EMBODIED AWAKENING INTO UNIQUE SELF
A Journey of Remembering, Recognizing, and Emergence
A four-day somatic retreat for people who are done understanding awakening and ready to live in it
May 28–31, 2026 · 10 Participants · Lodging & Meals Included · $995 Early Bird
You've done the work. Meditation, therapy, maybe breathwork or plant medicine. Something real has opened. You've had the glimpse — the moment where separation dissolved, where you felt the ground of something larger than your story.
And then you came home. And the glimpse faded. Not because it wasn't real, but because it lived in your mind and never fully landed in your body.
You're left with a gap. Between what you've seen and how you actually live. Between what you know to be true and what your nervous system believes. Between the teaching that says you are not separate and the chest that still tightens in the same old ways.
Most retreats offer you more understanding. More concepts. More maps.
This one asks your body to become the territory.
THE RETREAT
Embodied Awakening into Unique Self
This is a four-day residential retreat that weaves three streams of practice into a single embodied arc: the Unique Self realization teaching of Marc Gafni, the recognition practices from traditions across the globe, and the somatic intelligence of Core Energetics. Over four days, ten participants move from the gap between knowing and living into direct, bodily realization of who they already are.
If those names are unfamiliar, don't worry — you don't need to know them to benefit from this work. If they're deeply familiar, you'll find a level of integration here that you haven't encountered elsewhere. The retreat is designed to meet you where you are and take you somewhere your body has been waiting to go.
May 28–31, 2026 · Spring Forest Community, Hillsborough, NC · Led by Ronen Goddard, PhD, CCEP · Lodging and plant-based meals included.
“Working with Ronen has been an amazing experience! Ronen has such a great understanding of what I needed, right from the start. He’s really skilled at intuiting how my body needs to move through blocks and discomforts, which has really helped me open up and discover what was previously blocked or unmaintained. Ronen knows how to guide you back home, and he’s a master at seeing the underlying desires that you’re searching for and bringing them to light. I highly recommend working with him - you won’t be disappointed!”
“Incredible. There are a few times in my life that I am speechless, and this is one of them. Beyond grateful to be able to work with Ronen. He has helped me during my healing journey, and am truly wowed.”
“Dr Goddard was able to help me unblock the life force in me that was stuck. I felt stuck! Now I tingle with energy and hope and connection. I had lost my connection. I feel more like myself than I have in many years and it is wonderful!”
WHAT MAKES THIS DIFFERENT
Three practices that don't usually live in the same room
Unique Self Realization Most non-dual teachings stop at True Self — the recognition that separation is an illusion, that you are the One. That's real and important, but it's incomplete. Unique Self teaching, developed by Marc Gafni, takes the next step: the One is having a you experience. You are not separate from the whole, and you are irreducibly, specifically you. This retreat doesn't just teach that distinction — it creates the conditions for your body to discover it directly.
Recognition Practices Drawn from a treasure trove of what are known as “recognition practices” across lineages, including Kashmir Shaivism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, these practices work with a radical premise: awakening isn't something you achieve. It's something you recognize — something already happening that you've been overlooking. The practices are simple, direct, and body-based: noticing moments when your stories weaken, when sensation becomes more vivid than narrative, when awareness recognizes itself.
Somatic Intelligence Core Energetics is a body-centered therapeutic modality that works with the connection between physical tension, emotional holding, and the patterns we build to protect ourselves. In this retreat, it serves as the ground: we don't just talk about false selves and true selves — we locate them in the body, feel where they live, and discover what happens when the body is given permission to release what it's been holding.
These three streams aren't offered as separate workshops. They're woven into a single practice field — 60% experiential and embodied practice, 25% relational work (dyads, witnessed speaking, small groups), and 15% teaching to orient the experience. Pedagogy exists to point. The real work happens in your body.
A word about "somatic": in the Kashmir Shaivism tradition that informs this retreat, somatic means that every dimension of experience — sensation, emotion, desire, thought — is a valid doorway to recognition.
This is not an intellectual framework. It is a somatic one — a lineage of awakening through the body, not despite it.