What if the life you want requires you to stop repeating the patterns that created the life you have? This four-day immersive retreat is an invitation to step out of autopilot and take an honest look at how you are experiencing, relating to, and directing your life. Through practical exercises, movement, breath, reflection, and honest conversations, you’ll explore the patterns shaping your perception, your energy, and your relationships—and begin to make small, conscious shifts that you can actually carry home with you. The goal isn’t to become someone else. It’s to see yourself more clearly, stop giving your energy to patterns that no longer serve you, and begin living from a more conscious direction.
This four-day retreat gives you the space to put down your phone, slow down, and step outside your usual patterns. Through guided sessions with Chi, movement, meditation, breath, reflection, and practices to explore on your own, you'll begin to notice what is shaping the way you experience your life.
You arrive at The Essence and step out of the rhythm you've been carrying with you. For four days, your attention turns toward what is usually easy to overlook: your thoughts, reactions, energy, habits, relationships, and the choices underneath them. Each day builds on the one before.
This program gives you the opportunity to see what is operating in you and shaping your life. Chi's role is to help you look more closely — at the stories you believe, where your energy goes, how you relate, and the choices you make. He brings a direct perspective to what you may be too close to see yourself. You'll have a dedicated 30-minute one-on-one session with Chi during your stay, along with opportunities to bring your questions and discoveries into the work throughout the workshop.
This stay takes place within a living community. Life here is real: there are two young children, there are animals, there are the natural sounds of a town on the edge of the jungle — roosters, dogs, the rhythm of ordinary life continuing around you. This is not a bug. It is part of the design.
There’s nothing to prove here. You don’t need to arrive with the right answers, have it all figured out, or become someone different. We do ask you to be in the practices and the daily structure — that’s what you came for. But you’re not here to perform, impress, or get it right. You’re here to be yourself, to look honestly at what’s happening within you, and to do the work sincerely.
Step out → See clearly → Discover possibility → Move forward
Four days won't change you. That's not what this is for. This is your chance to see, firsthand, whether this way of living — the structure, the practice, Chi's teachings and presence, the people — is somewhere you actually want to go deeper.
The same shape, day after day. You move through the day at the community's pace, not your own — and join what draws you: a conversation, a task, a silence.
Create distance from your usual routine and begin seeing where you are now: what isn't working, what keeps repeating, and what brought you here.
Slow down and learn to meet the present moment as it is, rather than through old experiences, expectations, or projections. Begin noticing how your attention shapes what you experience.
Look at the situations where you feel stuck and explore the choices, possibilities, and opportunities that become visible when you change the way you look at them.
Turn what you've discovered into something practical. Get clear on what you want to change, break it into manageable steps, and create a way to bring your new perspective into everyday life.
A private cabaña with A/C, or a spot in the shared cabaña with fans. Both have an en-suite bathroom and their own entrance. One price covers the whole stay — the bed, the food, the teaching, all of it.
| 1 person | 2 people | |
|---|---|---|
| All year | $900 | $1,500 |
| Per bed | |
|---|---|
| All year | $600 |
Prices cover the whole stay, not per night.
Four days, Thursday to Sunday. Pick a window and we'll confirm it together.
Plenty of time for rest and reflection
Still unsure about something? That's normal — it's why we start with a conversation rather than a checkout.
Ask us anything →No. We do ask you to be in the practices and the daily structure — that's what you came for. Beyond that, nothing is asked of you. You're welcome to lend a hand in the kitchen or the garden if something calls you to, and you're not expected anywhere near the running of the place. People who stay on for longer naturally grow into contributing whatever they're able to.
Three people, three very different reasons for coming. In their own words.
I'm realizing now — maybe I don't need to find myself. It's okay to just be myself. Nowhere to get. Nothing to do.
Sam came from Arizona after fifteen years of searching — hypnotherapy, energy work, plant medicine, EMDR, one approach after another, always chasing the question of who she was. She arrived for a two-week retreat and never left. Eight months on, she became part of the community, often found cooking for the house. The searching has quieted into something simpler: permission to just be herself.
Read Sam's full guestbook entry →
It is exactly the right place for people who are tired of bending over backwards for a sick society.
Fabian came from Germany carrying more than a decade of chronic pain that began with a tumor diagnosis at seventeen. He had worked through countless therapies, doctors, clinics, and retreats, and read deeply in Western psychology and spirituality, before meeting Chi in 2024. Within four months his life changed radically — through standing meditation, breathwork, and Qi Gong his body began to heal and the pain receded, while the long conversations with Chi helped pull him out of a severe depression. A year and a half on, he is part of the community, drawn to understanding the patterns of the ego and to helping others turn their pain into growth.
Read Fabian's full guestbook entry →
At times, it feels like a lot, but being surrounded by like-minded people provides immense support
Kelly first came from Spain for a retreat, then again the next year, and again this one — a month or two at a time. What keeps her coming back is Chi's guidance, which she holds as priceless, and a community that works as a real container for growth: somewhere she can challenge herself and actually practice. She cooks for the house, and for all her shyness she turns into a quiet powerhouse whenever she's around.
Read Kelly's full guestbook entry →Send us your details below and we'll follow up to confirm your dates.
or just email us at connect@the-essence.org — whatever's easier
