Intimacy & Connection Retreat
A transformative retreat for those called to open the heart and walk the path of love
Friday, April 24th - Sunday, April 26th
CHRISTINA DELLA IACONO, LAURA SANCHEZ & BALA YANCEY
Just Love Forest, Poetry, Georgia
A Transformative Retreat for Individuals
Designed for those who want to deepen their capacity for intimacy, connection, and authentic presence - with themselves and others.
Deepen your connection in nature.
This year, the Intimacy Retreat at Just Love Forest invites individuals to step into a weekend of deeper self-understanding and relational awareness. This is a space for those who long for authentic closeness, vulnerability, and meaningful connection - whether in romantic relationships, friendships, family, or community.
Rather than focusing solely on fixing what’s broken, this retreat is an invitation to explore what’s possible. Through guided experiences and embodied practices, you’ll have the opportunity to examine how you show up in connection, how you listen, how you express yourself, and how you create safety and trust - both within yourself and with others.
Held in the quiet support of the forest, the retreat offers time to slow down, reflect, and practice new ways of relating. You’ll be guided into experiences that cultivate presence, clarity, and openness, while gaining practical tools you can carry into your everyday relationships. This is a weekend to reconnect with your heart, deepen your relational awareness, and remember what it feels like to meet others and yourself more fully.
It starts within
Let’s journey into true intimacy.
Intimacy isn’t just about romance or touch. It’s about listening, being heard, and feeling understood. It’s about learning to express yourself authentically and discovering new ways to meet others with presence, care, and curiosity without judgment or reactivity. Through guided exercises, somatic practices, ritual, and time immersed in the beauty of nature, this retreat cultivates the kind of intimacy that transforms how you relate to yourself and to others.
This retreat is designed as a spacious, supportive container for personal exploration and relational growth. Whether you come with a specific relationship in mind or simply with a desire to deepen your overall capacity for connection, you’ll be guided through experiences that help you soften defenses, release old patterns, and reconnect with what feels most true in your heart. From walking the labyrinth, to releasing held emotions around the fire, to resting deeply in the forest, each moment invites you to remember what it feels like to feel connected, supported, and loved.
Imagine this: you feel more at ease in your body, more confident in your voice, and more available for authentic connection. This retreat isn’t just about healing what’s been hard - it’s also about deepening what’s already good. It’s about liberating joy, strengthening heart connection, and reclaiming your natural capacity for openness, play, and love.
You are welcome to come as you are - single, partnered, in transition, or simply curious. Through embodied practices, creative exploration, and immersive nature experiences, you’ll explore how you communicate, how you move through challenge, and how you cultivate greater presence, ease, and aliveness in your relationships and daily life.
WHAT TO EXPECT
FOREST THERAPY & NATURE IMMERSION
Reconnect through guided experiences that restore harmony, mindfulness, and deep presence, allowing the forest to gently support your nervous system and open space for insight and connection.
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DANCE, MOVEMENT & EMBODIMENT PRACTICES
Explore freedom and expression through dance, somatic shaking, and sacred movement. These practices invite you into deeper embodiment, helping you feel more fluid, expressive, and at home in yourself.
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SOMATIC & EMOTIONAL RELEASE
Release stored emotions, ancestral patterns, and held tension before they harden into resentment or disconnection. Experience rituals such as back breathing, shadow work, and guided release practices designed to cleanse and restore.
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THROAT & SACRAL CHAKRA ACTIVATION
Awaken your voice and creative life force through primal sound, toning, and movement exercises that support authentic expression, confidence, and deeper connection.
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COMMUNICATION & RELATIONAL AWARENESS TOOLS
Learn and practice skills such as active listening, mirroring, and “I feel / I notice” practices to strengthen your ability to express needs, hold boundaries, and meet others with clarity and compassion.
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FROM REACTIVITY TO CHOICE: EMBODIED EMPOWERMENT
Shift from patterns of blame or contraction into self-leadership and inner sovereignty. Through experiential workshops, you’ll explore how to respond rather than react, express boundaries with integrity, and choose connection without self-abandonment.
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INTENTIONS & RELATIONAL RE-SCRIPTING
Reflect on the relationships you wish to cultivate romantic, platonic, familial, or communal and clarify the values, agreements, and qualities you want to embody moving forward. This is an invitation to consciously shape how you show up in connection.
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CREATING YOUR IDEAL RELATIONAL EXPERIENCE
Through guided reflection and gentle inquiry, explore questions such as:
• How do I want to feel in my relationships?
• How do I want to meet discomfort or challenge?
• What do I want to invite more of - trust, playfulness, safety, honesty, joy?
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BENEFITS YOU’LL TAKE HOME
Greater harmony, joy, and nourishment in your relationships
Clearer, more compassionate communication skills
A deeper capacity for listening and being heard
Embodied practices that support playfulness, ease, and presence
Tools for navigating conflict before it turns into resentment
Stronger intimacy with yourself and with others, emotionally, physically, and energetically
Are you ready to deepen your relationship with intimacy itself?
Let’s journey inward and open outward, together.
FAQS
Who is this retreat for?
Individuals who feel called to deepen their capacity for intimacy, presence, and authentic connection with themselves and with others.
Those who are ready to move beyond habitual communication patterns and explore more honest, playful, and ease-filled ways of relating.
People who value experiential learning and are open to embodied, somatic practices that support heart-centered awareness and meaningful connection.
Anyone who wants to cultivate trust, vulnerability, and joy in their relationships - romantic, platonic, familial, or communal.
Is this retreat only for PEOPLE iN RELATIONSHIPS?
No. This retreat is designed for individuals who want to deepen their relationship with intimacy itself - how they listen, how they communicate, and how they show up in connection with others. You do not need to arrive with a partner or a specific relationship in mind.
True intimacy isn’t limited to romance. It’s about trust, presence, self-awareness, and the ability to meet others with openness and care. The practices offered support a wide range of relational experiences: romantic, platonic, familial, and communal by helping you cultivate the inner skills that allow connection to grow naturally.
Who isn’t this retreat for?
Those seeking traditional therapy or a space to vent grievances without accountability.
Individuals unwilling to engage in respectful, permission-based interactions.
Pairings who are in active conflict or who require crisis counseling.
Those uncomfortable with introspective, experiential exercises or group dynamics.
What if I’m nervous about being vulnerable?
Feeling nervous is completely natural. The retreat is a judgment-free, supportive space where you can move at your own pace. Exercises are designed to be gentle and permission-based, encouraging you to listen to your body and honor your boundaries.
What’s the schedule like?
The retreat starts on Friday at 2 PM with a warm welcome and introduction to the land. Saturday and Sunday are filled with structured activities and plenty of rest time to integrate. The retreat concludes Sunday afternoon with optional overnight into Monday.
What do I need to bring?
Bring an open heart, comfortable clothing, a journal, and an optional offering for the land or labyrinth walk (flowers, fruit, or a poem) and we’ll provide everything else!
Your registration includes all meals, accomodations, bedding, and towels, but you’re welcome to bring your own. A detailed packing list will be in your confirmation email.
Come experience
Deeper Connection & Authentic Presence
Clear & Compassionate Communication
Deep Listening & Emotional Attunement
Embodying Boundaries with Love
Moving Through Conflict with Grace
Liberated Expression & Playfulness
Heart Intimacy
A Reawakening of Pleasure & Vitality
Your forest home awaits
We offer you a large, beautiful canvas bell tent with your own luxury tempurpedic mattress.
716 acres of pristine protected forest
Our gathering space
A hand-built intentional yurt
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Friday
- 2:00-4:00 PM: Arrival
- 4:00 PM: Welcome Tour
- 5:00 PM: Labyrinth Walk
- 6:00 PM: Dinner
- 7:30-9:30 PM: Opening Ceremony
- 9:30 PM: Optional Campfire
Saturday
- 7:00 AM: Continental Breakfast
- 8:00-9:00 AM: Optional Meditation
- 9:00 AM: Breakfast
- 10:00 AM-12:00 PM: Forest Bathing Hike to Bhakti Mountain
- 12:00-2:00 PM: Lunch & Free Time
- 2:00-5:00 PM: Fire Tending: Exploring & Dissolving Burning Issues
- 5:00-7:00 PM: Free Time
- 7:00 PM: Dinner
- 7:30-9:30 PM: Somatic Dance & Sound Journey
- 9:30 PM: Optional Campfire + Medicine Songs
Sunday
- 7:00 AM: Continental Breakfast
- 8:00-9:00 AM: Optional Meditation
- 9:00 AM: Breakfast & Reflection Time
- 11:00 AM: Depart and go to Little River Canyon
- 12:00 PM: Picnic Lunch at the Falls
- 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM: Scripting: Creating Joyous Relationships”; “Vows, Receiving Love, Closing Ceremony
- 2:30-4:00 PM: Vows Ceremony
- 5:00 PM: Depart or Optional Additional Night at Just Love
CHRISTINA DELLA IACONO, M.S.
Christina has been directly initiated as a curandera in the shamanistic tradition of her Peruvian lineage. She was also initiated as a song carrier by a Cherokee Taíno Choctaw medicine woman and has trained in the priestess temple arts for over a decade. Since 2019, Christina has served as a ceremonialist, weaving the medicines of sound & somatics to inspire souls to remember their deepest truth. She guides people back home to the intelligence of the open heart, so that they may directly experience profound connection–with themselves, loved ones, and Life itself. To learn more about Christina’s work, visit www.gaia-sophia.com or IG @hathorsdaughter.
LAURA SÁNCHEZ, MS, NER
After finishing her Master's in Nutrition, Laura ventured into the depths of her essence and shadows through Neo Emotional Release. She now helps others witness and release their emotions by creating a safe and loving container in which they can unshame the parts that they don’t like about themselves, decondition limiting beliefs, and lift any ancestral weight. She guides people into alchemizing pain into pleasure and blessings and helps them remember the juicy parts of being alive.
BALA YANCEY
Bala is a dedicated space holder, meditation teacher, forest therapy guide, and retreat facilitator who weaves together nature connection, embodiment practices, and deep relational work. Rooted in the wisdom of the land, he creates immersive experiences that guide people back to presence, authenticity, and connection with themselves, each other, and the natural world. Through ritual, and intentional conversation, Bala invites participants to explore vulnerability, release old patterns, and step into greater joy, intimacy, and self-leadership. As the steward of Just Love Forest, he curates transformative retreats that honor the power of community, sacred relationship, and the healing intelligence of nature. Learn more at about him at www.bala.love.
RecIprocity
What’s included in the retreat?
The retreat includes pre-retreat (April 21st) and post-retreat (May 13th) virtual gatherings; delicious plant-based meals (3x breakfast/lunch/dinner) and snacks; three nights of lodging (bell tent, mattress, bedding) in the serene beauty of Just Love Forest; guided group activities and solo reflection time; and a special forest bathing hike, ceremonies, and playful bonding experiences.
Shared Glamping
Share a canvas bell tent with another attendee. All retreat activities included plus vibrant plant-based meals.
$800 + tax per person
Private Glamping
A canvas bell tent with queen mattress all to yourself. All retreat activities included plus vibrant plant-based meals.
$1,000 + tax per person
The bell tents come with sheet and towel service
No cancellations
SPECIAL RATES APPLY FOR MEMBERS
Up to two members are eligible for 25% off. Read more here.
Financial Accessibility
We always want these gatherings to be as financially accessible as possible. If you would like to be considered to serve as part of our volunteer and support teams for a reduction in fees, please contact us.