WINTER PARK
MEN’S RETREAT
JUNE 26-28, 2026
Men. Welcome.
This is a trumpet call-out to men who are ready to shake things up.
You already know something’s not working.
You can feel it… even if you can’t quite name it. A sense that the life you’re living is narrower than the one you’re capable of. That you’ve been holding back — even if things look fine, or even enviable, from the outside. And the longer this goes on, the more familiar it becomes. Just the way things are.
Most men are afraid of death.
But there’s something far more frightening: arriving at the end of your life having never fully shown up for it. Having held back. Played it safe. It’s a kind of stinginess — and it’s not just you who pays the cost. It’s the people closest to you. The ones who need more of you than an autopilot version of yourself.
The alternative isn’t a peak-state fantasy. It’s simpler — and harder — than that. It’s the courage to actually feel what’s in your chest.
Men who do this aren’t traipsing around in bliss (though there might be moments). They’re in contact. With themselves, with the people they love, with what actually matters. There’s a fullness to it. An aliveness.
The other path — closing down, sidestepping what you feel — works, in ways. But it leaves you thin, estranged. Starving for something you can’t name, in a life that might look fine from the outside.
You can’t think your way out of this.
In my experience, the problem typically isn’t a lack of information, or even insight. Most men already have some sense of what needs to shift. The greater challenge is the gap between knowing and actually feeling — and it’s in the moments of real pressure that this disconnect reveals itself, and our well-worn patterns take over.
What I’ve seen, through years of doing this work, is that real change happens in relationship. Not in solitude (though I have tried and tried). Things melt when men are together in this way — grief that’s been pushed away for years, isolation rooted in competency and self-sufficiency. And it’s not just that other men facilitate the dropping-in. They give him a place to land.
And then something else happens: when one man slows down enough to feel what he typically runs from — another man lights up. Because he’s been carrying virtually the same thing, just his own version, all while assuming he was the only one. That he was somehow broken, or an exception.
He isn’t these things. None of us are.
The medicine ceremony.
At the center of our three days is a guided medicine ceremony. It lands on day two, and it’s the heart of everything.
What medicine does, in the right conditions, is open access to what’s already here. Emotions that have been managed, sidestepped, held at arm’s length — they become contactable. And what surprises men, time and again, is that feeling these emotions doesn’t destroy anything. It connects us. To ourselves, to our bodies, to the men around us, to the simple fact of being alive in this moment.
My role in ceremony isn’t to guide you toward insight. It’s to be with you as you actually are. I’m listening. I’m not trying to change anything. What I’m doing, most of the time, is helping you slow down to feel what’s already arising — the thing you just skipped over, the emotion that flickered across your face and got willed away. There’s an okayness in slowing down. We find a resting place here, one that’s hard to find alone.
If the weather holds, we take the ceremony into the wilderness. If the mountains have other plans, we hold it inside, around a fire. Either way, we go it together. As men have always done.
“The medicine experience was a breakthrough for me. My intentions were strong going in, and I came away with great energy that’s still with me. Your co-facilitation worked extremely well — great dynamic. I look forward to attending another with you guys.”
— W.G., retreat participant
Three Days.
The drive up from the Front Range is part of it. Men leaving the familiar rhythm of their days and heading into the mountains. I’ve seen some arrive brimming with excitement. Others feel something relax, as cities fade in the rear-view mirror.
I remember men standing in the living room of the Winter Park house — bags set down, taking in the space built of thick wood and solid stone, the huge windows, the trees outside, a passing raven. A collective exhale.
What the three days offer is a slowing down. In the company of other men, away from technology and the usual noise, cooking meals together, eating around a shared table, walking through the woods — sometimes in conversation, sometimes in silence. Morning body practices for men who spend most of their time in their heads, analyzing, thinking, solving. And hapé, served across all three days — a grounding, clarifying experience that draws a man back into his body.
“I came home much lighter in spirit, and more joyful — without the familiar heavy blanket of stress, fear and anxiety around the unknown. My mind is clear.”
— J.S., retreat participant
Your Guides.
Reuvain and I have known each other for eighteen years — a friendship that grew slowly, through men’s groups, nature walks, late night music-making, birthdays, medicine journeys. In his twenty-five years of practice, he’d chosen to only lead solo — until the two of us started co-leading men’s retreats in the Rocky Mountains and Mexico.
Bryce Widom
What I do, at its core, is notice what a man is passing over — an emotion, a sensation, something glimmering at the edges of his awareness — and call his attention back to it, to meet it fully.
There’s room in me for whatever a man brings. And it’s from this place that things unwind. I love the moments of revelation that men discover, chance upon, reveal.
Reuvain Bacal
Reuvain is something of a consciousness mechanic. He brings precision and a kind of direct challenge that doesn’t let you off the hook — helping men see how they’re actually showing up under pressure, and shift it, in real-time.
The details.
June 26-28, 2026. Friday 11am through Sunday 2pm. Winter Park, Colorado.
$2,500 — private room (3 spots).
$2,150 — built-in bunk (4 spots).
$1,800 — floor or under the stars.
Accommodation and food included. Men share in cooking.
Ten spots total.
If there’s even a spark of interest — let’s talk.
This starts with a conversation. A short call or coffee, to talk about where you are.
Contact me : 303.638.8052
