Awakened Intimacy for Couples

Retreats on mindful sexuality for couples

Awakened Intimacy is a series of sex retreats for couples looking to renew, restore or deepen their erotic connection. Just as a garden needs care and attention, your erotic life needs tending or it will wither on the vine.

As relationships change, we face
ongoing challenges to intimacy and desire.

These challenges can lead to conflict and disengagement. Or they can be a portal to creativity, connection and growth.

Our couple’s retreats will teach you skills to weather these difficulties and transform your relationship as a mindful team.

TRANSFORM and CULTIVATE…

Each retreat in the four-part series cultivates a new set of skills.

Part 1: EROTIC PRESENCE

Cultivates curiosity and engagement when passion is ebbing.

Part 2: EROTIC COOPERATION

Cultivates deep connection and trust when intimacy is fading

Part 3: EROTIC EXPRESSION

Cultivates freedom and play when creativity is dwindling.

Part 4: EROTIC ATTUNEMENT

Cultivates mystery and surprise when spontaneity is waning.

GROW and FLOURISH…

We want your “garden” to flourish for a lifetime, not just a season.

Begin by registering for our live online Intro Mini-Retreat, Erotic Presence for Pleasure, Connection & Growth, or one of our forthcoming self-paced courses.

The skills and practices taught in these programs transform common challenges of real-life sex into opportunities for renewal, healing, and growth. They show you how to establish a trusting, blame-free relational container as preparation for the advanced retreats.

Let us show you how to expand beyond deadening routines, release shame, and recover the creativity that often gets lost over time together.

OUR APPROACH

We put safety first and respect your unique journey as a couple.

You can be sure that we will not push you to do anything you don’t want to do and that our approach is gentle, trauma-sensitive, sex-positive, and non-judging. We do not teach pleasuring techniques. Instead, we help you explore the emotional and relational dynamics that inhibit your aliveness, disconnect you from one another, and prevent you from opening up to pleasure, connection, and erotic creativity.

Regardless of whether you’re in a sexual drought or fully nourished erotically, Awakened Intimacy will help you establish a more wakeful and engaging erotic life together.

WHO ATTENDS?

Our Retreats and Courses are especially helpful for couples who are:

In a loving relationship, but having little or no sex with each other

Interested in using sex for growth and transformation

Unsure how to speak openly about their sexual desires and fears

Adjusting to physical changes due to aging or illness

Stuck in power struggles, hurt and resentment about sex

Avoidant of sex because of past wounding or negative experiences

Wanting the benefits of commitment without giving up thrills

Seeking more freedom, ease and play in their lovemaking

Looking to build a solid foundation for the years to come

Is this the right time to participate in the retreat?

The Awakened Intimacy program is for committed couples in a loving relationship who want to use their challenges to heal and grow together. If you are in a crisis or find erotic content triggering, please wait until you are further on your healing journey. The program is not for estranged couples or those newly healing from an affair or trauma. We can schedule a Zoom chat to help you discern if the program will be beneficial. Reach out to us if you’re not sure.

What is a retreat like?

The training format consists of morning mindfulness followed by “tribe time” and one-on-one support from the leaders.

We intentionally foster an environment where couples support other couples. This dissolves the silence around sexuality that leads so many of us to feel deficient and ashamed. Rest assured, however, that we also respect your privacy. You will never be required to share explicit details about your sex life.

Throughout the day, we give short talks on mindful sexuality followed by experiential (non sexual) exercises that you complete under the supervision and supportive coaching of the leaders.

We help you get connected right from the start, so that you can meet difficulties as a team.

This is why we practice in class and give you assignments at night. We want you to feel confident that the skills you learn in the retreat will transfer to your life at home.

You will also receive private exercises to complete before and after group sessions.

These are not hands-on techniques, but rather gentle guidelines to cultivate a present and exploratory state of mind. Most participants find that the exercises add safety, particularly if you’re at an impasse, but you can always modify them to fit your individual needs.

AS SEEN IN

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Will I learn how to talk to my partner? Even about the really awkward subject of sex?

Yes. You will acquire more ease in talking openly about sex through ice breakers, structured dialogues, and hearing the leaders talk about sex. We will teach you how to slow down, notice, and report on your experience in a way that engenders curiosity and compassion from your partner rather than defensiveness or withdrawal.

Our love life has really been non-existent for years now. Do you really think it is possible that my partner and I could ever reach a deep erotic connection again?

Time and again, we have seen couples recover the love and spark that once was theirs by starting to repair past hurts and becoming more vulnerable with each other. As you speak your deeper truths, you become re-acquainted and often re-engaged with one another. While this doesn’t happen for every couple, we have seen it often enough to know that emotional honesty can be a powerful aphrodisiac.

We’re in a very bad place right now and have been so for a while. I am not sure I want to stay with my partner. Will your retreats help us?

Our retreats are for loving couples who want to deepen or restore their erotic life together. Still, even the most loving couples experience conflict that can result in hurt or fear of broaching the topic of sex. Some of our retreats explore these challenging dynamics, specifically. However, if you are in crisis around your relationship, feel contempt for your partner, or have already “left” the relationship and do not want to return, our retreats are not for you. To benefit from our retreats, you must sincerely desire to engage physically and erotically again. We are happy to talk with you about your situation to determine if attending our retreats is the right course of action for you.

There are many couples retreats out there. Why would I sign up for yours?

You can read more about Maci’s unique approach by scrolling down to “Why Us? Or, read about how are we different from other retreats.

Many sexual enrichment programs focus on ways to enhance pleasure and performance. Knowing how to pleasure each other is important, but so is having tools to work with the limiting beliefs, unresolved hurt, and shame that lead us to avoid sex in the first place.

Passion and Presence uses mindfulness to explore internal barriers to pleasure and erotic expression. We empower you to re-engage your curiosity, come off of automatic, and experience novelty by changing how you orient to sex and perceive yourself and your partner. Our mantra is “great sex is a state of mind,” and research supports this. You won’t learn hands-on techniques. Instead, you will learn how to cultivate a state that optimizes pleasure, connection, and creativity.

We’re recovering from an affair. Will your retreat help?

If you just learned about your partner’s affair, you need time to recover your equilibrium and heal. Affair recovery has stages that include recovering from the disclosure crisis, understanding the affair’s meaning, and re-envisioning your post-affair relationship. The final step is erotic recovery.

If you have successfully moved through the first few stages and feel ready to re-engage erotically, then, by all means, attend our retreat. However, since you said you are in crisis, we suggest you work through the other phases first.

We are not your "typical" couple. Will we be accepted? Will our needs be honored?

Yes! While the leaders are cis-gendered and in heterosexual partnerships, we value diversity, equity, and inclusion in our retreats. Couples of all genders, orientations, and love styles are encouraged to attend. Moreover, our retreats address issues couples of all orientations face, including differing arousal pathways, low or mismatched desire, life stress, aging, bodily changes, and shame from growing up in a heteronormative and sex-negative culture.

Is your program trauma-sensitive?

Many participants have experienced sexual trauma, and most like our slow, mindfulness-based approach. We also welcome you to pass on or modify any activity that makes you uncomfortable. With that in mind, if erotic content and exercises involving touch trigger you, you may want to wait until you feel more resourced to join us. While the leaders are trauma therapists, we don’t have a way to work with you individually, and we can’t take time to process what’s coming up for you during our mini-retreat. We’re happy to help you decide whether the retreat will benefit you if you’re unsure.

Is this the right time to participate in the retreat?

The Awakened Intimacy program is for committed couples in a loving relationship who want to use their challenges to heal and grow together. If you are in a crisis or find erotic content triggering, please wait until you are further on your healing journey. The program is not for estranged couples or those newly healing from an affair or trauma. However, if you are in the later phases of your recovery, please join us.

Explore the full series of Passion & Presence® Retreats

Awakened Intimacy for Couples

Part 1: EROTIC PRESENCE

Part 2: EROTIC COOPERATION

Part 3: EROTIC EXPRESSION

Part 4: EROTIC ATTUNEMENT

Is this the right time to participate in the retreat?

AS SEEN IN

Part 1: EROTIC PRESENCE

Part 2: EROTIC COOPERATION

Part 3: EROTIC EXPRESSION

Part 4: EROTIC ATTUNEMENT

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