Why I Co-Created Orē

A retreat series built around movement, food, spaces and resisting performative wellness

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why retreats often feel overwhelming and disconnected from reality.

They ask people to arrive already open, already healed, already ready to connect. They compress experience into schedules. They fill the silence with programming. They promise transformation without accounting for the amount of stimulation most people already carry.

I wanted something else.

Orē, pronounced oh-ray, is a retreat series I co-created with my friend, yoga and hormonal coach, Vera Kasper, to make space for arrival as a physical experience. The kind that happens slowly, allowing the body time to register its position and that it is safe enough to settle.

The foundation of Orē is simple: food, space, and time.

Food sets the pace. It is seasonal, restrained, and built around the idea that food connects us to nature.

Space works its magic, too. Light, materials, layout, and sound all shape how the body responds long before the classes and workshops. We pay attention to how rooms feel, and design environments that calm rather than stimulate.

Time is perhaps the most essential element. Orē moves slowly on purpose. There is room for rest, for conversation that unfolds naturally, for moments that are not optimized or documented. There is no pressure to extract meaning from every hour.

The first Orē retreat is called The Thaw.

The idea came from the seasonal shift from winter to spring. From the way the body holds tension during colder months. From the stiffness that slowly sneaks in. From the moment when warmth begins to return and circulation changes, before we consciously notice it.

The goal is to gradually return to action and ease out of stagnation, allowing the nervous system to recalibrate.

This approach reflects how both Vera and I think about care more broadly. We’re not interested in fixing people or pushing breakthroughs. We’re interested in designing conditions that let the body do what it already knows how to do, and in using ingredients that naturally guide that activation.

Orē is for people who are anti-optimization and crave in-person analog experiences. If you want to eat well, move, and commune without being asked to perform wellness, this is for you.