375 Panterkill Road PO Box 70 Phoenicia, NY 12464 United States
November 19 - 22, 2026
About this Retreat
Melissa Kaplan, MPA, AACEP, is a somatic practitioner and spiritual activist. She is a Senior Faculty member at the Institute of Core Energetics and Embodied Relationship Mentor based in New York City and Upstate New York. In her private practice with individuals, couples and groups, she believes that eros is the awakening force that transforms our defenses, our negative beliefs, distorted feelings, and disconnection from animism. Her group work is emergent, relational and emphasizes intimacy across difference. She works with trauma that is held in the body in order to increase our capacity for pleasure and ground in our true selves so that we may step into our most expansive and rooted emotional leadership. She teaches self-intimacy through body, spirit, emotion, and connection to land. Melissa is an alumna of Harvard Business School with a focus on Executive Leadership and holds a master’s degree in Public Administration. Melissa was an international CEO for more than a decade and brings her extensive cross-cultural experience into her practice. She is an author and graduate of the Orphan Wisdom School.
Sanjay is Armenian, born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and currently lives in the Hudson Valley, New York.
He is a Somatic Therapist in private practice since 2016. Trained in Bioenergetics and Core Energetics, both body-based psychotherapy modalities. He also trained at the Radical Aliveness Institute, which specializes in systemic complexity and group work.
He is currently an Associate Faculty member and serves on the Ethics Committee at the Institute of Core Energetics in New York.
He teaches internationally as a Junior Faculty Member at the Netherlands Institute of Core Energetics.
Details of this retreat
Intimacy on all levels — with self, with others, with all beings
Please follow this link for registration and an interview.
Sanjay and Melissa are launching the next level of their Emergence Group: The Intimacy Project. Three residential intensives in the Hudson Valley, NY, over a period of seven months. One committed group of humans who want to go deep into themselves, and with each other. Small group practices in between retreats to deepen the work and the connection between group members.
Intimacy = in-to-me-see. In our modern culture, the word intimacy is often associated with a romantic situation or couple. Sanjay and Melissa are using this word differently. To them, intimacy is the proximity you have in any given moment with your present-moment experience — with yourself, with any other person, and with the world that surrounds us. This is what they intend to cultivate, with a group of willing humans who want to know themselves and break through their own self-imposed barriers.
Returning again and again as a circle builds the trust needed to go to places unknown — exactly where something more true begins to emerge. As leaders, Sanjay and Melissa bring specific themes for the group to explore, staying responsive to where the group's own intelligence wants to go.
The group will draw on a rich toolkit to guide this exploration — Core Energetics, Radical Aliveness, Bioenergetics, Family Constellations, and Circling. Each modality offers its own doorway into presence: some work through the body, some through direct relational encounter, some through the ancestral patterns we carry from our families of origin. Together, they offer a full-spectrum practice for meeting what's real.
Schedule:
Thursday, November 19
3 - 6 pm Arrival, Check-In, and Registration
6 - 7 pm Dinner
7 - 9 pm Opening Session
Friday, November 20
8 - 9 am Breakfast
9:30 am - 12 pm Morning Session
12:30 - 1:30 pm Lunch
2 - 5:30 pm Afternoon Session
6 - 7 pm Dinner
7 - 9 pm Participant Led Evening Activities (Optional)
Saturday, November 21
8 - 9 am Breakfast
9:30 am - 12 pm Morning Session
12:30 - 1:30 pm Lunch
2 - 5:30 pm Afternoon Session
6 - 7 pm Dinner
7 - 9 pm Participant Led Evening Activities (Optional)
Sunday, November 22
7 - 11 am Check-Out of Rooms
8 - 9 am Breakfast
9:30 am - 12 pm Morning Session
12:30 - 1:30 pm Lunch
2 - 4 pm Final Session and Departure
*Please note this schedule is subject to change.
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