Mt. Shasta Couples Retreat is where extraordinary love grows.
Deepen heartfelt communication, trust, and intimacy. Explore practical tools to navigate challenges, rekindle passion, and create a shared vision for a flourishing relationship.
June 18 - 20 & September 24 - 26
Facilitated by
GAVIN & JOY TAYLOR
Saying Yes to Love ... Saying Yes to Us!
There comes a passage in many committed relationships when something new is asking to emerge.
Sometimes it reveals itself through tension or recurring patterns. Other times, it's a subtle invitation, an inner knowing that greater intimacy, connection, and aliveness are possible.
Are you sensing that your relationship is ready for a new level of love and connection?
This intimate couples' experience is designed for those who feel that calling and are ready to explore what's possible together. It's a dynamic, heartfelt journey of releasing what no longer serves your relationship, deepening your understanding of one another, and consciously creating the conditions for extraordinary love to flourish.
The Power of Growing Together in Love
This retreat is a thoughtfully and creatively designed experience that offers a nurturing, empowering space for meaningful growth and lasting transformation in your relationship.
You'll be part of a carefully curated group of no more than five couples, creating a rare atmosphere of intimacy, trust, authenticity, and genuine connection.
Something powerful happens when couples come together with a shared intention to grow. You'll have opportunities to:
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See yourself, your partner, and your relationship through fresh eyes.
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Learn from other couples' experiences, challenges, insights, and breakthroughs.
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Discover new perspectives, possibilities, and practical skills to enrich your relationship.
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Feel supported and inspired by a community of couples devoted to creating extraordinary love.
The insights, connections, and experiences you share can continue to nourish your relationship long after the retreat ends.
Joy and Gavin ... are the real deal.
"The program gave me renewed incentive, hope, and belief. What a beautiful and healing way to “see" the possibilities of a genuinely loving long-term relationship. Joy and Gavin are wonderfully transparent...the real deal. Their ability to live what they teach as they guided individuals and the group was authentic and highly effective."
~ Lydia Clark
An Enlivening Experience
Our weekend is designed to be an immersive, experiential, and nourishing program. We create a potent, transformational process that only small-group bonding makes available. This is not a curriculum and talking heads; this is a lived experience full of practices and opportunities for you, as a couple, to engage in healing, new awareness, and lasting change.
As facilitators, our style emphasizes creative interaction and self-discovery. You'll be engaging in a rich range of relaxed, guided experiences with your partner.
• Learning and anchoring new communication skills in real time
• Experiencing new levels of connection through playfulness, movement, touch, and presence
• Spending time in nature, Mt Shasta's glorious forests, fresh air, alpine lakes, and expanse
• Participating in shared group experiences
• Creating new levels of depth and shared memories that anchor your growth
The Mt. Shasta Couples Retreat provides an opportunity for you to naturally deepen your relationship in the heart and body, reaching new levels of intimacy you've been yearning for.
Your Investment
$2,800 total cost per couple, which includes:
- Three full days of an in-person immersion limited to five couples per retreat
- Delicious, healthy, locally sourced lunches and dinners catered to your needs.
- Experiential workshops, guided nature excursions, group mentoring, and healing experiences
- One 45-minute 2:2 private integration session held on Zoom within two weeks of the retreat
- All printed workshop resources and tools in a beautiful binder for future reference and homework
- Access to The Real Us online video library of ten relationship courses to support your rich integration of our core teachings
Lodging is off-site and not included. We will recommend our favorite locations and support you in your logistical planning! We love our little town and want you to enjoy spending time here.
payment plan per couple
$725 x 4
(charged monthly)
pay in full per couple
$2,800
save $100
Application Process
This experience will be carefully curated, with participation by personal invitation and application only.
Below is a brief questionnaire for you and your partner to complete. This will assist you both in clarifying your intentions for participation. It will also support us in welcoming those couples who are a genuine match for the in-depth small-group experience we are offering.
This small group experience is for couples who...
- Love each other deeply and sense that even more is possible.
- Feel inspired to grow, both individually and together.
- Value honesty, emotional maturity, and conscious partnership
- Long for renewed energy, intimacy, aliveness, and a shared vision for the future.
- Want to transform recurring triggers, challenges, or disconnection into opportunities for greater understanding and closeness.
- Are curious, open-hearted, and willing to keep learning and evolving as sincere students of love.
Whether you've been together for three months or thirty-plus years, what matters most is your shared intention, openness, and willingness to continue growing together. Come as you are, with a sincere desire to deepen your connection and discover what's possible for your love.
Hear From Couples Who Said Yes to Us!
Joy and Gavin offer something truly special: a chance to rediscover the person beside you, even after decades of knowing each other. Their honesty, warmth, and humor made it easy to show up as ourselves—with all our history and humanity in tow! Each brings a depth of professional experience and hard-earned wisdom, grounded in decades of helping others and doing their own inner work. Their willingness to share their own vulnerability makes that wisdom feel deeply human and accessible. Together, they embody what they invite us to practice.
For me, as we embark on our 35th wedding anniversary, this retreat was an invitation to meet our marriage with fresh eyes and an open heart—to stay curious, loosen the grip of what we think we already know, and recognize that we’re both still unfolding. I believe these tools are invaluable for couples in newer relationships as well. Learning early to listen deeply, approach differences with compassion, and pause before reacting can help prevent conflicts from becoming entrenched patterns. These are practices for growing a more conscious, self-responsible, harmonious partnership, wherever you are on the journey. I’m so grateful we said YES!
~ Barb Lewinsky
"This workshop is a MUST for anyone intending to enter a long life time relationship .... Great workshop - Many thanks for sharing your gifts!"
~ Bernie Lewinsky
"Joy and Gavin bring soulful reality to their invitation to know ourselves and our Beloved in the most generous open hearted ways. If you want to grow in delight and gratitude for your relationship, don’t hesitate. Come."
~ Deborah Wilder
"This is the most powerful relationship work I have ever been privileged to participate in. I’m so grateful my partner introduced me to working with Joy and Gavin. Learning to hold space for our difficult truths and to share things we are afraid will “break” our relationship is so juicy, powerful, intimate, and terrifying. Our relationship would not be where it is today without them. If you are ready to go off the high dive with yourself and your partner every single day, these are your coaches and role models.”
~ Ben Steigler
"Gavin & Joy hold an impeccable space with high integrity, psychological maturity and emotional safety for others to open their hearts. I feel a level of peace and security that was not with me before this retreat. The content and guidance was exceptional.”
~ Crystal Scarlett
"Gavin and Joy are two open hearted humans who are clearly doing the work to bring authenticity, love, openness, and a plethora of wisdom and practices to not only enhance their own union, but to share what works for them with others. Their work made a great impact on my relationship with myself and with my beloved."
~ Damiel Balderrama
Meet Your Guides
We bring together many decades of experience in transformational leadership, spiritual development, and relationship work. We offer our experiences of partnership to the facilitation process, teaching from transparency and lived experience, not theory alone. In our retreats and The Real Us workshops, we openly share our personal journeys as we continue to embrace opportunities to learn and grow as a couple. Together, we hold a space that is grounded, compassionate, honest, and deeply committed to each couple's evolution. It is our joy and nourishment to support couples as they deepen their relational field and come into new levels of aliveness with each other.
Gavin Taylor, MA, MFT
Gavin is a licensed spiritual therapist and couples counselor with over 40 years of professional experience guiding individuals and couples toward new levels of flourishing love in their relationships. With a unique ability to weave profound wisdom with practical tools, Gavin has helped thousands of clients uncover their true potential as they heal and transform their lives.
His work is rooted in the appreciation that relationships are sacred pathways to personal growth and awakening. Gavin’s approach combines intuitive insight, compassionate presence, and a commitment to creating safe spaces for exploration and transformation.
A beloved facilitator, speaker, and author of The Real You: Leading Your Life From Your Authentic Self, Gavin is known for his gentle yet powerful ability to inspire insight and lasting change. His work invites people to live with greater courage, clarity, and joy in their personal and professional lives.
Joy Taylor, LMT
Joy is a transformational leadership coach and soul-somatic integration practitioner whose work is dedicated to helping individuals awaken their gifts and create a life they truly love. With over 30 years of experience in personal growth, professional development, and the healing arts, Joy blends her expertise in body-based wellness, spirituality, and creative expression to guide her clients toward greater connection, confidence, and inner harmony.
Joy’s compassionate presence and heartfelt wisdom create a nurturing environment where individuals and couples can explore their vulnerabilities, deepen intimacy, and embrace their emerging truth. Her approach is grounded in the knowing that relationships are a powerful catalyst for awakening and transformation.
An inspiring speaker and author of Inspired: 7 Wisdoms of a Soul-Inspired Life, Joy facilitates women's circles and retreats and enjoys encouraging others to bring their visions to life by sharing their talents and solutions with the world.
Structure of the Weekend
Friday
10 am - 8 pm
Saturday
10 am - 9 pm
Sunday
10 am - 5 pm
We'll gather for three full days—Friday through Sunday—for an intimate journey of learning, connection, and renewal. Surrounded by the magnificent beauty of Mt. Shasta, we'll blend powerful relationship practices with nature walks, outdoor adventures, delicious meals, and spacious time to rejuvenate with your Beloved.
Each day weaves together experiential learning, honest sharing, practical tools, and time for reflection and integration.
Nature will be our companion, inviting greater presence, playfulness, sensuality, and connection. We'll also enjoy healthy, delicious lunches and dinners together.
Our Sacred Renewal Space
Our sanctuary home offers ample room as our central meeting space. We'll enjoy our workshops and meals here, with a sunset-facing patio and a sunrise porch for outdoor dining, plus a large lawn surrounded by majestic views where we can dance, walk barefoot, and be nourished by the fresh air. Share and learn together with plenty of room to relax. Lodging is off-site.
We gratefully acknowledge that the lands of Mt. Shasta and Siskiyou County are the ancestral homelands of Indigenous peoples who have lived in relationship with this region for thousands of years, including the Shasta Indian Nation, Winnemem Wintu Tribe, Karuk Tribe, Modoc Nation, Klamath Tribes, and the Quartz Valley Indian Community. These mountains, rivers, forests, and meadows have long been places of prayer, ceremony, stewardship, and spiritual connection. As we gather here, we do so with humility, respect, and gratitude for the original caretakers of this land and for the enduring wisdom, resilience, and cultural traditions that continue through Indigenous communities today.
“Witnessing Joy & Gavin’s authentic adoration for one another modeled how a high vibration relationship can flow with genuine honesty, grace, and playfulness.”
~ Ara Pomarico,
FAQ's
What if we want more support. Can we get private sessions with Gavin?
What do you mean by intimacy?
What if we like to keep our relationship issues private?
We’ve only been together a short time. Is this for us?
Is this open to all sexual orientation couples?
How is Mt. Shasta part of the experience?
Gavin & Joy Sharing About Dating and Relationships
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