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CHAPTER II
ESSAOUIRA, MOROCCO
EXPANSION AL SOL
november 6-12
Imagination.
In Sufi tradition, Khyal is the realm between the visible and the invisible. The threshold where what doesn't exist yet begins to take form. Where visions become real. Where perception opens.
From there, our deepest imagination becomes our greatest form of intelligence.
khayal (خيال)
Among swaying palms, desert blue and a distant howl of something you've always known, lies a temple within you.
It holds everything you want, and you can have it all, under one condition:
you
must
enter
naked.
In the middle of the desert,
a blue Lotus blooms.
november 6-12 (11/11 portal) – morocco
In order to expand,
we must first:
open.
Most retreats help you disconnect.
This one reconnects you to the oldest creative technology you possess: your imagination.
Before every body of work, every life you've been dreaming of, there was a woman who could see it before it existed. Before every vision becomes reality, it has to exist as imagination first.
Through plant wisdom, the body, community, and your own untapped perception, we will open the channel to greater clarity, deeper meaning, and the kind of imagination that builds new realities.
For the woman who knows something inside her is ready to beam.
Our stunning villa in the hills of Essaouira
Essaouira chose us, like it chose me a few years back to live there and unravel. A coastal town on the Atlantic wrapped in blue and white fortress walls where the medina smells like cedar and thuya wood and fresh bread.
Colline des Oliviers sits on a hilltop just outside town, surrounded by olive groves and absolutely nothing else. Which means we'll basically have the sky, the silence, and each other.
our concept
On a hilltop outside the beach town of Essaouira, surrounded by olive groves and the sound of the sweet desert wind, sits a villa built by those who understood that beauty is an elixir.
Colline des Oliviers is an oasis in every sense. November in Morocco is: listening. The land is resting but awake.
Our week together through the 11/11 portal is an immersion into that deep listening.
Optional writing/creation and tea time with Maia as the sun rises over the desert. Morning fascia and lymph work with Giustina in the shala to open the body petal by petal. Core workshops with Maia each afternoon, building on the last, deepening the arts of moving visions into reality.
And at night, we bloom: evening Blue Lotus ceremonies with Adrienne under a sky with as many stars as dreams dancing inside of you.
In between, the day is yours: morning pages on the terrace as the sun comes down, lounging by the pool with your future besties, family-style Moroccan feasts that last hours because no one wants to leave the table. Day trips to the medina, the hammam, the coast.
Long stretches of nothing where the nothing does its work deep in the bones.
And surrounding all of it, an almost unbearable amount of beauty that will make you wish for a bigger heart.
And you can have it.
In fact, you can have it all.
Meet Your Guides
Adrienne of earth
Herbalist, messenger of the Earth, ceremonialist
She loves nothing more than communing with the Earth + the elements and sharing their profound wisdom + gifts.
Adrienne is trained in the Wise Woman Tradition of Healing, Sacred Plant Medicine, Holistic Healing, and Traditional Herbalism. Her path of study is one that explores the connection of the physical, emotional, energetic, and spiritual aspects of wellness in both linear + non-linear realms. Her lineage comes from the SWANA region (Southwest Asia + North Africa) and Ireland. The plants have led her on a journey of ancestral remembrance, which serves as a deep guide + inspiration in all that she shares and all that she is
”My love for the earth runs deep. My path with the plants has been and continues to be the most beautifully transformational, awakening, supporting, loving, and powerful connection i’ve ever experienced. This is meaning and purpose for me. I believe that if one can come into a relationship, a reciprocal relationship, with the earth - that is where true healing, belonging, inner knowing, love, and compassion lie. For all things within + without. May our hearts be open to remembering the ways of the earth and the abundant gifts, teachings, and love that she has for us in many forms.”
giustina
Yin, yoga and bodywork teacher.
For over a decade, I’ve taught people how to understand and inhabit their bodies from the inside out. My work, at its core, is simple: learning how to meet ourselves with honesty.
To feel what’s been living beneath the surface.
To soften long-held patterns stored in the body.
To build a relationship with ourselves that feels sustainable, grounded, and wise.
My approach blends trauma-informed yoga, somatics, hands-on bodywork, nervous system literacy, and precise anatomy—not as abstract ideas, but as lived experience. Through years of working closely with clients, I’ve seen that when people understand what’s happening in their body, something shifts. Clarity emerges. Agency returns. Change becomes sustainable.
My work weaves together the art and science of the body, the intelligence of sensation, the precision of biomechanics, and the spaciousness of contemplative practice.
I believe that when we learn how to truly listen to the body, we don’t just feel better—we relate to ourselves differently. And from that place, something deeper becomes possible.
maia
Writer, mentor, woman in love with possibility.
If you ask me what I do, I'll tell you I love flirting with the limits of possibility.
In short, I hold the mirror as you outgrow who you think you are and expand into who you're capable of being.
My work is simple but it requires something from you: a burning desire to stop negotiating with your own potential.
artist in residence
For a retreat that centers around imagination and perception, I couldn't think of a more perfect artist in residence than Manuela Benaim. Sculptor, performance artist, and my little (not so little) sister.
Manuela's work explores the human body as both subject and material. She creates hyperrealistic silicone skins that blur the line between what is real and what is perceived, between the body we inhabit and the body we think we see.
Her practice lives in the exact threshold this experience is built on: the space between the visible and the invisible, between who we are and who we are becoming.
She describes the body as "a costume we were born wearing and will die wearing" and the skin as "a membrane that separates life from the after-life, the body from the soul, the perishable from the infinite." She has shown at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in Berlin, Jane Lombard Gallery in New York, and has worked with over fifty bodies across ethnicities, ages, and identities.
Having her in this container is going to open up the kind of conversations that don't happen anywhere else. I know it.
The body as vessel, identity as something fluid, what it means to truly perceive yourself from the outside in.
We will have one core workshop in collaboration with Manuela exploring performative art and creation as tools for expanded perception.
And I genuinely can’t wait for you to meet her.
Body of work
Each day deepens the one before it, one petal at a time. Lotus guiding the way, your three guides holding the space for you to unfurl, completely.
Morning practices with G are devoted to opening the body so it can hold what the week is revealing. Daily fascia and lymph release, yin yoga, and other modalities to create space in the body for what wants to come through.
Daily workshops with Maia are where perception becomes vision. Future self activations, clarity mapping to see the next chapter of your life, vision workshops that take the raw material of what the lotus revealed and what the body opened and help you build something real from it.
We are not journaling about our dreams here. We are giving them bones! And who knows maybe a kundalini tantra sesh or two (no breath of fire or crazy arms!).
Adrienne teaches you how to see.
Giustina teaches you how to hold what you see.
Maia teaches you how to build what you see.
The feasts, the hammam, the medina, the stars, the silence, the laughter that comes from nowhere at dinner: that is Morocco doing what Morocco does.
And it will work on you whether you are paying attention or not.
You won't go home feeling like a different person. Not at all.
You'll go home as the same luminous person you are, this time wide open to a reality that was always yours but you would have missed in a blink.
Each night we sit together in ceremony with Adrienne, as she guides with the kind of presence that makes you forget there are words for what is happening. Trust me. The lotus does what it has done for four thousand years: it thins the boundary between what you know and what you have not yet allowed yourself to perceive.
Some nights will be quiet. Some nights will crack you open. But every night we will have an epic feast.
Our vision across the week is expanding the aperture of your perception wide enough that the life you have been imagining stops being a dream and starts being an inevitability.
our co-conspirator
The flower of creation
For over four thousand years, the Blue Lotus has been woven into the ceremonial life of North Africa. The Egyptians called it the flower of creation. It became a companion for dreaming.
For ceremony. For imagination. For seeing beyond the obvious.
And perhaps that's what creation has always required. Not “more”, but a different way of seeing.
The Blue Lotus is our guide in this retreat as a gentle invitation to soften the grip on the familiarity of our “ordinary” lives, so the vision you've been trying to access has room to speak again.
my path with Lotus
In 2025, I began a seven-month apprenticeship with my herbal teacher and dearest friend, Adrienne of Earth.
I don't know if I'll ever find the words for what happened inside that year.
Blue Lotus opened something in me that years of coaching, workshops, books, and inner work never could.
The shift wasn't happening in my mind. It felt like the plant was speaking to a part of me that existed long, long before language.
Adrienne introduced me to a completely different relationship with plants. Not as remedies or something to "consume," but as teachers.
As ancient intelligences we enter into relationship with.
And relationships change us fundamentally.
The Blue Lotus never gave me answers.
It changed the quality of my perception.
Instead, I began to seek deeper questions.
It softened me into the greatest, strangest imagination I've ever experienced.
The more time I spent with the plant, the more I realized that sharing it was part of the relationship too.
So here’s lotus, passed down to you, as the north African queen that she is.
Adrienne will not teach us how to "work" with Lotus. She will show us how to be with Lotus.
And Lotus will do what it has done for four thousand years: unfurl you.
daily rhythm
○ 7:00 — (optional) sunrise morning pages, tea, creation time with Maia
○ 8:30 — morning practice with Giustina
○ 10:00 — Moroccan breakfast
○ 12:00 — Free time/excursion
○ 3:00 — Light lunch
○ 5:00 — Core workshop/activation with Maia
○ 7:00 — Moroccan family style feast
○ 8:30 — Evening ceremony with Adrienne
*subject to divine intervention/Morocco’s magik/some planned surprises
Some places change your life.
Others change the way you see your life.
The second kind stays with you longer.
Because once perception changes:
the outer world re-arranges.
Expansion al sol
November 6-12th (11/11 portal)
Essaouira, Morocco.
For the woman who knows something inside her is ready to beam.
the experience
○ Six nights, seven days at our temple villa
○ Herbal medicine kits
○ Your very own Expansion Maroc workbook
○ All organic, locally sourced meals prepared by our private chef
○ Daily morning movement with Giustina (fascia release, lymphatic drainage, yin yoga)
○ Daily core workshops and activations with Maia
○ Evening Blue Lotus ceremonies with Adrienne
○ One art workshop with artist in residence Manuela Benaim
○ Hammam excursion in Essaouira
○ Day trip to the Essaouira medina and coast
○ 11/11 portal surprise
○ Transport to and from Marrakech
○ A very special gift spread (leave space in your luggage! iykyk)
○ Infinite downtime in the most unimaginably beautiful surroundings
○ An opportunity to meet the women you didn't know you were looking for
FAQ
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Fly into Marrakech (most common) or Essaouira airport. From Marrakech, the drive to the villa is approximately 2.5 hours along the stunning Atlantic coast road. Transport to and from the villa is included and will be coordinated after booking.
We'll open a WhatsApp group to coordinate travel plans, pair up arrivals, and make the journey part of the experience. If you can, I recommend arriving in Marrakech a day early to explore and settle before we head to Essaouira together.
If you fly to Essaouira, the villa is 20min away by car and you can coordinate that at the airport.Your transfer back to Marrakech is also included!
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No. Not at all. Adrienne guides everything with deep care and sensitivity. There is no preparation needed and no prior experience required. The lotus meets you wherever you are. You just have to show up open.
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Of course! you can request it in the application, after you choose the room you want.
If you book one of the double rooms without plans to share it with someone specific, I’ll pair you with someone I think you’ll truly vibe with, and you’ll likely leave the retreat with a new friend.
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Airfare to and from Morocco
Independent travel costs to and from the van meetup point (to go to Essaouira from Marakech)
Accommodation outside the retreat dates
Traveler’s insurance (required, see terms)
Visa and entry fees (if applicable, check in advance!)
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We’ll inform our private chef of everyone’s dietary restrictions, preferences etc
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November in Essaouira is beautiful. Warm days (around 20-24°C), cool evenings, golden light, and no crowds. It's off-season, which means we have the town and the coast practically to ourselves. Pack layers for the evenings and a scarf for the Atlantic wind!
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Please see our terms and conditions
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Yes. Most women do! You will not feel alone for long. These retreats have a way of turning strangers into lifelong friends by dinner on the first night.
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This retreat is for any woman who wants to reconnect with her creative vision and expand her perception. You don't need a business. You don't need a brand. You need a desire to see differently.