Dark Goddess Retreat: A Journey into the Shadow Heart

The Dark Goddess Retreat is a three-day retreat held at Valaterra Retreat Center in La Grange, Kentucky, focused on embodiment, reflection, and self-trust.

This retreat offers a supportive space for women and womb-holding beings to explore personal growth through guided discussion, gentle somatic awareness, creative reflection, and community connection. The emphasis throughout the weekend is on learning to listen to the body rather than override it.

Participants will engage in practices that explore conscious consideration, consumption, and indulgence to develop awareness of what we take in physically, emotionally, mentally, and energetically. Intentional choice will be encouraged and integrated to support clarity and regulation.

All offerings are trauma-informed, optional, and respectful of personal boundaries.

Info: Arrival, accommodation assignments, and the beginning of the digital detox.

Info: Group introductions, facilitator overview, and review of house guidelines, container agreements.

Info: Under the archetype of Isis, this grief circle offers a compassionate space to honor loss, reflect on love, and connect with one another in a ritual of healing and remembrance.

Info: As the sun sets, we’ll venture onto the Valaterra trails for a Dark Goddess night hike. Rooted in presence and reverence for the land, we’ll awaken our primal voice and howl at the moon together.

Info: A gentle morning meditation to center the body, steady the breath, and set an intentional tone for the day ahead.

Info: An additional welcoming circle for those arriving after the opening gathering. This brief orientation offers space to land, review intentions and agreements, and consciously step into the retreat container.

Info: A 2-Hour Guided Journey of Art, Insight, and Remembering
This two-hour immersive experience invites you into a gentle, symbolic journey to meet and heal your Inner Child Archetypes. Guided by the wisdom of The Oracle of the Lost Children, art-making, and meditation, you’ll explore the subtle energies that have shaped your inner world—and begin to release what no longer belongs to you.
Through the creation of three Journey Circle Cards ™, you’ll awaken inner child archetypes and allow art to become a living language of exploration and energy. A guided meditation will lead you along a chosen inner landscape, where you’ll connect with meaningful symbols and an animal guide offering insight, protection, and support.
You’ll be invited to listen deeply and ask your inner child simple yet powerful questions—uncovering where you’ve felt trapped or held, what fears and tears are ready to be witnessed, and what remains true and alive within you now.
This is not

Info: Through Divine Goddess Breathwork and a sacred drum washing, Katie and Christi blend conscious breath with the primal resonance of the Shamanic Buffalo frame drum, ocean drum, rain sticks, and rattles. This powerful soundscape supports emotional release, energetic clearing, and reconnection to inner wisdom.

Info: Rage is an emotion that is often feared in our society because it is associated with violence, but rage is a valuable emotion with a lot of energy to fuel transformation. When it is expressed and channeled in safe and productive ways it has the power to alchemize stuck energy and fuel creation. Through this Sacred Rage Ecstatic Dance Journey we will explore this powerful emotion through music, movement, vocalization, and by accessing altered states of consciousness. Participants will be invited to adorn face paint (optional) to invoke their fierce selves, imbibe heart opening cacao, collectively weave a safe and sacred ceremonial container of self exploration, be guided through a movement lexicon, and be guided gently into a partnership with music body, and mind, intended to facilitate unbridled expression and reclamation.

Info: This restorative introductory Bowspring class explores movement through the myth of Persephone, honoring the natural cycles of descent and return. Through posture, breath, and gentle activation, participants are guided to restore resilience, ease, and embodied awareness.
Accessible and educational, this session offers a nourishing entry point into Bowspring while using myth as a reflective framework for renewal and integration. No prior experience is required.

Info: SHADOW JUICE — Crimson Descent
A blood-red offering honoring grief, truth, and the power found in the dark.
? LIGHT JUICE — Golden Devotion
A radiant blend celebrating pleasure, embodiment, and divine joy.

Info: As part of the Dark Goddess Retreat, guests are invited into an optional guided sauna and cold plunge experience designed to support deep release, nervous system regulation, and embodied integration.
Rooted in Finnish sauna tradition, the sauna offers sacred heat—a place to soften, sweat, and allow the body to speak. Within the warmth, we create space to shed what no longer serves: old stories, stored tension, emotional residue, and energetic weight carried in the body. This is löyly—the living steam that invites surrender and presence.
The cold plunge that follows is a conscious return—clear, invigorating, and empowering. Cold awakens sisu, the quiet inner strength that arises when we meet intensity with breath and choice. Together, heat and cold form an alchemical contrast that mirrors shadow work itself: entering discomfort with awareness and emerging grounded, awake, and renewed.
This experience is not included in the retreat investment but is offered a la carte at discounted rates

Info: Noble Silence offers a quiet pause for integration, reflection, and nervous system settling. During this time, participants refrain from speaking and allow space to listen inward, rest the mind, and gently process the experiences of the retreat.

Info: Reclaiming Touch, Pleasure, and Power
In this session, Dr. Monica will lead an educational, trauma-informed exploration of sacred sexuality, intentional touch, and the Dark Goddess archetype as a guide for authenticity and embodied empowerment. Participants will examine how desire, pleasure, and intimacy intersect with the nervous system, trauma patterns, and personal agency. This offering invites reflection, curiosity, and deeper self-understanding, focusing on the inner landscape that shapes our experiences in the “bedroom” of the psyche.

Info: The Queen’s Feast is a shared, celebratory meal centered on conscious indulgence, presence, and connection. During the feast, the digital detox comes to a close, inviting a mindful return to the outside world after a day of reflection and integration. The evening concludes with a symbolic coronation honoring personal sovereignty, along with the receiving of a personalized gift as a tangible reminder of the insights gathered throughout the retreat.

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Host or Publisher Katie Ward with Realigned Body LLC