What becomes possible when we stop experiencing the body as something separate from who we are?
Our experience of the body changes when we stop perceiving it as something we possess.
When we stop experiencing the body as solid, dense, and simply made of matter, something begins to shift. And when this perception shifts, our experience of reality shifts with it.
We can drop our attention from the racing mind into the body. And from there, we can go even deeper—into the heart of awareness itself.
The body isn't just a tool or a vessel. It's a doorway. When we move past our conditioned ideas about the body and meet it as it actually is, we discover something unchanging. Something that was never born and will never die. Something free from the stories we've been telling.
This is where peace lives. Our bodies don’t need or want perfection or control. They already know what the mind has forgotten: how to rest in our true nature
What if peace isn’t something you have to figure out?
We spend so much of our lives in the mind—analyzing, anticipating, remembering, trying to understand. Yet beneath all that thinking, the body is already here. Breathing. Sensing. Knowing.
This retreat is an invitation to shift attention from what the mind has learned to what the body has never forgotten.
Through meditation, movement, sound, and embodied practice, we’ll explore the body not as something to perfect or overcome, but as a doorway into presence—and into the peace that is already here.
You don’t have to think your way there. The invitation is to experience it for yourself.
The Retreat Experience
What Is Possible on Retreat
Moments of real stillness.
A relaxed nervous system remembering what it feels like to not be on guard.
A different relationship to your body — like coming home to yourself.
The kind of rest that actually restores.
Unexpected clarity that surfaces in the silence between sessions.
An embodied sense — not just an intellectual understanding — that you are not separate from what you’re longing for.
Connection with others that goes deeper than small talk.
Leaving with something you can’t quite name — but won’t forget.
A Glimpse Into Your Days
The Body as a Gateway to Peace
With Caverly Morgan, Davin Youngs, Jess “Jay” Jarris, and Sam Hammer
DECEMBER 7–12, 2026
Meal Times
Monday, December 7
Tuesday–Friday, December 8–11
Saturday, December 12
These days are intentionally designed to balance teaching, nature, community, and rest, so that what you came for can be lived rather than simply learned.
Scenes From Past Retreats
TESTIMONIALS
Caverly Morgan is bold and unapologetic, of a deep love for humanity and a full understanding of the power of authentic harmony & evolution. I couldn’t recommend her retreats more highly.
If you’re longing to awaken, in courage grounded grace & joy, in a space where you’re held in such true depth and connection.
I wanted to express sincere gratitude and appreciation for all the time Jess has shared with me. I’ve felt comfortable and safe in our sessions and was able to go to some new places in my consciousness that I’ve been resisting for a long time.
It was liberating and illuminating, and it was a bit of a breakthrough that I was not expecting.
A beautiful magician of the soul.
Scholarships
Financial Support Is Available
We want this retreat to be accessible to those who feel genuinely called to be here. A limited number of scholarships are available for participants who would otherwise be unable to attend.
If financial support would make it possible for you to join us, we invite you to apply.
Apply for a Scholarship Scholarships are limited and applications will be reviewed individually.Your Guides
Every step of the way, you'll be held by a team of guides, movement teachers, coaches and musicians, each offering their own kind of support for the learning, the integration, and the connection that unfolds between you.
About Caverly Morgan
After eight years as a silent Zen monk, Caverly Morgan discovered something through direct experience: the freedom she’d been seeking was already here.
Featured in the New York Times and named one of 2025's powerful women of the mindfulness movement, Caverly is a teacher of awakening, two-time author, nonprofit founder and speaker who blends the original spirit of Zen with a modern nondual and relational approach.
Caverly supports others in remembering our true nature—not through more techniques or self-improvement strategies, but through presence, inquiry, and togetherness.
She is the author of The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together and A Kids Book About Mindfulness. As founder of the nonprofits Peace in Schools (the nation's first for-credit mindfulness program in U.S. public high schools) and Realizing Freedom Together, she has pioneered ways for communities to awaken collectively, making teachings that lead to liberation accessible to all.
About Sam Hammer
Sam is a highly trained bodyworker and craniosacral therapist, his work is based on safe and attuned therapeutic relationship; cultivated presence; mindful and precise contact; and a deep trust in the innate intelligence and healing capacities of our bodies and beings when supported with the environments and optimal inputs that we need.
In over 10,000 client sessions since 2014, he’s cultivated the art of listening with my hands and energetic sensitivity to the unique needs and qualities of each client.
While his professional practice focuses on manual therapy, his learning and personal passions include somatic meditation, qi gong, functional strength and mobility training, and metabolic health practices.
About Jess “Jay” Jarris
Jay Jarris (she/they) is a Somatic Psychotherapist, Yoga Therapist and Embodiment Coach. In her private practice, she blends together Somatic Experiencing, mindfulness, Polyvagal Theory, parts work and embodiment practices.
Jay began their personal exploration of contemplative practices in 2004 and since 2012 has journeyed alongside others in exploring how movement, mindfulness and somatic awareness can help to reconnect us with the innate wisdom of our bodies. She offers individual sessions, a quarterly group series called Embodied Homecoming, and workshops.
About Davin Youngs
New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert describes Davin Youngs as a "beautiful magician of the soul." The singer and sound healing artist has proved himself to be a true musical innovator who believes wholeheartedly in the transformational power of singing, voice and sound.
He is the creator of The RESET, an immersive sound healing experience that he has brought to iconic spaces and stages like The Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall, Chicago's famed Orchestra Hall, Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Finney Chapel at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the roof of Ace Hotel. This experience features Davin using improvisational singing through looping devices as well as overtone-emitting instruments to create a sonic container for restoration and healing. What makes this experience truly unique is the subtle integration of electronic beats and the emergence of improvised music that reflects the wonder and beauty of each person present.
Davin is a featured teacher on the Insight Timer meditation app where his extensive library of recorded meditations and immersive sound experiences are available for streaming. Additionally, Davin hosts the highly rated Becoming Sound podcast and works with some of today’s most influential singers, performers and leaders on finding more freedom, authenticity and ease with their voice.
About Whidbey Institute
One of the many sacred spaces held by the forest.
106 Acres of Forest
Held by the Land
This gathering is held on 106 acres of quiet, protected land on Whidbey Island—a forested sanctuary of towering firs and cedars, fern-laced trails, and tended gardens. This is a place where the trees rise high, the silence is real, and the land itself becomes part of the homecoming. At the heart of the land, an old-growth forest and living gardens hold the same quiet aliveness this retreat is here to help you remember.
Gather Around the Table
Deeply Nourished
Meals at the Whidbey Institute are lovingly prepared by the Institute’s chef using local, fresh, organic produce whenever possible. Special dietary requests can be accommodated, with an abundance of gluten-free, low-sugar, and vegan options. Food as medicine—prepared with care and sourced as close to the land as possible.
Delicious, nourishing and made with love and care.
Whidbey Institute gathers on the ancestral homelands of the Coast Salish Peoples, who have lived in the Salish Sea basin since time immemorial and have hunted, fished, gathered, and taken care of these lands.
We respect their sovereignty, their right to self-determination, and we honor their sacred spiritual connection with the land and water.