A 7-night women's retreat with Jess Parvin & Amy Nicholson

There are times in our lives when we find ourselves standing at a threshold, sensing that something is changing even before we have the words to describe what it is. The life we have created may still be working, and there may even be much that we love about it, yet somewhere underneath the responsibilities, roles, expectations, and momentum of everyday life, we can feel something asking for our attention.

Perhaps it is a longing for greater freedom, creativity, connection, purpose, or meaning. Perhaps you are navigating a transition and questioning what comes next. Or perhaps what you are longing for is much simpler and more essential: to feel deeply connected to yourself and fully alive in your own life.

Sacred Threshold is an invitation to step outside of ordinary life for seven nights and create enough space to listen.

Held on the magical shores of Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, this intimate retreat brings together somatic and nervous-system work, Human Design, authentic Andean ritual, embodied archetypal process and creativity work, intuitive leadership, nature, and spacious time for reflection and connection. Together, we will journey through the four elements of Earth, Water, Fire, and Air as a living map for releasing what no longer serves us, reconnecting with what is essential, and exploring what is ready to emerge.

WHO THIS RETREAT IS FOR

This retreat is for women who sense that they are standing at an edge in their lives and are ready to listen more deeply to what is changing, ending, emerging, or asking to be lived.

You may be moving through a transition in your work, relationships, identity, creativity, spirituality, leadership, or sense of purpose. You may have spent years caring for others, building a career or business, raising a family, creating, achieving, healing, or doing the inner work, and now find yourself wondering what the next chapter wants to be.

You may already have a great deal of insight into yourself. Perhaps you have been in therapy, practiced meditation, explored spirituality, studied personal development, or learned to recognize many of the patterns that shape your life.

And yet there is a meaningful difference between understanding ourselves and actually being able to inhabit ourselves—to trust what we feel, listen to our intuition, stay connected to our bodies, honor our natural rhythms, and make choices that reflect who we are becoming.

This retreat is for women who are ready for that deeper exploration. It is for those who want to move beyond simply understanding their patterns and begin experiencing greater capacity for presence, creativity, connection, pleasure, authenticity, and aliveness.

At the heart of our week together is a simple but profound inquiry:

Who am I beneath everything I have learned I need to be, and how might I live if I trusted that more deeply?

THE JOURNEY THROUGH THE ELEMENTS

Throughout our time together, the elements will become both our teachers and an archetypal map for the journey. Each element offers a different doorway into the body, psyche, imagination, intuition, and the deeper questions that arise when we give ourselves permission to step outside of our usual ways of being.

Rather than filling every hour with programming, we are intentionally creating a rhythm that allows for deep experiential work alongside rest, integration, nature, play, meaningful conversation, swimming, reflection, and simply being.

We believe that transformation does not always happen through doing more.
Often, something becomes visible when there is finally enough space to listen.

Lake Atitlán is the perfect backdrop for this journey- with the sacred lake, majestic volcanoes, expansive sky and lush tropical land surrounding us. 

EMBODYING WHAT WE REMEMBER

The journey does not end with insight. One of the most important questions we will explore together is how to bring what we discover back into the lives we are actually living.

As the four elements begin to come together, we will turn toward integration, authentic expression, purpose, creativity, relationships, and embodied leadership. Through coaching, reflection, visioning, and practical integration, we will explore what it means to make choices from a more deeply embodied and internally aligned place.

For one person, that may mean changing the way they lead or work.
For another, it may mean reclaiming creativity, changing a relationship,
setting a boundary, beginning something new, allowing more rest, trusting intuition,
or simply relating to themselves differently.

There is no predetermined version of who you are supposed to become.
The invitation is to discover what becomes possible when more of you is available to participate in your life.

YOU’LL LEAVE WITH. . .

You may leave feeling more grounded and at home in your body, with greater awareness of your nervous system and more capacity to remain present with yourself when life becomes challenging. You may have greater clarity about what you are ready to release and what you want to make room for, along with a deeper understanding of your natural energy, gifts, intuition, and the ways you are uniquely designed to move through the world.

You may reconnect with parts of yourself that have become quiet beneath responsibility, achievement, caretaking, or adaptation—your creativity, desire, playfulness, voice, spirituality, leadership, or capacity for pleasure and connection. You may leave with a clearer vision for the chapter ahead, or perhaps with something quieter and equally important: greater trust that you do not need to have everything figured out in order to take the next true step.

Most of all, we hope you leave feeling more like yourself — more connected, more spacious, more awake, and more available for the life you are here to live.

Amy Nicholson (MAIIMA) & Jess Parvin

We created Sacred Threshold from a shared belief that meaningful transformation is not always about becoming someone new. Often, it is about becoming quiet enough to recognize what has been there all along and developing the courage, capacity, and self-trust to live from that place more fully.

Amy Nicholson (Medicine Woman, Psychotherapist, Artist & Educator) brings more than two decades of experience across integrative mental health, higher education, and leadership. Grounded in somatic, eco-transpersonal, and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, as well as Somatic Experiencing® and interpersonal neurobiology, her work is also informed by long-standing study and initiation in Indigenous Andean healing traditions. She weaves together clinical neuroscience and psychology with archetypal process, animistic and earth-based practices, and energy medicine, working at the intersection of soma, psyche, and soul to serve her clients, students, and community.

Her emerging framework Embodied Consciousness™ is rooted in the belief that healing restores our capacity for aliveness, meaningful relationship, creativity, and deeper participation in life. As MAIIMA, Amy creates music as medicine, an offering of voice, soul, and remembrance.

Jess Parvin (Holistic Business + Purpose Coach) brings a complementary exploration of Human Design, intuition, mindfulness, soul purpose coaching, creativity, and authentic expression. With a background in business strategy and branding alongside her work as a spiritual life coach and intuitive guide, Jess has spent years helping people understand their unique energetic blueprint, recognize their natural gifts, trust their own way of making decisions, and translate what they know internally into lives and work that feel more aligned with who they actually are. Jess has spent a lot of time on and around Lake Atitlan over the past few years, and loves sharing this sacred place with others. 

Our retreat takes place in a beautiful mountainous setting in central Guatemala, with the property nestled into a hillside overlooking Lake Atitlán. Our retreat host, Ix Balam (The Temple of Umbilical Arts), is a very special place created by artists and dedicated to restoring our innate connection to source through ancestral and modern technologies and wisdom.

The environment is not simply the backdrop for the retreat. As we move through the four elements, the landscape itself becomes part of our practice. There will be opportunities to begin the morning beside the lake, swim & use the paddle boards between sessions, hike to waterfalls and mountain-top spots with amazing vistas, gather around the fire, practice in relationship with the elements, and allow the rhythms of the natural world to become part of the way we slow down and listen.

Part of the beauty of this location is its natural landscape, which includes uneven pathways and approximately 100 stone steps throughout the property. We want you to feel comfortable and well-supported during your stay, so please keep in mind that you’ll be navigating steps throughout our days together. If stairs or uneven terrain are challenging for you, we encourage you to consider whether this particular setting will feel supportive for your body and your needs.

Please let us know if you have questions about this!

Join us for a free info session: OCTOBER 15th at 6:30 pm CST (live on zoom) with Amy & Jess! Contact hello@jessparvin.com for the zoom link.

A SPECIAL GIFT FOR OUR FIRST FOUR SIGN-UPS

The first four people to register and submit their retreat deposit will also receive two private sessions with us as our gift ($575 value!)

A complimentary private Human Design session with Jess, offering an opportunity to explore your unique energetic blueprint and begin connecting with the ways you are naturally designed to move through the world.

A complimentary private Embodied Consciousness™ Coaching session with Amy, offering an opportunity to explore what is most alive for you as you prepare for our journey together.

These sessions will give our first four participants an opportunity to begin the retreat journey before we even arrive at Lake Atitlán.