How it works
Before we decide on any experience, we ask a much simpler question: is this something we would genuinely want to do ourselves? The place and the adventure have to hold up entirely on their own. Everything else then gets built on top of that. This is the part most people get backwards, and it is the reason most retreats feel the same.
This is not coaching in a beautiful location.
These are the real experiences. You go somewhere that would have been worth the journey even if nobody had organized a single thing, and you go with a group that was curated person by person rather than whoever paid first. Some of the days will be planned around deliberate transformational experiences. Most of the time belongs to the place, the adventure, and the people you're sharing it with. That balance is the main part of the whole design, and it's the reason nobody comes home feeling like they attended just another retreat.
Depending on what we're creating, an experience might last two days or two weeks. It could be a cabin in the mountains, a villa in the jungle, a route through the valleys, a camp, or a village deep in the Amazon. No experience is run twice in the same way. Before anyone commits, we're clear about the theme, what is included, and who it is for. Every guest has a personal onboarding conversation so we can make sure the fit works for them, the group, and the experience as a whole. This is the difference between a trip and something you carry home with you.
We're not looking for a hotel that could be anywhere. We look for an adventure, a landscape, a trail, or a relationship with a community that most people would never experience on their own. Sometimes that takes us to the other side of the world. Sometimes it is two hours outside a city. Some experiences are raw and remote. Others are deeply comfortable. The place decides what the experience needs to be.
Few things are more frustrating than reaching an incredible place with a group you do not connect with. We spend at least as much time curating the people as we do the itinerary, and we would rather keep an experience smaller than fill the final places badly. When it is right, you feel it on the first evening, and it stays with you long after everyone has gone home.
We plan the most important parts, and we leave the rest of it alone. Some of the experiences will have a programme, some of them will simply be a room full of the most interesting people you'll ever meet. Yet regardless of what we build around, a good deal of the time belongs to the group, to connect and bond and build relationships. Most of the moments people carry home with them have rarely been a part of a schedule.
We work with local partners for the parts that are theirs to lead. That might mean the people who know the land, the community hosting us, or the team responsible for an experience on their home ground. We also look for a direct and appropriate way to give something back to the place and the people hosting us.
Collaborations
The ten-day immersion in Huni Kuin culture was co-created with a musician, artist and documentary filmmaker, Patrick Belem, who co-directed Eskawatã Kayawai, the documentary about the Huni Kuin people. He held the bridge between our group and the community, while bringing years of his own experience in facilitation and medicine space. This is what a real relationship with a people and a place looks like, and it goes well beyond renting somewhere. It means having somebody on the team who has lived with them, studied with them, and immersed himself at that level.
Watch Eskawatã Kayawai ↗
The Ceremony was a three-day, high level men's retreat built for leaders, founders and space holders who have already done a great deal of inner work. An extended weekend outside Austin, co-created with Scott Seymour, who has spent years in men's work, couples coaching and ceremony spaces at a level very few people ever reach. He was the reason that, in three days, the men we served found connection, depth and transformation that most people spend years of personal development looking for.
Vortex Retreats started with a vision to be a co-creation and never a one-person show. We launched it as a partnership in Tulum alongside some of the most capable facilitators and healers we could find. As we co-founded a physical location, it carried a vision of a longevity centre bridging ancient wisdom with modern technology. Our early partners included a co-founder of Ahau Tulum and Alaya Tulum, and a doctor now running Vortex Vitality Clinic Tulum, a stem cell provider and longevity clinic.
About the founder
Jakob has been in facilitation spaces for nearly a decade, and has worked with hundreds of people across retreats, in-person events, co-living residencies and online. He has built retreat centres and organised dozens of experiences, spent years facilitating journeys in the Amazon alongside indigenous people, taught yoga and breathwork for half a decade, and trained for three years under an eighty-three year old pioneer of somatic work, going on to certify others in her body of work.
He has coached hundreds of people through a faith-based addiction recovery non-profit, leading the somatic work and building the operations behind it, and has facilitated alongside world-renowned coaches.
Jakob's current work ↗
If this feels like it was written for you,
it probably was.
