Why Doing Nothing Might Be the Most Transformational Part of Your Retreat

Discover why slowing down, stripping off, and simply being can create the most profound transformational retreat experiences for men over 50.

Some people glance at my retreats and assume they’re just gay vacations with fewer clothes and more cocktails. And yeah, there are cocktails. And there’s definitely nudity. But if you think that’s all that’s happening, you’re missing the point.

Because here’s the truth no one wants to say out loud: doing nothing is deeply transformational. Especially for men over 50 who’ve been in survival mode for decades—working, caregiving, grieving, repressing, conforming. You want a week filled with 12 workshops and 15 journaling prompts? That’s not rest. That’s just productivity in spiritual drag.

My retreats are built for the kind of man who’s spent a lifetime carrying invisible weight. Many of us came of age during the AIDS crisis. We buried friends in silence. We skipped entire decades of play. We went from fear to funerals without the in-between. And now? Now we get to reclaim what was stolen. Sometimes that looks like skinny-dipping under the stars. Sometimes it’s laughing your ass off over a shared bottle of wine with a stranger who ends up feeling like a brother.

That is transformation.
Even if it’s quiet. Even if it doesn’t come with a certificate.

It’s hard as hell to make friends after 30. Harder still to feel seen once your hair grays or your body shifts or your libido starts sending you mixed signals. But the kind of magic I witness on these retreats—the new friendships, the softening, the fucking joy—it’s not accidental. It’s curated. The way I build these groups ensures that even first-timers leave with a half-dozen real connections. And you tell me: when’s the last time you made six new friends in a week?

So this is a call to retreat leaders:
Build in space. Real, empty, unstructured space.
Don’t over-schedule. Don’t over-coach. Let your people float. Wander. Nap. Get sun-drunk and soul-full. That’s where the real shifts happen—not in the doing, but in the being.

My itinerary might be too slow for some folks. It doesn’t have sound baths or ecstatic dance or plant medicine ceremonies. But it has presence. It has softness. It has 58-year-old men laughing like they’re 12 again. And that’s more healing than any crystal grid.

Let them be.
Let them connect.
Let them remember who they were—before the world told them who they had to be.