COSTA RICA | AWAKEN
Seven days on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica | April 11 to 17, 2027
My spirit is leading me to the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, and I'm inviting ten souls to come with me. Sand, ocean, jungle, and enough time to hear yourself think.
Reserve My Place01 · The Niggle
Nothing dramatic enough to name out loud to anyone who'd ask if we're alright. Just a small persistent pull in the spirit that says something in me is asking for more than this, arriving at the least convenient hour and ignored by morning, because there's a meeting, a child, a deadline, a person who needs us.
We're very good at ignoring it. Most of us were trained to. We learned that being capable was the price of being loved, and we've been paying it so long we stopped noticing what it costs.
Functioning isn't the same as flourishing. We've spent a very long time confusing the two.
Awaken is seven days where the confusion ends, not because someone hands us an answer, but because we finally go somewhere quiet enough to hear what we already know.
Who We Are When We Arrive
Spiritually open, sometimes quietly, sometimes for years without anywhere to put it. We have gifts we haven't fully trusted. We read the books, feel the pull, and go back to work.
We aren't broken. We're ready, which is a very different thing.
And most of us arrive a little afraid. Of traveling that far. Of what might surface with nothing to hide behind. Of spending this much on something that can't be justified on a spreadsheet.
If you recognized yourself before the end of that paragraph, you already know why you're still reading.
Costa Rica, and Why the Place is the Teacher
What keeps calling me back isn't the scenery, though the scenery will undo you. It's the way the land is genuinely respected there. You feel it in how people move through a morning. You feel it in the fact that the jungle hasn't been managed into submission for anyone's comfort.
Spirit is visible in every element. In the butterfly that lands and stays longer than it should. In the tree, the fruit, the sand, the ocean, the face of the person handing you breakfast. It becomes impossible to look at any of it and not see the Divine looking back, which makes it very difficult to keep looking at yourself and seeing less.
That's the whole mechanism of this retreat. Beauty does something to a nervous system that's been braced for years. It opens what effort cannot. We don't have to work at awakening here. We have to stop working, and let a place that is already awake do what it does.
This year my spirit is directing me to the Caribbean side for the first time. Less traveled. Less packaged. More itself.
I'm not taking anyone somewhere I've mastered. I'm going somewhere I'm being called, and I'm asking you to come with me.
Who We're With, and Why It Matters
The Caribbean coast is Afro-Costa Rican land, with a culture, a lineage, and a way of living that the country's tourism story has largely walked past.
We aren't visiting it as scenery. We'll be with the people whose home this is, in their businesses, at their tables, learning from their hands, with our money staying in their community.
This is the same commitment running through everything I build. People who've been overlooked aren't a backdrop to someone else's awakening. Part of what we carry home is an understanding of how much we were never shown, and what it costs all of us when a whole culture is rendered invisible by an itinerary.
It's woven into why this retreat exists at all.
The Journey Begins Long Before We Board
Not on a list. In the circle.
We gather before we travel. Our guests meet virtually ahead of April, so the people beside you in Costa Rica are already familiar faces. For anyone who's quietly wondered whether they can really do this alone, this is where that question gets answered.
We prepare for where we're going. Together we spend time with Costa Rica before we arrive. The Caribbean coast, its history, the Afro-Costa Rican community whose home it is, and the customs that make us good guests rather than tourists passing through. We learn enough Spanish to greet someone properly, to say thank you and mean it, and to ask for what we need with respect.
Arriving prepared changes what a place can give us. You won't spend the first two days orienting. You'll already be here.
We stay connected after we leave. The week in April isn't the whole of it. Reentry is where most of the real work happens, and we walk it together rather than scattering at the airport.
The Rhythm of Our Days
We know the shape of this week. The particulars we hold loosely, on purpose, and here's why.
I've led enough of these journeys to know that the people who say yes to April change what April needs to be. So does the land. Something will happen on the third morning that no planning document could have anticipated, and everyone who has traveled with me before will tell you that the unplanned thing is usually the thing they still talk about years later.
What I can tell you is how the days move.
Mornings open slowly. There's no five o'clock bell. We begin with stillness in some form, meditation or movement or simply coffee somewhere with a view that makes conversation unnecessary.
Late mornings hold our gathered work. One anchor experience each day rather than a packed schedule, because depth asks for room and more activity has never once equaled more transformation.
Afternoons are largely yours. Swim, sleep, journal, walk, book bodywork, talk to someone for four hours, or say nothing to anyone at all. Rest is part of the medicine for people who haven't stopped in years.
Evenings belong to the circle. Shared meals that run long, sacred conversation, ceremony when ceremony is what wants to happen.
Between those anchors, the week is curated as it forms. That isn't a gap in the planning. It's the planning.
I lead and curate every element of our time together. At times I invite guest facilitators whose gifts serve what the group needs, a teacher of movement, a keeper of sound, someone whose medicine belongs in that particular room. They're chosen by me and held inside our container. You're never handed off. The thread of the week stays in my hands.
A retreat built entirely in advance can only give us what someone imagined months ago in a room far from here.
The purpose, the destination, the lodging, the inclusions, the anchor experiences, and the overall rhythm are established before a single invitation goes out. Logistics are held with real care, and you receive your detailed travel information well before departure.
The inner work is shaped closer to our gathering, in response to the people who are coming and what the land is offering. Everything is invitational. Nothing is required beyond your presence.
This is the same practice we're here to strengthen. We're learning to trust our knowing and follow guidance as it arrives, which is difficult to teach from a locked schedule.
Your Place in the Living 4.Love Collective
12 months
Included · A $924 value
From the day your deposit is received, you belong to the Collective.
We're the capable ones. The people others lean on, who've been functioning for years without much room to flourish, and who are finally done pretending that's the same thing.
Monthly gatherings where we meet face to face. Ongoing teaching between them. Sunday Suppers and early word on everything we create before it goes anywhere else. A circle walking the same road, so the question you can't ask anyone in your ordinary life finally has somewhere to go.
Your membership begins the moment you say yes and runs a full year, carrying you through the months before Costa Rica, through April itself, and through the long reentry afterward where the real integration happens.
The week is seven days. Your year is the rest of it.
What's Included
Accommodation details and photographs are shared with confirmed guests as soon as our property is finalized.
This retreat is capped at ten, and that number is a design decision rather than a marketing device.
Ten is the largest circle where nobody disappears. Where I can know what's happening with each person in the room. Where someone who came to be found actually gets found.
The Investment
Shared occupancy
$3,444
Reserve My PlacePrivate occupancy
$4,444
Reserve My PlaceReserving begins with a Retreat Alignment Call and brief application so we can ensure this circle is the right mutual fit.
$555 deposit secures your place
Due by January 11, 2027. Balance due March 11, 2027. The deposit is non-refundable and applies toward your balance. If plans change, it may be transferred to another Soul Bloom experience within twelve months.
I want to say something plainly about the private occupancy number, because anyone who's traveled with me before will notice it. $4,444 is the same number I've carried through this work in Costa Rica for years. I didn't choose it to look clever on a page. It's simply the number that belongs to this land and this work, and I've stopped pretending that sort of thing is a coincidence.
Already in the Collective? Your twelve months are credited to your membership, so you pay nothing for the year following your deposit. Your $44 founding rate stays locked when that year ends, exactly as promised.
About the Person Leading This
I've traveled five continents. I know exactly what it costs to be the person everyone else leans on.
I'm not going to stand in front of you with answers. I'm walking this myself, which is why I can walk it with you. Healing is a journey, and anybody who tells you it's a destination is selling you something.
Love is the universal antidote. Everything I build starts there.
Questions Worth Asking
Come With Me
There'll be a morning in April where ten of us are sitting somewhere green and impossibly alive, and the person you've been carrying around underneath all that responsibility will put their shoulders down for the first time in years.
You don't have to be sure. You only have to be honest about the pull.
From my heart to yours, Dr. Makeba