Caldera retreat Idaho. Yoga Nidra retreat. River Writing retreat. Writing and yoga retreat 2026. I've been leading this retreat since 2016, and the question I get most often is a simple one: what actually happens there?

After more than 25 years teaching yoga and Yoga Nidra, I've learned that the best answer isn't a description of the practices. It's a description of the day. Because the rhythm is the medicine.

Here's what five days at the Caldera Retreat August 27–31, 2026, Harriman State Park, Idaho actually looks like.

The Morning: Movement, Breath, and Big Sky

8:00 am — Morning movement on the lawn.
Breath work, gentle yoga poses, Kouk Son Do, a slow energy movement practice, walking and seated meditation. We greet the four directions. Sometimes the deer are still in the field while we move.

9:00 am — Breakfast together.
Amy May prepares the food. I'll say this plainly: it's some of the most thoughtfully curated, spiritually considered food I've encountered at any retreat. You'll understand when you taste it.

River Writing: The Truest Thing You Can Say Right Now

10:00 am – 11:30 am — River Writing at the Scoville Center.
Eleven-minute writing sessions. No judgment, no praise, no apology. Just the truest thing you can say in that moment. We are not writing to publish.

Then we read to each other without preface, without caveat. And the group listens without comment. Just witness. At the end, the only thing we say is: thank you.

What comes out of that table every single year is some of the most honest, most beautiful, most cathartic language I've ever heard read aloud. Real poetry, from people who rarely or never call themselves writers.

The bravery in this circle still surprises me. Every time.

11:30 am – 12:30 pm — Free time.
Walk. Write. Sit by the Snake River. Nap. Talk. Just be.

12:30 pm — Lunch.

The Afternoon: Open, Yours

The afternoon is open. On some days there's 1:1 work available with me, Amy, or Nan if you want it.

There's also what we call "hammock town," a quiet spot in the woods for reading or napping. There are trails for hiking, walking, trail running. You can do a lot, or you can do nothing at all. Both are right.

Dream and Write: The Voice Underneath

4:00 pm — Dream and Write.

I lead a thirty-minute Yoga Nidra to drop everyone below the thinking mind into that threshold state between waking and sleep where the mental editor goes quiet. Then, directly from that state, we write.

The pages that come out of these sessions don't sound like anyone's regular voice. They sound like the voice underneath. Slower. Less guarded. Often surprising, even to the person who wrote them.

Evening: Fire, Stars, Whatever the Cohort Wants

6:00 pm — Dinner.

7:00 pm — Campfire.

Stars. Stories. Songs. The clarinet sometimes. Whatever the cohort wants. Some nights people stay up late.

9:00 pm — Quiet time.

Why Every Year Is Different

We've been doing Caldera since 2016. And here's what I've learned: every year is different, because the alchemy of who shows up is different.

The land is the same. The structure is the same. My co-facilitators: Nan Seymour and Amy May, and I are the same. But the people change. And the people are the medicine.

This year I'm also bringing things I couldn't have articulated the last time at the Caldera. My book Waking Up with the Yoga of Sleep launches November 1, and the writing process has sharpened me in ways that will show up in the retreat.

Same land. Same circle. Same fire at night. But different stories, different music. We come back to Caldera because it's where we get grounded enough to go back out there and respond from beauty and wonder, instead of reactivity and fear.

An Invitation, Not a Push

Space is limited to 14. If you've been feeling the pull toward something more still, slower, and more honest than the busy you've been living, this is the one I'd point you toward.

Caldera Retreat August 27–31, 2026 Harriman State Park, Idaho (Scoville Center) Co-facilitated with Nan Seymour and Amy May

Learn more and register

FAQ — Caldera Retreat 2026

What is the Caldera Retreat? Caldera is a small-group yoga and writing retreat held annually in Harriman State Park, Idaho. It combines gentle yoga, Yoga Nidra, River Writing, and Dream and Write practices over five days in a held, intentional circle.

How many people attend? Space is limited to 14. The group is kept small on purpose. The intimacy is part of what makes it work.

What is River Writing? River Writing is a community-based writing practice created by Nan Seymour. The instruction: keep the pen moving for eleven minutes without editing or stopping. Participants read to each other and listen without judgment, just witness. It consistently produces some of the most honest writing people have ever done.

What is Yoga Nidra, and do I need experience? Yoga Nidra is a guided meditation practice that leads you into a deeply restful state between waking and sleep. No prior experience is required. It's one of the most accessible practices I know, and one of the most profound.

What is Kouk Son Do? Kouk Son Do is a slow, meditative energy movement practice used in the morning sessions at Caldera. It's gentle, grounding, and a beautiful way to begin the day.

Who are the co-facilitators? Nan Seymour is the creator of River Writing and a longtime collaborator. Amy May joins as the second year co-facilitating. She brings the tea of the land ceremony, exceptional food prepared with spiritual care, and her own River Writing facilitation. Together the three of us have shaped something that feels complete.

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There was a derelict shed behind the forgotten house where my grandfather kept his old tractor which used to plow an acre-size garden, his pride and joy and his reason for living, the only thing left of his family’s inheritance.

At 5 years old, I remember stepping into the old shed, my eyes adjusting to the dark as I breathed shallowly the imposing scent of gasoline and dirt. It smelled of rotting time, deceased decades, the bones of an age I never knew.

I remember seeing the rotting timbers which held the place together, the collection of rusted Utah license plates hanging on the wall, and a blunt chopping stump with an axe embedded permanently within, an agricultural Excalibur.

Against one wall was a sloping pile of silky-black coal, chunks the size of misshapen grapefruits, fossils revealing a forgotten time when people heated house and hearth by shoveling these bulky blocks into furnaces. As my great-grandparents died, so did their need for coal and this pile of forgotten fuel stood as a mute reminder of the invariability death.

Mostly, I remember sitting on top of that old tractor in its wide seat, looking over to see the enormous rear tires dwarfing the small front ones. I remember trying to reach the clutch and gas and pedals with my short, child's legs and handling the stick. The top of the gear shifter was decorated with a black skull.

Now, the message of it tells me that we are all dust. “Go ahead,” it seemed to whisper. “Plant, sow, till. But one day you too will be planted in this earth and that is the simple, hard truth, a truth as rigid as the axe embedded into the stump, and as true as there is soil to plant in."

Decades later, many of my own years buried, the shed has now probably been razed. Today, I'm increasingly aware of my own mortality as I see family members and loved ones, one by one, young and old, whose harvest times have arrived and are themselves planted in the earth.

And so like everyone else, I try to make meaning of the relatively small time I enjoy walking on top of this earth instead of being buried beneath it. The poet Maria Tsvetaeva speaks to this perfectly when she says in her poem, I Know The Truth:

I know the truth – give up all other truths!

No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle.

Look – it is evening, look, it is nearly night:

what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals?

The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,

the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.

And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we

who never let each other sleep above it.

When I read the first line “I know the truth – give up all other truths!” my mind snaps to attention. What monumental truth has she discovered and needs to tell me? To me, she’s asking the human race to stop struggling and look at the beauty of the world, the night, and of course the oncoming dusk of our own lives. She says, take a look at the world around us and see how we are all part of the big picture.

Written in a time in Soviet history when poets were persecuted and killed, Maria Tsvetaeva makes a beautiful inclusion of the generals, the very people who sought to eliminate poets, “what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals?” and by so doing, speaks to a bigger truth, even beyond the threat of her own death, that we are all human, subject to the same fate, “And soon all of us will sleep under the earth . . . .”

By pointing to the fact that, “all of us will sleep under the earth, we/ who never let each other sleep above it”, she uses her voice as a poet, an oracle, to illuminate the futility of struggling with each other when we will all eventually experience the same fate.

This is not a message of doom and gloom. It’s a wake-up call to practice being in the here and now and to look beyond dogma and idealism and search for the divine humanity everyone including “lovers, poets, generals.” I’m sure all of us fit into one if not all three of those categories

What does it mean to be human and how do we truly appreciate another day in the sun?

Both poetry and poses are a chance to practice being human. Through them, we practice the vicissitudes of living, the ups and downs, the tension release, the struggles and joys. Perhaps mostly we practice cultivating paying attention before the sun has set and it is too late.

And by practicing, my hope is that we find something within us, something deep down that we can call real, something that we find to be fundamentally beautiful and good. Finding this within, even to a small degree, may we look around and find the same quality in everything else, particularly those people around us, family, loved ones, strangers.

May we, through practicing yoga and therefore better understanding ourselves, see the beauty, majesty and miracle of everything.

Perhaps this is what it means to truly see.