EROTIC LEADERSHIP RETREAT

Eros for Leaders

The Art of Embodied Power

Explore surrender, control, and conscious erotic play.

April 15-18, 2027 | Upstate New York

Leadership isn’t only about your influence—it’s a clear, quiet power that lives in your body.

Whether you’re leading an organization, a team, a family, a community, or your own unfolding life, your capacity to lead is directly related to the connection with yourself. To feel. To stay present with what’s alive for you, moment to moment. To hold complexity. To ask for what you want. To surrender. To harness your power with integrity.

Eros is so much more than sexuality. It is life force, creative intelligence, relational presence, and the courageous “yes” to being fully alive.

Eros for Leaders explores the intersection of leadership and eros through embodied practice, conscious play, and community. Together, we’ll explore how the way we relate to desire, boundaries, power, intimacy, and surrender becomes the way we lead.

You’ll leave with a more integrated relationship to your own authority, a deeper trust in your body’s wisdom, and a renewed capacity to create spaces where others feel safe, seen, and inspired.

Open to all genders, identities, body types, and relational constellations.

Your immersive experience includes:

Accomodations

Private accommodations for 4 days, 3 nights, including a queen-size bed. Bathrooms are shared and located on the first and second floors.

Meals

All meals and snacks will be prepared by our personal chef. Our menu is predominantly vegetarian/pescatarian; however, the chef can accommodate any dietary allergy, intolerance, restriction, or preference.

Program

Guided workshops and explorations on embodied leadership, consent, boundaries, and container-building / stewardship.

Experiential explorations of power exchange, dominance, submission/surrender, and relational dynamics through conscious erotic play—and what these archetypes reveal about leadership, including but not limited to:

    • Sensation play using texture, temperature, blindfolds, and other embodiment practices
    • Introduction to Shibari (rope play) as an entrance into trust, presence, and surrender
    • Guided experiences with impact play (including flogging and paddling) with an emphasis on consent and nervous system awareness
    • Erotic communication as a pathway to both express and receive the truest essence of one’s desires, limits, and needs
Practices and Processes

Somatic practices are designed to reconnect to your sensations, desires, intuition, and authentic expression.

Integration circles and facilitated group processes will help the group and individuals bring it all together. Evening community play spaces will be offered as opportunities to integrate and explore new erotic experiences at your own pace.

Aftercare, including cuddle therapy and practices for grounding and nervous system regulation, will be provided to all participants.

Amenities

Access to all retreat amenities, including a heated saltwater pool and indoor hot tub (both swimsuit optional), indoor fireplace, outdoor fire pit, sauna, and quiet spaces for reflection.

Limited to 12 participants | $3,500 per person ($500 off before Feb 28, 2027)

Please note that this is a sober space (no alcohol or substances).

cuddle retreat upstate ny

EROTIC LEADERSHIP RETREAT

Eros for Leaders

The Art of Embodied Power

Explore surrender, control, and conscious erotic play.

APRIL 15-18, 2027 | UPSTATE NY

Leadership isn’t only about your influence—it’s a clear, quiet power that lives in your body.

Whether you’re leading an organization, a team, a family, a community, or your own unfolding life, your capacity to lead is directly related to the connection with yourself. To feel. To stay present with what’s alive for you, moment to moment. To hold complexity. To ask for what you want. To surrender. To harness your power with integrity.

Eros is so much more than sexuality. It is life force, creative intelligence, relational presence, and the courageous “yes” to being fully alive.

Eros for Leaders explores the intersection of leadership and eros through embodied practice, conscious play, and community. Together, we’ll explore how the way we relate to desire, boundaries, power, intimacy, and surrender becomes the way we lead.

You’ll leave with a more integrated relationship to your own authority, a deeper trust in your body’s wisdom, and a renewed capacity to create spaces where others feel safe, seen, and inspired.

Open to all genders, identities, body types, and relational constellations.

Your immersive experience includes:

Accomodations

Private accommodations for 4 days, 3 nights, including a queen-size bed. Bathrooms are shared and located on the first and second floors.

Meals

All meals and snacks will be prepared by our personal chef. Our menu is predominantly vegetarian/pescatarian; however, the chef can accommodate any dietary allergy, intolerance, restriction, or preference.

Program

Guided workshops and explorations on embodied leadership, consent, boundaries, and container-building / stewardship.

Experiential explorations of power exchange, dominance, submission/surrender, and relational dynamics through conscious erotic play—and what these archetypes reveal about leadership, including but not limited to:

    • Sensation play using texture, temperature, blindfolds, and other embodiment practices
    • Introduction to Shibari (rope play) as an entrance into trust, presence, and surrender
    • Guided experiences with impact play (including flogging and paddling) with an emphasis on consent and nervous system awareness
    • Erotic communication as a pathway to both express and receive the truest essence of one’s desires, limits, and needs
Practices and Processes

Somatic practices are designed to reconnect to your sensations, desires, intuition, and authentic expression.

Integration circles and facilitated group processes will help the group and individuals bring it all together. Evening community play spaces will be offered as opportunities to integrate and explore new erotic experiences at your own pace.

Aftercare, including cuddle therapy and practices for grounding and nervous system regulation, will be provided to all participants.

Amenities

Access to all retreat amenities, including a heated saltwater pool and indoor hot tub (both swimsuit optional), indoor fireplace, outdoor fire pit, sauna, and quiet spaces for reflection.

Limited to 12 participants | $3,500 per person ($500 off before Feb 28, 2027)

Please note that this is a sober space (no alcohol or substances).

Our Schedule

THUR (4/15) — Opening Ritual + Agreements
5:00pm - 9:30pm
• Dinner
7:00 - 8:00pm
• Consent, Boundaries + Container-Building
8:00 - 9:30pm
FRI (4/16) & SAT (4/17)
7:30am - 9:30pm
• Morning Movement
7:30am
• Breakfast
8:00am
• Sensation, Embodiment + Group Processing
9:00am - 12:30pm
• Lunch
12:30 - 1:30pm
• Impact Play, Erotic Communication + Group Processing
1:30 - 4:00pm
• Break / Free Time *
4:00 - 5:30pm
• Integration: Bringing Eros into Everday Leadership
5:30pm - 6:30pm
• Dinner
6:30 - 8:00pm
• Community Play Spaces
8:00 - 9:30pm
SUN (4/18) — Breakfast, Closing + Departure
8:00am - 11:00am

* Free time is woven throughout the long weekend. You can take a nap, immerse yourself in the enclosed heated pool or soak in the outdoor hot tub (both swimsuit optional), meditate, journal, go for a walk, or cozy up with a book. Individual bodywork sessions with John Ellsworth are available for an additional fee.

 

Meet Your Co-Facilitators…

Kelly Campbell cuddle therapist

Kelly Campbell (they/them)

Kelly is a trauma-informed leadership and somatic intimacy coach, Wheel of Consent-trained practitioner, certified Cuddlist®, and retreat facilitator. The culmination of their work and purpose is as a sacred intimate to women, SA survivors, queer and trans/nonbinary folks who want to reclaim voice, choice, and pleasure. They wrote Heal to Lead in 2024 and are based in New York’s Lower Hudson Valley.

grey doolin

Grey Doolin (he/they)

An embodied intimacy mentor, sacred intimate, and creator of The Intimacy Codes, Grey holds a Master’s degree in Counseling and draws from training in somatics and attachment theory in their work. They are passionate about helping intuitive leaders cultivate embodied presence, authentic connection, and a deeper relationship with their own aliveness. Grey is based in Ohio.

John Ellsworth

John Ellsworth (they/he/she)

A seasoned bodyworker for over 20 years, John works completely by referral. They are not only a certified cuddle professional but also serve on the leadership team of Cuddlist®. They love helping people in the process of transforming pain and limitations into ease, expanse, and even pleasure. John lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.
Jax W

Jax Wren (she/her)

Jax is an Authentic Consent™ Trainer, Wheel of Consent® Facilitator, certified Cuddlist®, and pleasure facilitator. In all of her work, Jax centers and uplifts Black, POC, Queer, and gender-expansive individuals, couples, and communities through the transformative possibilities of pleasure through embodied choice.

rosemary

Rosemary Tarcza (she/her)

A certified Gestalt coach, Integration Coach, retreat facilitator, Wheel of Consent-trained practitioner, and a chef, Rosemary helps people cultivate a broader and deeper sense of intimacy in their lives through a lens of curiosity, experimentation, embodied learning, and connecting with the living wisdom of nature. She lives in Western MA.

Our Home for the Long Weekend

cuddle therapy retreat 2026
enclosed heated pool
cuddle retreat upstate ny
cuddle therapy retreat
cuddle retreat
bathroom with soaking tub
dining room on cuddle retreat upstate ny
bunk room
erotic leadership retreat fire pit
What Questions Do You Have?
Is this retreat for me?

The Eros for Leaders retreat is designed for leaders who are ready to move beyond intellectual understanding of their leadership and into embodied knowing—discovering what becomes possible when leadership emerges from presence instead of masks or performance.

Whether you’re leading an organization, a team, a family, a community, or your own unfolding life, your capacity to lead is directly connected to your capacity to feel. To stay present. To hold complexity. To ask for what you want. To surrender. To harness your power with integrity.

Please note that this is a sober space (no alcohol or substances).

Do I need to have prior experience with kink or BDSM?

No prior experience is needed. Come as you are, with an open heart and open mind. Bring your curiosity, the flutters in your stomach, and the longings you haven’t yet explored.

What if I only want to participate in certain experiences?

All practices are invitational. You are always free to decline, modify, pause, or step back from an exercise without needing to justify your choice. We believe that genuine transformation happens when people feel safe enough to exercise their agency and choice moment to moment.

How will consent be practiced throughout the retreat?

Rather than treating consent as a one-time agreement, we approach it as an ongoing practice of listening to ourselves and to one another. Throughout the retreat, you’ll be invited to notice your own boundaries, desires, and capacity in the moment, and to communicate them with honesty and care.

Will there be nudity or sexual activity?

There will likely be nudity, always by choice. Sexual activity will not be part of our facilitated programming or shared community play spaces.

Because this is a retreat centered on embodiment, we’ll explore what it means to experience ourselves and one another through the body and the full range of our senses. Some facilitated practices, including impact play, may involve optional nudity depending on a participant’s comfort and preference. The indoor saltwater pool, hot tub, and sauna will also be clothing optional. Nudity is never required or expected.

We’ll also offer optional evening community play spaces where participants can connect, practice, and explore together within the agreements of the retreat. These spaces may include conversation, movement, cuddling, practicing communication and consent, sensual touch, impact play, conscious erotic exploration, witnessing, or simply spending time in community.

We make a distinction between erotic expression and sexual activity. Eros, as we explore it in this retreat, can include desire, sensation, pleasure, intimacy, attraction, and erotic energy without activities becoming explicitly sexual. For this retreat, we are defining sexual activity as sexual contact involving genitals or anus, one’s own or another person’s, in public or shared spaces.

Community play spaces are participant-led and overseen by facilitators. There is no expectation that you participate in any particular way. You are always welcome to participate, observe, choose a different kind of connection, or opt out altogether.

Consent, personal agency, and respect for individual boundaries remain foundational throughout the retreat.

Do people usually sign up solo or with a partner?

Some prefer to venture solo into retreat terrain like this, while others find the work can expand their relationship, organization, or self-leadership when they attend in tandem. On the application form, you can specify the number of people in your party. Note that if you decide to come together, each of you will need to apply separately.

All private rooms have a queen-sized bed, so there will be plenty of room whether you decide to sleep alone or with your partner.

What should I bring?

We recommend bringing comfortable clothing you can move, breathe, and relax in, along with layers for changing temperatures, a journal, a water bottle, and anything that helps you feel grounded and nourished.

If you plan to enjoy the indoor pool or hot tub, bring a swimsuit if you’d like to wear one. Those spaces will be clothing optional, and you are welcome to participate in whatever way feels most comfortable and aligned for you.

You may also wish to bring a favorite blanket, meditation cushion, or other personal items that help you feel at home. Most importantly, bring your curiosity, your willingness to meet yourself honestly, and a commitment to honoring both your own boundaries and those of others.

A more detailed packing list will be sent to all registered participants before the retreat.

Please note that this is a sober space (no alcohol or substances).

Where is the retreat being held?

The retreat location is in upstate New York (approximately 2 hours from New York City). Photos are seen above. The address will be provided to participants once they are approved and paid.

What is my financial investment?

The monetary investment for this experience is $3,500 per person ($500 off until Feb 27, 2027). It can be paid in full, or in two equal parts, or in monthly installments between now and the retreat via Venmo, credit card, or ACH.

If you’re able to round up your investment to help offset the cost for someone else, that equitable act is greatly appreciated.

If this feels like your next edge, apply below.

We intentionally keep this retreat small to cultivate trust, depth, and meaningful connection.

Each applicant will be invited to a Zoom conversation with Kelly and Grey to explore whether this experience is a mutual fit. Once accepted, you’ll receive retreat location details and information to help you prepare for the journey ahead.

We’ll also gather for a pre-retreat group Zoom call two weeks beforehand to meet one another, answer remaining questions, and begin cultivating the container before we arrive together. For continued integration, we will also gather together again on Zoom 1-2 weeks after the retreat.

Come explore what leadership feels like when it arises from the body, is grounded in presence, and is animated by the full aliveness of eros.

(she/her, he/him, they/them, etc.)
Let us know if this application is for you only, or if you're bringing others.
Please choose one, knowing that we will try our best to accommodate.
Please choose the option that best describes your experience.