Upaya Retreat Center

05/09/2025

✨ We are so excited to open our gates again next month ✨

After a quiet season of stillness, Upaya will soon be filled with practice, presence, and community once more!!! We have a beautiful season of retreats ahead, and we are deeply looking forward to all that will unfold together.

We can’t wait to welcome you back — whether you’ve walked these grounds many times before or are planning your very first visit. Come practice with us, come learn with us, come be part of this living community.

🪷 Explore upcoming retreats and join us! Click the link in bio and stories for more info!

29/08/2025

There’s something about gathering around the fire that never loses its magic. Our bonfire circle has held so many moments over the years — laughter and music spilling into the night, journals opening wide, old stories burning away to make room for new ones. Alumni from GYST and so many other retreats have sat here under the stars, hearts cracked open, letting go and letting in.

This season feels like that, too. A time of release and renewal. A time to throw what no longer serves us into the flames, and watch the sparks rise as space opens for what’s meant to arrive. The fire reminds us that transformation is not always loud — sometimes it’s a steady glow, a quiet warmth, a place where we remember that we belong.

Here’s to another season of gathering, of purging, of inviting in the life we’re ready to live.

Join us by the fire this season — and see what’s ready to be released, and what’s waiting to come alive.
Check out details for our upcoming retreats in our link in stories or bio!

25/08/2025

The ocean is our oldest teacher. 🌊
Its tides remind us that all things move in cycles, that endings and beginnings are one and the same, that silence and surge are both sacred. Today, under the dark embrace of the new moon, the sea whispers of renewal. The foam gathers and dissolves, gathers and dissolves — a gentle reminder that we too are allowed to release, to soften, to begin again.

Water is the element of emotion, intuition, and flow. It cleanses what we have carried too long and carves new pathways where once there were none. To sit before it is to be held by something vaster than words, something that asks nothing of us but presence.

This new moon invites us to listen more deeply, to plant our intentions in the fertile stillness before the tide turns. Like the ocean, we are both infinite and intimate — capable of holding the whole sky within us while touching each stone along the shore.

At Upaya, we honor these moments as thresholds: a chance to pause, breathe, and let the water remind us of what it means to live with openness, rhythm, and renewal. May the waves wash over you with peace. May the new moon light your inner tide. 🌙

22/08/2025

the upaya team sending everyone love from different parts of the world!!!

happy travels!!

15/08/2025

Rainbows appear when light meets rain — a fleeting reminder that beauty often arrives after the storm.

At Upaya, we welcome these moments as part of practice: the meeting of joy and challenge, the colors that emerge when we stay present through it all.

As we rest between seasons, we look ahead to December for our first GYST Retreat of the new season — a time to gather again, to witness the unfolding spectrum of community, silence, and reflection.

📅 Explore upcoming retreats via the link in bio!

08/08/2025

Throwback to our Epic Family Quest Retreat. ✨
One of the most powerful on the schedule — it was in the quiet creativity of this painting, made by one of the girls during an activity we hosted.

It reflects one of our core teachings from the Get Your Sh*t Together Retreat:
Life is happening for me. Everything is here to help me.

When we choose to see challenges not as obstacles but as invitations, the entire landscape shifts.
Every conversation, every delay, every unexpected turn — all of it becomes part of the path.
And with that shift comes freedom.

This is what we practice together at Upaya: meeting life as an ally, not an adversary.

What’s one moment in your life that felt hard at first, but turned out to be helping you?
We’d love to hear your reflections below.

01/08/2025

While many are off on their own adventures this season, we’re reminded—again and again—that community doesn’t take a vacation. It shows up in the small gestures: a steady hand when someone needs help down the trail, a shared meal under the trees, silent presence on a meditation cushion, or a soft laugh exchanged between strangers who, somehow, feel like family.

This moment, captured in the stillness of a summer day, reminds us why we do this work. Why we gather. Why we hold space.

Because healing doesn’t follow a calendar. Growth doesn’t wait for fall. And love—real, grounded, generous love—can look as simple as one human helping another.

To those who continue to show up—in body, in heart, in spirit—thank you. You are what makes this center more than just a place. You are what makes it home. 💛

21/07/2025

Soft summer days from the Baja

The air is slow. The light is kind. The path forward is quiet, but clear.

You don’t always need to do more to find peace.
Sometimes you just need to remember who you are beneath it all.

Come back to your breath.
Come back to your body.
Come back to what’s real.

We’ll meet you here.

23/06/2025

The quiet in between seasons is part of the practice.

This is where integration happens. Where the lessons land. Where the next retreat begins—long before arrival.

16/06/2025

Driftwood rests quietly in the heart of Upaya — a reminder that stillness doesn’t mean stagnation.
Even in the off-season, the land holds stories, the team dreams, and the vision deepens.
A new season is on the horizon… but for now, we let the quiet speak.

02/06/2025

“Everyone wants the wings.
No one talks about the crawl.”

But this, too, is sacred.
The slow becoming.
The tender, unseen work.
The days spent inching forward —
not knowing what’s ahead,
but moving anyway.

At Upaya, we honor every part of the path.
Not just the breakthroughs,
but the silent moments of becoming —
the molting, the waiting,
the days that feel like nothing is happening
when in truth, everything is.

✨
Here, there’s no rush.
No need to prove or push.
Just space to be with yourself —
wherever you are on the journey.

Trust the crawl.
The wings will come.

02/06/2025