centres, and her weekends mix rest, yoga nidra, journaling, song and nature-based ritual. She also offers recorded virtual retreats, an online course for women who want to lead their own circles, and pilgrimages to Iona. She divides her time between Austin and the mountains of western North Carolina, where she runs a weekly community dance class.