Meet your Retreat Facilitators

Julia and Steve teamed up 3 years ago offering residential opportunities for clients to deeply immerse themselves into inner exploration. Transformative opportunities offer themselves over the course of our lives. Some are so profound that they can’t help but to transform us, others require mindful effort to commit to the healing journey. Julia and Steve’s desire to offer these intensive opportunities comes from their own individual transformative experiences which led them into journeys of self discovery and healing.

Julia started her transformative work a dozen years ago after intellectual analysis, quieting the ego-mind through meditation, and psychotherapy efforts intending to improve the trajectory of her life lost their momentum. Around that time, she began to notice how the Energy Healing Coursework she was taking to integrate into her physical therapy practice was affecting her psychospiritual life. Eyes widened to new ways to heal in body, mind, and spirit, she soon followed an intensive path of energy and shamanic work leading her to the Transformative Life Coaching Program at Sofia University. Her personal transformational story is the fuel for her passion in helping others on their journeys. Learn more about Julia here.

Steve began collaborating with Julia on Transformative Retreats after spending many years doing his own personal work. In his travels with psychotherapy, he discovered that he could only go so far before he came to the protective traffic cop, AKA, his Ego.  Working with different healers, Steve experienced how powerful transformative work was in helping him drop below his conscious mind and address the things conventional talk therapy couldn’t. These experiences led to life changing and transformative results. Steve is currently in a transformative apprenticeship program and is looking forward to integrating new skills in his role as a retreat facilitator.

The group setting is perfect medicine for the isolation many feel when facing their shadow side. In this setting, we discover that even though our storylines differ, we are all on, what Joseph Campbell calls, a heroes journey. We become a tribe which is fueled by the belief that we have within us what we need to prosper and grow. We bear witness to each others stories which may in turn illuminate unrecognized facets of our own. Here, in the group setting, we discover how together we become stronger than each of us are individually. Paraphrasing Malcolm X, when “I” becomes “We”, “I”llness becomes “We”llness. The energy of the group strengthens the experience.

Julia and Steve’s role as facilitators is to create a safe community for us to blossom and grow in. The agreements of confidentiality and the intention to speak from and listen through our hearts are the creed of the tribe. Experiences are designed to help their clients dip below the control of their egos to explore their deeper knowing, remember who they are, or to notice their competing commitments. Their final role is to help the retreaters integrate the information they received from within themselves into their new story to share with the world.