What Happened at the Rediscover Your Intentional Self Retreat

By Becca Stackhouse-Morson, MS, CFLE, RYT-200

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There is something that happens when you take people out of their everyday lives, set them down in 153 acres of private forest in rural Georgia, and give them actual space to breathe. I have been thinking about how to put it into words ever since we packed up and left The Florrest, and I think the closest I can get is this: people remembered themselves.

That is what the Rediscover Your Intentional Self Retreat was built to do. And watching it happen in real time — over four days, through community meals and yoga mornings and campfire conversations and moments that surprised even me — was one of the most meaningful things I have done in the work of Stacked Intent.

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Why We Built This Retreat

This retreat started with a question I kept coming back to: what do people actually need? Not what sounds good in a brochure — what do people genuinely need in order to reconnect with who they are?

The answer was time. Unhurried, intentional time — combined with the right tools, the right environment, and the right people.

The right people, for this season, were already beside me. Ashleigh Geurin, MS, CNWE — Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator and Family & Consumer Sciences (FACS) County Extension Agent with the University of Georgia (UGA) — is my co-host on the Stacked Intent Podcast, and her expertise in nutrition and wellness was exactly what this experience needed. We built out the curriculum together, she led the community cooking and nourishment components, and her contribution is woven into everything that made the retreat feel whole. Sarah Bradley, MS, LMFT was our relationship co-host (Season 5 - 10) at the time, and she joined us on-site to bring that lens to the conversations happening in the room.

Most of us are running on empty and do not even realize it. We move from obligation to obligation, taking care of everyone else, putting ourselves last, and slowly disappearing from our own lives. This retreat was the antidote to that.

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The Setting: The Florrest

We held the retreat at The Florrest, a boutique retreat property set on 153 private, secluded acres just a short drive from the Atlanta airport. Participants stayed in geo-domes nestled in the forest — a deliberate choice. There is something about sleeping surrounded by trees, waking up without an alarm and hearing only nature, that starts to soften the noise people carry in with them.

The property has an infrared sauna, cold plunge, hot tub, pool, fire pits, hammocks, and miles of nature trails. We used all of it. But the most important amenity The Florrest offered was something you cannot put on an amenity list — genuine stillness.

One participant described the setting as "fantastic and peaceful." Another said the environment made it easy for people to open up quickly. When the space itself feels safe, the work goes deeper.

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What We Did: Four Days of Going Deeper

Each morning began with movement and mindfulness — a grounding practice to start the day connected to yourself rather than to your phone or your to-do list. From there, each day had a focus.

We explored the looking-glass self — how our sense of who we are has been shaped by how we believe others see us, and how to disentangle that from what is actually true. We did family mapping and genograms, tracing the stories we inherited and identifying the patterns we have been living out without knowing it. We talked about what it means to matter, how to set goals that reflect your real values, and what authentic leadership looks like — not the loudest-in-the-room kind, but the kind that builds strong networks and knows when to lean on them.

One participant said the genogram work felt like "the last piece of a puzzle I've been working on the last 14 years." Another said it helped them see that "how I grew up is such a deep part of who I am. Now I can change it."

We also had a guest speaker for our leadership session — Tom Stackhouse, President & CEO of Central Alabama Electric Cooperative, whose decades of leadership in the cooperative industry brought a grounded, real-world perspective to the room. His quiet strength made an impression that participants are still referencing. One person wrote afterward: "I don't have to be the loudest in the room to be a leader." That is a takeaway that travels home with you.

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The Kitchen: Where Community Got Built

Ashleigh Geurin, MS, CNWE led our community cooking sessions, and I will be honest — this segment became one of the most talked-about parts of the retreat. Every meal was made together. No one sat back and waited to be fed. Everyone had a role in the kitchen, and somewhere in the process of chopping and stirring and learning something new, walls came down.

Participants left knowing how to make pizza dough from scratch, cook orzo a new way, and prepare potatoes without foil. But more than the skills, they left with this: "It was amazing — the feeling of building community while making wonderful food. It fed my dehydrated soul."

That line stopped me when I read it. Fed my dehydrated soul. That is exactly what we were going for.

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What Participants Said They Walked Away With

The post-retreat survey results told a clear story. Every single participant rated both overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend at 5 out of 5. One hundred percent. That is not something I take lightly.

When asked about their biggest takeaway on healthy self-relationship, here is what they shared:

"That I am allowed to feel the things that I do — and I need to take more time to acknowledge myself as a person. Just because I care about others does not mean I cannot care about myself too."

"Learning how the story became my pattern."

"For me, I just need to make time for things that are important."

"Listening to myself and others — and the nutrition is not so hard to get."

When asked about the retreat's impact on skills, knowledge, and self-reflection, participants said things like:

"It opened me up a lot and allowed me to see so much that was still under the surface. It also gave me the ability to be vulnerable and be seen. Grateful for the experience."

"It was very refreshing and great to learn more about myself and what I bring to the table and what shapes me into being the person that I am."

And one of my favorites — from someone who came as a professional observer and left having learned something too: "It's easy to take for granted my own skill set, and I should not do that."

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What the Numbers Show

Beyond the stories, the outcomes were measurable. After the retreat, 100% of participants strongly agreed that they understood why it is important to establish their priorities first. 100% felt confident in their ability to prepare healthy, balanced meals. 75% or more felt confident using a SMART goal framework moving forward. Every participant left with a stronger sense of self-relationship — including the tools to check in with themselves regularly through the 15-minute relationship check-in practice.

The most frequently cited valuable elements of the program were Self-Connection workshops and Self-Relationship sessions, each selected by every participant. Free time for self-reflection, authentic leadership content, yoga movement, and community meals followed closely behind as favorite elements of the retreat for the majority of participants.

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What We Heard and What We Are Building On

I also want to be transparent about the feedback that challenges us to grow. The number one area participants wanted more of? Time. Fifty percent said they wished the program were longer — more time to go deeper on specific goals, more time for teamwork in the kitchen, more time at the campfire.

That feedback is a gift. It tells me the experience was not too much — it was not enough. And we are taking that seriously as we plan what comes next.

One participant offered a thoughtful note about the format: that this type of retreat may work best when you arrive as a stranger, ready to open up in a way that can be harder with people who already know you. There is real wisdom in that, and it is something worth sitting with as you consider whether this is the right experience for you.

And then there was the last line of the survey: *"When's the next one? Lol."*

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The Next Chapter

We are working on it. The Rediscover Your Intentional Self Retreat is not a one-time event — it is a framework for transformation that we believe in deeply. Whether that looks like another intimate retreat at a carefully chosen location, a multi-day workshop brought to your organization or team, or a Becca-led intensive designed around your group's specific needs, the core is the same: intentional time, real tools, and the space to come back to yourself.

If you are curious about what this could look like for you — as an individual or as a team — I would love to talk. And if you want to hear Ashleigh, Sarah, and me walk through the retreat concept in our own words, [tune into Episode 99 of the Stacked Intent Podcast].

Because here is what I know after four days in those geo-domes: you do not have to keep disappearing from your own life. You just need the right space to find your way back.

[Learn more about the retreat →]
[Inquire about bringing this experience to your team →]

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*Becca Stackhouse-Morson, MS, CFLE, RYT-200 is the founder of Stacked Intent and a Certified Family Life Educator. She hosts the award-winning Stacked Intent Podcast alongside Ashleigh Geurin, MS, CNWE — Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator and Family & Consumer Sciences (FACS) County Extension Agent with the University of Georgia — and Sarah Bradley, MS, LMFT, founder of Hope Grows Therapy & Consultation.*