Return to Love

A Transformational Retreat

December 3rd-9th 2024

Tamarindo, Costa Rica

When You are On Your Path 

You Know Exactly Who You Are

Are You Ready to Remember? 

A uniquely curated retreat experience set in the beautiful Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica. This Retreat will be a powerful transformational container where you will not only be able to completely unwind and relax, but to work deeply to create a quantum leap in your life. Costa Rica offers a beautiful natural landscape to hold you while you do your deep work, alchemize blocks in your life, and align yourself with your highest potential. 

We are currently in a time of great awakening. On a personal level we are going through some deep changes in our lives so we can alchemize our trauma and any blocks holding us back from living the life that we long for. This retreat is designed for women who have done a lot of their work over the years and are successful in their lives, and are ready to dive in and process and transform anything that is still feeling stuck or blocking you.

Who this retreat is for

This retreat is a powerful, highly transformational, and safe container where you can be with other women who are also creating lives that they desire while transforming any blocks that are in their way of their highest potential. You will be held with the highest level of love and expertise as you surrender yourself into these deeper layers and begin to step into your power and purpose. The medicine of connecting with others and having space to evolve is vital. You will also feel embraced by the magical frequencies of the land herself as you are in metamorphosis.

You will learn tools that you can take with you and integrate into your daily life and practice as well as have the opportunity to participate in plant medicine ceremony that will help you to open up new possibilities and quantum leap. This retreat is designed for women who are experienced in deep process work, trauma work, and other types of transformational work.

If you have been curious about deeper spiritual practices, connecting with your ancestors and spirit guides, partnering with plant medicine allies, sinking into deeper sisterhood, and having an expansion into your purpose and mission in life, this retreat is for you. This retreat is specially designed for a small group of women who are feeling the call. You might not know exactly why you are feeling called to this retreat, as often the call will come from a deeper soul knowing. 

It is time that you fully step in to who you were born to be. 

We trust that if you are feeling the call to join this one of a kind experience, that life is orchestrating perfectly what is meant for you and needed at this time. If you are feeling this call, reach out here and schedule a phone call to explore if this retreat is the right one for you.

Feeling the call? Connect here via email to chat: nicolefordmsw@gmail.com

Interested? Fill out the form below to request more information and to reserve your space.

You will also Receive….

• 2 Sacred Plant Medicine Ceremonies to support your metamorphosis in the way of the ancients and in alignment with your natural process. These ceremonies will include icaros and sacred music.

• Cacao Ceremony to open the heart, create a new trajectory, see and feel with clarity and love, and assist in integration. Mama Cacao knows where to flow and hold you; like a Grandmother cradling her grandchild with the deepest and most unconditional love.

• Local and Organic food prepared by locally acclaimed Chef Matteo. This food will nourish your senses and every cell of your body.

• Mala necklace workshop to help form and hold your intention. You will get to take your one of a kind piece home with you.

• Personal Photo Shoot with local photographer Rachael Kershaw to capture and imprint this special experience. This will help to capture your most essential expression of self and be a beautiful gift to yourself from this healing space that you can use in your branding and social media.

• Guided Rose Dieta to prepare for your arrival prior to the retreat. This dieta will be opened with the sacred wisdom teachings of the Amazon Elders.

• Preparation and Integration Support that will be offered before, during, and after the retreat to assist you in your process and getting the most out of your experience.

• and much more

Nicole Ford

Nicole has been working in the mental health field for 17 years and has been specializing in Trauma work and Shamanic Healing Practices for the past 10 years. Nicole is a Masters level clinician and was practicing as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker for a decade. Currently, Nicole blends EMDR, Shamanic Practices, and Somatic work to help people access their natural abilities to heal and understand themselves more deeply. This work enables people to address their difficulties on each level it can manifest; mind, body, and spirit.

Nicole was trained in EMDR in 2014 and has been utilizing it in her practice since. It is a powerful modality for treating trauma that was developed in the 1980’s and is considered a best practice for the treatment of PTSD. Nicole combines this modality with Somatic work, which is a way of opening up and processing trauma that is stuck in the body where it cannot be transformed by talk therapy alone.

In addition to traditional therapeutic training, she trained in Core and Advanced Shamanic work as well as Northern European Shamanism, and Plant Medicine Shamanism. This specialized approach to treating trauma is also helpful for stuck patterns, addiction, depression, anxiety, and many other symptoms that are in the way of living an authentic and vibrant life. 

These tools of a trauma focused Therapeutic Approach and Shamanic Work create a powerful container to heal and move towards wholeness.  Nicole provides individual sessions that are a unique experience curated specifically for the individual and honoring their process and pace of work.  Shamanic Work can include: Soul Retrieval Ceremony, Cord Cutting Ceremony, Energy Clearing Sessions, Plant Medicine integration sessions, and specialized journey work and shamanic counsel.  

Nicole has held many types of containers the past 20 years including groups, workshops, classes, family therapy sessions, individual therapy sessions, and various kinds of ceremony. Her work is her devotional path and mission in life. Being of service and holding space for people as they alchemize and transform their pain into authenticity, wholeness, and becoming who they are is her highest honor. 

Nicole has been on a journey of solo motherhood since 2019 and in 2023 she and her daughter moved from the Pacific Northwest in the USA to the beautiful land of the Pacific Coast in Costa Rica.  She spends her days swimming in the ocean, being of service and a dedicated student of life, parenting her daughter, and creating a beautiful life. 

Elodie Michaux

Ewa Apache

I suppose the best angle from which to present myself is the space of Now.

I am Elodie and the sum of all I embrace, have experienced, and also as hollow as I might be to receive God’s breath. I was born in Normandy, France in 1972 and secretly grew up with Jesus as a friend, away from dogma and religion. Carlos Castaneda became a teacher through reading his books as a teen although I could barely read the language.

I trained as a sophrology therapist, a reiki master, massage and chi nei tsang giver. Around 2011, the forest called me night and day, through any weather and trained me to frequencies, the Wild and beautiful, shamanism.

My teachers are from the non tangible, ancestors, archetypes, avatars, higher consciences… and from my very ordinary life every step of the way.

I am a mother of four amazing beings and of many more I encountered along my journey, for a while when maternal nurturing was needed. My happiness is to serve and be a bridge for alchemy and transformation.

I am a healer and a pillar. I hold space by deeply grounding and anchoring so that I call in healing frequencies. I operate on the electric life web, hands on and remotely equally. I am a channel for the divine and miraculous to heal you through me.

Nature is my mother, and I am a daughter of life. I dance with the elements and all of life, I offer myself to be a conduit of transformation and alchemy for those who choose.

I am simple, ordinary, and listening.

Chonon Yaka

Leonie was born in South Africa and moved to Taiwan in 2001 where she started teaching art and English. Her journey with Plant Medicines, Acacia, and Ayahuasca began more than 10 years ago, which has changed her life and opened a new chapter of personal healing, connecting and communicating with the plant kingdom and their teachers. 

She became an apprentice of Metsa Meni and was helper and organizer under his tutelage for several years. She then went to Peru and studied and did plant dietas under several shamans of the Shipibo tribe in the Yukali river area of the Amazon. Some of them are: Ricardo Amaringo, Amelia Pandura, and Antonio and Rosita Vasquez. She was accepted and initiated into the tradition of the Shipibo plant healers by receiving her Maestra dieta from Antonio Vasquez. She served as a helper for about a year, and then the plants started calling her to step into the role of facilitator. 

Leonie has also been studying Core Shamanism since 2007 with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies (founded by Michael Harner). She started offering small ceremonies to her friends and the larger community both in Taiwan and the USA and these became more regular, filled with participants from various cultures around the world. 

Forever a student and learning more, she loves being a guide for people into the realms that the plants help us open and perceive, in order to improve our lives in the ordinary world. It is very important to her to hold ceremony in a confidential, safe container with respect to the plant medicine, participants, and all creatures present in the territory. 

To stand behind the beautiful and sacred medicine in integrity, love and trust in service to those that need her healing and guidance is Leonie’s main mission in life. She sees plant medicine as a sacred divine tool and not a cure all, that is helping us to have new perspectives on our trauma and patterns that that is able to cleanse and heal them in order to build new healthy habits to walk the “Beauty Way” on Earth, which means living in reciprocity, compassion, and in harmonious balance with all creatures. 

She also offers sound healing through using various musical instruments such as: the hand pan, shaman drum, flutes, the monochord, the mouth harp, and others both inside and outside of ceremony setting. 

Holding ceremony with mama Cacao and various other plant and Earth medicines, as well as private sessions and opening plant dietas for people are some of Leonie’s ways of offering her service and love to others. 

Experience an excursion to sacred lands in the jungle where we will have a powerful Ancestral Ceremony with Faisal Khattak…

Want more details or to schedule a call? Click here: nicolefordmsw@gmail.com