Inviting Beauty into Your Life
A 5-day Fall Equinox Shamanic Retreat
with Michael Hoffman
September 16-20, 2026
Chetco River Inn, Brookings, Oregon
How much beauty, love, and joy do you allow into your life?
Some Native American cultures refer to the richness, love, and joy that they carry in their hearts as beauty. They value it highly and make it a top priority in their lives.
The amount of beauty that we are accustomed to carrying directly determines the amount of beauty, we can hold.
Once the amount of beauty and love exceeds that threshold, we tend to push it away. Perhaps we avoid it, discount it, sabotage it, or simply talk ourselves out of it.
Usually, we're unaware that this is happening. But every now and then, when considering something, we wonder, "Maybe that would be fun. Perhaps I should give it a shot."
That is the moment you can intervene to invite beauty into your life. Wouldn't you like to enjoy more richness, love, and happiness? Those things you used to dream about.
Fall Equinox is the time of harvest. It's a doorway to stretch yourself to invite more beauty into your life.
Fall Equinox is a time to allow the beauty and abundance of what you have awakened within yourself and created in your life into your heart and everyday life.
It's a time to stretch yourself to make room for the things that matter most to you. Ironically, allowing such beauty and preciousness may be outside of your comfort zone.
The Fall Equinox is a time of integration. It's where you own the new aspects of your life and make them part of who you are and what your life is about.
This begins by celebrating them. Acknowledging them and offering gratitude allows integration. It's throwing a harvest party to celebrate the bounty of the new things in your life.
Medicine Wheel, Sweat Lodge, and Shamanic Ceremonies awaken and integrate your newfound beauty.
Shamanic ceremony offers a space to directly experience the spiritual and emotional dynamics at work within you.
The Medicine Wheel and Mini Vision Quest Ceremonies create a space for you to receive a vision for your new life.
Sharing circles provide insight and integration. It allows you to see what obstructs and what fosters your beauty.
Sweat Lodge is a right of passage that provides a line of demarcation where we divest ourselves of our old ways and commit ourselves to the new.
This tradition of Shamanic ceremony fosters a direct connection between you, Spirit, and all of life. When you connect with Spirit, you are naturally in your beauty.
But the most powerful ingredient of this shamanic retreat is living as a collaborative, supportive community.
When I first started going to shamanic retreats, I was enamored by the Sweat Lodges and Vision Quests. And to fair, they are amazingly transformative.
But then an odd thing happened. It was subtle. It became even more noticeable when I took on the role of the retreat facilitator.
The most transformative thing and the true magic was the group coming together as a supportive community. Adn ti seemed to happen quite naturally. And it makes sense.
Everyone is sharing themselves authentically as we participate in the sharing circle, build the sweat lodge, and prepare meals together. We truly get to know each other.
Due to the community and Shamanic ceremony over the five days together, everyone experiences joy, sadness, belonging, heartbreak, connection, and grief.
Empathy and compassion come naturally. Because we're in it together. We can all relate to each other. They're all the same issues, just configured differently in each of us
You can't help but be supportive. Your heart can't help but be blown open. You can't not feel the love and belonging. It's undeniable. Sure, you can resist it for a day or two.
But then the miracle happens. You become one of the people. That's native speak for part of the community. You experience how it's supposed to feel as a human being.
So come be one of the people. Let the magic happen. Experience being a part of a loving community.
The Chetco River Inn Retreat Center
The Chetco River
A beautiful drive along the Chetco River transports you to another world. The Chetco River Inn is a place where the lulling sound of the river rushing over stone calms the soul.
Enjoy the thirty-six secluded acres on the banks of the Chetco River. Surrounded by the Siskiyou National Forest, the retreat center caters to both nature lovers and anglers and makes for a great getaway.
The retreat grounds are completely off the grid and private, offering gentle walks, fishing, hiking, mountain biking, swimming, kayaking, rafting, paddle boarding, or simply floating down the river.
Lodging, Meals, and Travel
Lodging is in the Main Lodge and Rockhouse Cottage. Most rooms are shared with two people as a partner, friend, or new friend.
Our meals will be prepared in the chef's kitchen. Each retreat participant will be asked to volunteer for kitchen duty for several meals to create a spiritual practice of service and community.
Fresh fruit, yogurt, oatmeal, granola, etc. will be served for breakfast. Lunch and dinner will feature hot meals for vegan, gluten-free, and meat diets. Coffee and tea will be provided throughout the day.
Each meal has a plan and shopped ingredients, but the volunteer cooks get some artistic license in the preparation.
The Chetco River Inn is located approximately three hours by car from the Rogue Valley International Airport in Medford, Oregon. It's a thirty-minute drive to Brookings, Oregon, and the ocean.
Retreat Facilitator
Michael Hoffman, LCSW
When I'm not playing the drums, exploring the Pacific Northwest, or interpreting dreams, I offer psychotherapy sessions with my root cause approach, which both relieves current symptoms and heals the underlying core issues to provide lasting freedom to fully enjoy life.
I bring 30 years of postgraduate experience and extensive training to create a personalized program tailored to your specific needs and situation.
My specialties include: 1) relationship issues and intimacy; 2) anxiety, depression, and social isolation;
3) men's issues and masculine roles; and 4) life transitions such as empty nest, divorce, and breakup.
I'm happy to guide you. Therapy works. Find someone you can work with. It's worth it. Whether it's working with me or somebody else, you owe it to yourself. If you'd like, schedule a free 15-minute consultation. I'm easy to talk to, and I'll help you get the ball rolling.
The Retreat Itinerary
Building a Sweat Lodge at the 2022 Summer Solstice Retreat
Day 1: Awaken Your Beauty
Arrival and check-in will happen between 3 and 5 pm on Wednesday, June 18. We will be sitting around the fire in Sharing Circle most of the evening. Bring any questions about the retreat. Here are the events for our first evening together:
• 3 to 5 pm: Arrival and check-in
• 5:30 pm: Dinner is served.
• 7:00 pm: Awakening the Fire, Smudge, and Sharing Circle: What's in your heart? Smudging purifies and awakens us for ceremony. We awaken the sacred fire by inviting Spirit and the energy of the Earth to dance with us. Sharing Circles involve sharing your heart and receiving guidance. We pass a talking stick around the fire. This Sharing Circle invites you to share what's in your heart, including what you've been experiencing and what you're hoping to awaken in retreat.
• 8:00 pm: Sharing Circle: Your Relationship with Beauty. The essence of shamanism is having a direct relationship with Spirit. Many of us were conditioned to put ourselves below Spirit. This circle allows you to experience your personal truth of you and Spirit being equal members of a collaborative team with different roles to play.
• 9:30 pm: Awakening Ceremony: Inviting Beauty into your life. Our beauty often lies dormant inside of us. This ceremony around the fire creates the space for each of us to intentionally call it forth so we can awaken it, access it, and dance with it throughout the retreat.
Day 2: Experience Your Beauty
We will utilize several ceremonies throughout the day to identify and awaken your medicine. These include Medicine Wheel, Shamanic Journey, Sharing Circle, Sacred Willow, and Stone People ceremonies.
Today's events are as follows:
• 6 am: Coffee and Tea are served.
• 7 to 8:30 am: Self-Serve Breakfast is available. Fresh fruit, yogurt, oatmeal, granola, etc. will be served for breakfast.
• 9 am: Guided Shamanic Journey I: Experiencing your Beauty. This guided shamanic journey guides you to establish and deepen your connection to Spirit. It will take you to your sacred space. This provides a foundation for spirit guides and Spirit to show you things and introduce you to your beauty.
• 10:15 am: Sharing Circle: Inviting Beauty into your Life. Awakening your Medicine is intentional. It requires the courage and self-worth to reach out and initiate a relationship with Spirit. It's boldly asking Spirit to dance with you. It's asking Spirit: Come and sing and dance with me! I want to work with you to offer my medicine and provide healing.
• 12 to 1:30 pm: Lunch Break
• 12:30 pm: Lunch is served
• 1:30 pm: Sacred Willow Harvesting Ceremony. Part of our Sweat Lodge tradition involves building a Sweat Lodge with the Sacred Willow Ceremony. We offer tobacco to the sacred red willow to honor its medicine of strength and flexibility. We then respectfully harvest the willow to use for healing the people in our Sweat Lodge tomorrow.
• 3:30 pm: Stone People Gathering Ceremony and Building the Medicine Wheel. Continuing our Sweat Lodge tradition involves doing a Stone People Gathering Ceremony to honor the Stone People as we gather the rocks that we will use for our Medicine Wheel and Sweat Lodge. We will then use some of the stones to build the Medicine Wheel according to our shamanic tradition.
• 5 to 7 pm: Dinner Break.
• 5:30 pm: Dinner is served.
• 7 pm: Medicine Wheel Ceremony. This ceremony invites us to enter the Medicine Wheel to seek our vision and find our place on the wheel of life. This ceremony brings consciousness and intentionality to the Medicine Wheel, allowing you to effectively navigate the developmental phases, changes, cycles, and aspects of your life.
• 8:30 pm: Sharing Circle around the Fire. Share what you experienced in the Medicine Wheel with your people. This ceremony provides insight into the symbolism and message that Spirit has offered you.
Day 3: Invite Beauty in Your Life
The focus for today is to awaken your medicine. The primary initiation ceremony will be offering our prayers or intentions in Sweat Lodge.
After we complete our Shamanic Journey, we will move to the ceremonial grounds for most of the day. The day will focus on building the lodge and the various ceremonies and traditions that go along with that. The whole day has a feeling of community and common purpose. Here is a listing of today's events:
• 6 am: Coffee and Tea are served.
• 7 to 8:30 am: Self-Serve Breakfast is available. Fresh fruit, yogurt, oatmeal, granola, etc. will be served for breakfast.
• 9 am: Guided Shamanic Journey II: Accessing Beauty from the Inside Out. This guided shamanic journey guides you to awaken your medicine for your new life. It will take you to your sacred space. From here, spirit guides or ancestors will show you things and introduce you to your beauty.
• 10:30 am: Build Sweat Lodge. We will work with the willow that we gathered yesterday morning to build our Sweat Lodge. We also prepare the space for a sweat lodge fire and an altar in front of the lodge. Building the lodge is imbued with rich tradition, and building the lodge together serves to bring us together for a common purpose.
• 12 to 1:30 pm: Lunch Break on the Ceremonial Grounds.
• 12:30 pm: Lunch is served.
• 1:30 pm: Light the Lodge Fire. This is a beautiful and touching ceremony where we put our intentions and prayers into the "stone people" and light the Lodge Fire, which awakens the ceremony.
• 3 pm: Sharing Circle: Crafting an Intention to Allow Beauty into your Life. While the stones heat in the lodge fire, we will do a Sharing Circle that focuses on creating a clear intention to walk with your medicine and offer it to your people. This provides guidance and preparation for the prayers you will offer in Sweat Lodge.
• 5 to 7 pm: Dinner Break.
• 5:30 pm: Dinner is served.
• 7:00 pm Sweat Lodge: Initiating Beauty in Your Life. Offering your intention in Sweat Lodge initiates your new way of being. Enacting it in the Dreamtime ensures it will take form in your life. This rite of passage marks the moment that your old life ends, and a new life begins.
• 9:00 pm: Celebration: Sharing, Stories, and Treats by the Fire. Celebrating the ceremony and the work we have done.
Day 4: Integrate Beauty in Your Life
The focus for today is to awaken your medicine. The primary initiation ceremony will be offering our prayers or intentions in Sweat Lodge.
Much of the day will focus on building the lodge and the various ceremonies and traditions that go along with that. The whole day has a feeling of community and common purpose. Here is a listing of today's events:
• 6 am: Coffee and Tea are available.
• 7 to 8:30 am: Self-Serve Breakfast is available. Fresh fruit, yogurt, oatmeal, granola, etc. will be served for breakfast.
• 9 am: Drum Ceremony: Sounding the Thunder of your Heart. We will follow this with a Drum Ceremony, which is a place where we express the thunder of our medicine. Each of us will play our song, and the rest of us will play it with you. We share our voices as a community and have our hearts beat as one.
• 10:30 am: Sharing Circle: The Blessing that You Offer the People. We all came here for a reason. You have powerful medicine within you. Your medicine can be seen as a blessing that you offer your people. It is your personal blessing that is unique to you. We will also look at the things that may prevent us from claiming and offering our medicine.
• 12 to 1:30 pm: Lunch Break.
• 12:30 pm: Lunch is served.
• 1:30 pm: Mini Vision Quest. Vision Quest is a ceremony in which we seek our vision to make the people stronger. We will participate in an abbreviated version here, in which you will find a sacred spot and then pray hard to receive your vision and guidance for your medicine and how it will benefit the people.
• 3 pm: Sharing Circle: The feeling of your medicine and your collaborative dance with Spirit. Drawing from your Vision Quest and the other ceremonies, describe the feeling of your medicine and the back-and-forth dance that happens with Spirit.
• 5 to 7 pm: Dinner Break.
• 5:30 pm: Dinner is served.
• 7:00 pm: Healing Circle for the People. A healing circle is a ceremony that we do sitting in a circle, combining our healing energies and focusing them on someone who needs healing. If you or someone you know could benefit from our healing energies, please let Michael know when you get to the retreat.
• 8:30 pm: Sharing Circle: The Energy of Your Medicine. How do you experience the energy of your medicine? What does it feel like?
Day 5: Walk with Your Beauty
On our final day of retreat, we will integrate the visions, insights, and awakenings we experienced throughout the retreat. While there is a tendency to start thinking about leaving the retreat, it is essential to stay present to complete the retreat.
Here is a listing of today's events:
• 6 am: Coffee and Tea are served.
• 7 to 8:30 am: Self-Serve Breakfast is available. Fresh fruit, yogurt, oatmeal, granola, etc. will be served for breakfast.
• 9 am: Heart Rattle Ceremony: Feeling the energy of your Medicine. The Rattle Ceremony is a place where you can express the subtle feelings of your heart non-verbally.
• 10:15 am: Sharing Circle: Integrating Beauty and your New way of Being into your Life. A spiritual practice allows you to experience the sensation and feeling of the element that you are integrating on a regular basis, so it can provide orientation for your life. By tuning into the sensation of the element on a regular basis, you can recognize it in the context of your daily life.
• Noon: Closing Pipe Ceremony: Prayer of compassion for yourself. We close our week of ceremony by offering a prayer of compassion for yourself. We complete the ceremony by breaking down the Sacred Pipe and closing the energy portal of the Medicine Wheel. We then deconstruct the Sweat Lodge and Medicine Wheel and return the ceremonial grounds to their natural condition before the ceremony.
• 1 pm: Lunch is served. Final Breaking of bread together. Retreat is complete.
"The real core of the work I did with Michael is seeing how I have always been looking outward to define myself. What I have found in working with him is that I already had the resources within me to actually create the changes I wanted to make. For me, this has been the pivotal change. I have to say, Michael held my feet to the fire and that is what I really needed. He helped me get in touch with trusting my heart and moving from that place."
Registration for:
Inviting Beauty into Your Life
5-day Fall Equinox Shamanic Retreat
INVITING BEAUTY INTO YOUR LIFE
5-DAY SHAMANIC RETREAT
Fall Equinox 2026
One-time pymt of $875
Registration closes 7/1/2026
-
In-person 5-day Fall Equinox Shamanic Retreat, Weds, 9/16/26, 5 PM to Sun, 9/20/26, 1 PM.
-
Ceremony & Spiritual Community at the Chetco River Inn & pristine Chetco River in Brookings, Oregon
-
This retreat's intention is to stretch yourself and self-beliefs to invite love, beauty, and joy into your life.
-
Ceremonies include a Sweat Lodge, Medicine Wheel, Mini-Vision Quest, and Healing Circle.
-
Includes breakfast, lunch & dinner from Weds dinner to Sun lunch: Vegan, Gluten-Free & Omnivore.
-
Includes lodging at the retreat center. Bedrooms will be shared as a couple or with a participant.
INVITING BEAUTY INTO YOUR LIFE
5-DAY SHAMANIC RETREAT
Fall Equinox 2026
3 Monthly pymts of $292
Registration closes 7/1/2026
-
In-person 5-day Fall Equinox Shamanic Retreat, Weds, 9/16/26, 5 PM to Sun, 9/20/26, 1 PM.
-
Ceremony & Spiritual Community at the Chetco River Inn & pristine Chetco River in Brookings, Oregon
-
This retreat's intention is to stretch yourself and self-beliefs to invite love, beauty, and joy into your life.
-
Ceremonies include a Sweat Lodge, Medicine Wheel, Mini-Vision Quest, and Healing Circle.
-
Includes breakfast, lunch & dinner from Weds dinner to Sun lunch: Vegan, Gluten-Free & Omnivore.
-
Includes lodging at the retreat center. Bedrooms will be shared as a couple or with a participant.
"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Lao Tzu
Still Undecided?
You’re ready to directly experience your beauty during this retreat if...
1. You’ve never done a shamanic ceremony or spiritual retreat before, and you're wondering if it's for you. You want to make sure you will be guided and supported and that you get powerful results.
2. You’ve done shamanic ceremonies and/or spiritual retreats before, and you want to go deeper. This seems similar but a little different from what you have done before, and it really resonates with you.
3. You already KNOW some of your spiritual gifts and may already offer them to people. Sure, you are open to some guidance as you go through the "Inviting Beauty into Your Life" 5-day Shamanic Retreat... but for the most part, you just want to experience your medicine for yourself.
4. You have no problem investing the time and money as long as you know that every bit of energy you invest is a powerful and effective step forward to understanding and offering your spiritual gifts.
5. In fact, you’re ALREADY investing lots of time and energy doing things like reading relationship books, doing yoga, meditating, and doing spiritual online courses. The only problem is that, without directly experiencing your unique medicine, you lack the understanding and confidence to feel good about integrating it into your relationships and everyday life.
6. You want something that works. You have tried spiritual workshops before. You paid your money, invested the effort (and worst of all, got hopeful), only to land back in the same confusing and unfulfilling place.
7. You can envision all the things you have always wanted that will open up once you integrate your spiritual nature into your life. You can just feel the closeness in your relationship, the life purpose in your work, and the pure enjoyment and richness of everyday life. You’ve always known it was possible.
8. You’re excited to try the "Inviting Beauty into Your Life" 5-day Fall Equinox Shamanic Retreat. Even if you’ve been side-tracked and let down before, you’re currently feeling a wave of renewed optimism.
If you caught yourself nodding your head to at least 5 of the 8 points above, then I absolutely cannot wait to meet you in the "Inviting Beauty into Your Life" 5-day Fall Equinox Shamanic Retreat.
INVITING BEAUTY INTO YOUR LIFE
5-DAY SHAMANIC RETREAT
Fall Equinox 2026
One-time pymt of $875
Registration closes 7/1/2026
-
In-person 5-day Fall Equinox Shamanic Retreat, Weds, 9/16/26, 5 PM to Sun, 9/20/26, 1 PM.
-
Ceremony & Spiritual Community at the Chetco River Inn & pristine Chetco River in Brookings, Oregon
-
This retreat's intention is to stretch yourself and self-beliefs to invite love, beauty, and joy into your life.
-
Ceremonies include a Sweat Lodge, Medicine Wheel, Mini-Vision Quest, and Healing Circle.
-
Includes breakfast, lunch & dinner from Weds dinner to Sun lunch: Vegan, Gluten-Free & Omnivore.
-
Includes lodging at the retreat center. Bedrooms will be shared as a couple or with a participant.
INVITING BEAUTY INTO YOUR LIFE
5-DAY SHAMANIC RETREAT
Fall Equinox 2026
3 Monthly pymts of $292
Registration closes 7/1/2026
-
In-person 5-day Fall Equinox Shamanic Retreat, Weds, 9/16/26, 5 PM to Sun, 9/20/26, 1 PM.
-
Ceremony & Spiritual Community at the Chetco River Inn & pristine Chetco River in Brookings, Oregon
-
This retreat's intention is to stretch yourself and self-beliefs to invite love, beauty, and joy into your life.
-
Ceremonies include a Sweat Lodge, Medicine Wheel, Mini-Vision Quest, and Healing Circle.
-
Includes breakfast, lunch & dinner from Weds dinner to Sun lunch: Vegan, Gluten-Free & Omnivore.
-
Includes lodging at the retreat center. Bedrooms will be shared as a couple or with a participant.