You spend your days helping young people regulate, focus, recover, learn, and grow. You hold space. You steady nerves. You respond to overwhelm – again and again.

That work can feel both meaningful and exhausting.

This summer, step away from the noise and into a retreat designed not just to teach wellness but to let you experience it.

Relax, Refresh & Restore What Sustains You

Join Lynea and Jim Gillen for the Summer Immersion, a three-day learning retreat held in a peaceful natural setting near the Clackamas River, at the foot of Mt. Hood. Surrounded by trees, trails, and open sky – yet within easy reach of Portland – this Immersion offers the rare chance to learn, move, reflect, and reconnect in person with a community of people who care deeply about supporting youth.

You won’t just hear about regulation; you’ll feel it in your own body. You’ll move between active and calm states. You’ll experience what it means to broaden your own window of tolerance in a safe, supportive environment.

You’ll join others in learning and practicing together – the way this work was always meant to be done. For Yoga Calm is more than just a curriculum; it’s a community – one that models the very culture of wellness it helps schools, clinics, and families create.

Create a Culture of Wellness

For Yoga Calm, the essence of what we do is to create a culture of wellness by helping schools, therapists and mental health providers reduce stress for both the youth they serve and themselves by integrating wellness practices in their work, while helping youth develop skills in regulation, attention, health, emotional intelligence, stress resilience, and learning.

Built on more than four decades of classroom and counseling experience, Yoga Calm is informed by research in trauma, regulation, and learning science. Its integrated approach combines movement, mindfulness, nervous system education, and social-emotional learning in ways that are practical, accessible, and immediately usable.

By honoring educators’ and therapists’ intelligence, training and gifts, and supporting their health, well-being and job satisfaction, we can create an environment where both staff and the youth they serve can truly thrive.

What Makes This Training Different

What makes this retreat powerful is how you learn.

This is experiential learning that engages body, mind, and relationships together. Throughout the weekend, you will practice the same strategies you’ll later share with youth, building awareness, strengthening regulation, and nurturing resilience in real time.

For those who have completed online Yoga Calm courses, this retreat offers a deeper, embodied way to integrate and refine your skills. For those newer to the work, it provides a strong foundation in the principles that make Yoga Calm effective and sustainable.

What You’ll Experience

• Experiential learning that engages body, mind, and relationships
• Daily movement, reflection, and guided nervous system practices
• Practical tools modeled in real time, not just described
• Shared meals and informal connection
• Time outdoors in a restorative natural setting
• A learning environment that honors both rigor and renewal

What You’ll Take Home with You

You’ll leave with tools you can use immediately – and with renewed clarity about why this work matters so much.

You will gain:

• Simple, effective regulation practices for youth and adults.
• Movement-based strategies that release stress and increase focus.
• Emotional “first aid” tools for triggers and overwhelm.
• Practical ways to teach nervous system literacy and self-awareness.
• Classroom- and clinic-tested activities that build connection and resilience.
• A clearer understanding of how embodied practices support attention, emotional intelligence, and learning.

Most importantly, you’ll gain strategies to support your own nervous system, strengthening your capacity to remain steady, responsive, and well in demanding environments.

Empower Youth with Nervous System Education

Retreat participants will explore simple ways to provide nervous system education so youth can understand what is happening in their bodies. As youth learn about the nervous system, they are better able to name their experiences and make choices that help them regulate.

Highlighting a variety of tools including our Empower nervous system education program you will learn how to:

• Destigmatize fight, flight, and freeze responses
• Develop a skillful vocabulary and basic fluency about how our nervous system works
• Teach practical daily regulation strategies
• Build self-awareness and social-emotional intelligence
• Help youth expand their window of tolerance through safe, body-based practices

We will also highlight a pilot study demonstrating how a district amplified its wellness initiatives by integrating home use of Yoga Calm’s Empower program—adding a powerful and often missing dimension to sustainable mental health support.

Yoga Calm – Trauma-Informed from the Start

Yoga Calm’s approach has always been grounded in an understanding of how stress and trauma live in the body and how regulation must be experienced, not just explained.

Drawing from decades of classroom and counseling work, and informed by research from leaders in trauma and nervous system science such as Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, Bruce Perry, and David Berceli, Yoga Calm integrates bottom-up regulation practices that support resilience, attention, and learning.

Participants will explore how movement, breath, and guided reflection help release excess nervous system activation safely, broadening the window of tolerance through structured shifts between active and calm states. These practices are simple, practical, and adaptable across settings, from early childhood classrooms to teen groups and family environments.

You’ll learn accessible ways to introduce nervous system literacy so youth can better understand what’s happening in their bodies, building vocabulary, self-awareness, and the capacity to choose supportive responses.

This work is rigorous. It’s research-informed. And it remains deeply human – grounded in lived experience and real-world application.

Supporting CASEL, PBIS & Mental Health Initiatives

Unlike many lecture-based programs, Yoga Calm develops emotional regulation and social skills through highly engaging experiential activities. This integrated approach promotes intrapersonal, interpersonal, and cognitive competence, yet adds a fourth, complementary, physical health component that also mitigates the physical effects of stress and trauma.

Rather than adding one more program to manage, the practices shared in this retreat integrate seamlessly into daily routines, supporting social-emotional learning, classroom transitions, therapeutic engagement, and staff wellness.

You’ll see how experiential, body-based learning supports intrapersonal awareness, interpersonal connection, cognitive flexibility, and physical health, reinforcing the competencies educators, therapists, and parents are already cultivating.

Explore Oregon!

This learning retreat will be held at a peaceful retreat center near the Clackamas River, at the foot of Mt. Hood. Surrounded by woods, trails, and open sky, the setting offers both quiet restoration and easy access – just 30 minutes from downtown Portland and Portland International Airport.

Between sessions, there will be time to step outside. Time to walk. Time to sit. Time to let what you’re learning settle.

On-site lodging is available and recommended especially for those traveling from out of town (see details below). Shared meals and informal conversation are part of what makes the experience meaningful.

If you’re coming from farther away, the Columbia River Gorge, Oregon’s beaches, and Mt. Hood are all within easy drives. Many participants choose to arrive early or stay a day or two longer to explore.

Join the Circle

One of the hallmarks of a Yoga Calm retreat is the sense of connection that forms quickly among people who care deeply about the same work.

Throughout the weekend, you’ll share practice, conversation, questions, and insight with others who understand the realities of today’s classrooms, clinics, and family life. The format models what Yoga Calm encourages in schools: self-care within community as the foundation for cognitive and social-emotional growth.

Many participants return to Yoga Calm trainings multiple times – not only for the content but for the collegial sharing and support from other passionate and creative educators and therapists — for being part of something steady, thoughtful, and sustaining.

You’ll leave with tools. And you’ll leave connected.