Paths to Pleasure Long Weekend Retreat
Friday, September 10 - Sunday, September 13, 2026 | Durango, Colorado
Queer and Trans-Affirming | Multi-generational
The Paths to Pleasure Retreat is a long-weekend camping retreat with playful and mindful exploration of grief, love, and belonging in service to our greater aliveness.
Join a group of kindred hearts for a sacred pause to come home to your authentic self, to your body, and deep belonging to the Earth.
We can enjoy our creative energy and our bodies at every age and life stage, in all shapes and sizes of our bodies and gender expressions.
Details
Program Dates: Friday, September 10 - Sunday, September 13, 2026
Location: Durango, Colorado
Program Cost: $685
Who is the Paths to Pleasure retreat for?
This is for you to...
- Celebrate your body, your relationship with yourself
- Reinvigorate your creative and sensual energy
- Enjoy a sacred pause or rest
This camping retreat welcomes anyone who is on their personal path of exploring and healing your relationship with yourself and your body, with the support of the natural world and caring guides. This program is open to all genders and forms of gender identity, sexuality, and gender expression. This is a Queer-and trans-affirming program. We welcome adults 25 - 70's who enjoy being in nature and have at least some experience hiking and camping.
Together, we co-create a retreat environment that is equitable and welcoming for all. We ask participants to practice courage, compassion, and curiosity so that we can create safety together, by being mindful of our edges, our privilege, and being aware of the internalized bias that we all carry. We love learning from the different perspectives of our elders and our youngers: healing, joy, and fresh perspective are possible in each chapter of our lives.
We want to make this program as accessible as possible to those who feel called to participate. If you have questions about whether the program is right for you based on physical or mental health needs, please get in touch.
Meet Your Guides
Jacqueline Thompson & Linds West Roberts
Jacqueline is a Board Certified Holistic Sexologist and 5-Element Tibetan Tantra Practitioner, an Earth-Based Ritual Curator and wilderness Rites of Passage guide.
Jacqueline's specialty is in crafting meaning journeys that help her community attune to nature’s rhythms, live with soul and purpose, and come home to their sensual bodies and creative potential.
Jacqueline is devoted to the art of ritual, to tending grief in these times of collective unravelling, and to making holy the forbidden and forgotten places of our humanness; so that we can become a little bit more whole, real, and rewoven into the web of life.
Linds (they/them) is a gender joyful Queer wilderness guide who weaves their background as an educator, Buddhist chaplain, Certified InterPlay Leader, and facilitator together.
Linds loves to warmly nurture spaces where marginalized folx’ lived experiences are honored and their multifaceted wisdom is able to be seen, heard, and affirmed.
Within human and more-than-human community, Linds finds the inspiration and capacity to witness the deep transformation and alchemy of our individual and collective stories.
Pleasure Liberation Is a Collective Endeavor
Pleasure liberation is not an individual journey. When we do the work of liberating ourselves and reclaiming pleasure as our birthrights, we contribute to collective healing and well-being.
As more and more people turn towards the aliveness inside of us, there is greater collective capacity to be with pain. The joy of one person ripples out to so many. This collective pleasure liberation allows us to imagine new possibilities. And together, we then make choices that support collective well-being and collective wholeness.
Pleasure Liberation Frequently Asked Questions
The long weekend schedule follows an arc of grounding and creating a container together to hold us as we playfully explore grief, love, and belonging in our lives. Over the course of the weekend you’ll get to explore embodied movement, to co-create a collective grief ritual that honors what we love & lose, and open to the joy and pleasure we want to create in our lives. On Saturday you are invited into a few hours of solo time reflecting in nature. You will be welcomed back from your solo time with a feast, shared story council to savor the experience. Finally, you will be supported in integration practices to take these insights back into daily life.
This container is intentionally small (limited to 8 participants) and facilitated with care by qualified and experienced guides. This is a wilderness environment and we ask each participant to consider your readiness to participate physically and emotiionally. Please talk with us if you have questions or concerns about your ability to participate. While safety is something we cannot guarantee, we can build a sense of safety and community together. We do our best to plan for and minimize risks. We ask each participant to agree to the following group agreements, and our group may create additional agreements once we are in person together. Group agreements: No sexual touch or romantic/sexual pursuit of other participants or facilitators; Confidentiality to support freedom in expression; Non-judgement and respect for others; Respect for boundaries and consent; Commitment to non-harm; Commitment to creating a welcoming space for a diversity of individuals; Zero tolerance for harassment or discrimination; Personal responsibility for physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
We will be camping on beautiful national forest land outside of Mancos, Colorado. We ask participants to bring their own tents, sleeping bags, etc, or be prepared to sleep in your vehicle. We will set up a camp kitchen with a gas stove, basic cooking implements, and water jugs for group use. There are no restroom facilities, running water, or electricity at our base camp location. Please let us know if you have questions, concerns, or gear needs related to camping during the program!
The Guide team will provide breakfast and lunch daily and after the first day will ask participants to sign up to help cook the group dinner meal. We will do our best to accomodate vegetarian/vegan and gluten free dietary needs. Please bring your own snacks and lunch items and a cooler for your use, if needed. We will be able to re-supply ice for the coolers during the program.
The program cost covers camping for 3 nights on national forest land, breakfast and dinner meals, and group facilitation and support from our Guide team.
There are no established restroom facilities at our beautiful base camp location. You are welcome to pee freely on the land. For pooping, we will have a toilet seat and honey bucket set up with toilet paper that we will haul out at the end of the program. If you need to go while out hiking or during your solo time you can dig a cathole, and we'll talk more about this during the program!
Pleasure Liberation Method
This program is a concentrated weekend based on the longer arc of the Pleasure Liberation Method, which includes:
- Recognizing our Belonging: We begin by building our foundation and remembering that we are an extension of earth. Systems of oppression that say that we are separate and small; in this stage, we clear that belief and remember that we belong. Here, we awaken to the possibility that Earth also longs for our being, and is our greatest resource for support.
- Retuning our stories about Worthiness. We are inherently worthy of pleasure, connection, and love. In this stage, we dismantle the belief that we are undeserving of rest, pleasure, and taking up space. We remember pleasure as a birthright.
- Tending and clearing Grief. In this stage, we engage the power of anger, sorrow and grief through ritual (solo, 1:1, or communal). This stage is the most challenging and confronting– but also the most important. Here, we lean into the importance of healing through letting ourselves feel and process the grief held in our lives, our ancestry, and the collective.
- Noticing Pleasure. Here, we increase our capacity to receive pleasure. In this stage, we begin by connecting with the pleasure that is already present in your life, your body, and the earth. Then, we clear blocks to pleasure. It is time to expand what you thought was possible, and discover what you truly desire.
- Listening for Desire. This is not about being desirable; it is about strengthening your relationship with your own desires and longings. It is about seeing desire as a roadmap to the biggest version of ourselves.
- Practicing our Voice. Here, we dive into how to communicate well and ask for what we really want. We get clear on our yes and no. We look at our self-talk, and make adjustments. We acknowledge the connection between expression and creativity, and give ourselves radical permission to embrace that part of ourselves.