Friends,
This retreat is about not being the only weirdo in the room.
Everyone here will be the weirdo in the room - including your two teachers. Just like there's been a small revolution in meditation spaces where people of colour get to practise together and discover shared experiences and insights, we're hoping to do something similar here for neurodivergent folks.
You can be from any background, any age, any gender identification or non-identification, any anything. What unifies us is the sense that our brains are wired a bit differently, and that difference has brought both real challenges and real creative opportunities.
Below is how we're holding this retreat. Read through it at your own pace.
(click on the arrows below to expand each section)
This particular space is for neurodivergent folks who already have some experience with meditation.
You do not need a lot of experience, but you do need some. You need to have found something beneficial about meditation or mindfulness, even if your relationship with it is inconsistent, messy, or occasionally infuriating. You need to have found a way in that works for you, at least some of the time.
We are clear about this because both of us are meditation teachers, not clinicians. We are not experts in treating specific mental health conditions associated with neurodiversity, aside from having to figure out how to live inside our own quirky brains. We are not therapists, and there will be no psychotherapists on the teaching team.
If meditation currently feels completely impossible for you, this retreat is probably not the right container. If you sometimes find meditation hard, welcome to the club. We do too. There is a lot to explore around adapting practice to make it more accessible, supportive, and rewarding, and that is very much on the menu.
The real teacher here is you. What you have already learned about meditating, relating, and creatively self-regulating. What you are learning now. And what happens when we share that learning with each other.
Make sense?
Self-understanding is the broadest theme of the retreat.
It comes from meditation, of course, but also from being in relationship with other neurodivergent humans. Hearing how someone else’s mind works often helps us finally see our own more clearly.
This is not a silent retreat, but it is one that respects different needs around silence, stimulation, and social energy.
You can expect:
The idea is simple. When we hear others describe their inner experience, it gives us language and permission to understand ourselves more honestly. Meditation does this too, just more quietly.
Everything here is optional. Truly.
After our first session on Thursday evening, we will have two main teaching and practice blocks per day. One in the late morning and one in the afternoon, with plenty of free time built around them so you can take care of yourself as needed.
These blocks will include:
We will also have a second space available at all times. It is a sensory-safe space where you can stretch, move, journal, make art, lie on the floor, or simply exist without having to explain yourself. Come as often as you like.
If that sounds too contained, the opposite option is also available. The surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains are stunning, with plenty of room to hike, talk, or belt out “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston. This is Ofosu’s favourite song and one of his primary self-regulation strategies while on tour.
Everyone is encouraged to be their own teacher and to trust their instincts about what they need, when. Both of us have found this approach deeply supportive in our own retreat experiences.
This is the heart of the retreat.
Seeing how we are. Accepting how we are. Caring for how we are.
We practise radical self-acceptance, not as a concept, but as something lived and embodied. This is one of the most powerful forces we know for healing trauma and updating all the old shame, fear, and self-loathing wiring that many of us carry.
Meditation leads to insight. Insight helps us communicate more clearly with ourselves and with others. From there, we can begin to design lives that actually support us, rather than constantly trying to correct ourselves.
As self-acceptance begins to land, something surprising can happen. We notice that some of the toughest aspects of our dysregulation are actually secondary symptoms related to fighting with our situations. When we stop fighting, we end up … more regulated. In other words, sometimes the most powerful way to improve a situation is by fully accepting it.
Welcome to the healing paradox of meditation.
The teaching fee is $600 (USD) per person for three days, plus room and board.
We only have room for 50 people. We will not have money for scholarships this time around. Margins are too tight. We are hoping that changes in the future.
We love you, and we also want to be honest about what this is and is not.
Like us, we expect you will have all kinds of mental health quirks. That is par for the neurodivergent course. But if you are in a place of serious dysregulation and instability right now, you probably are not going to benefit from three days in the woods, looking at your own mind, surrounded by a bunch of kooks.
If that is you, we would rather you get the support you need first, and come join us at a time when this kind of retreat can actually help.
Ok friends. That is the retreat.
This has been a long, rambly ADHD explanation, but screw it, that's how Jeff's mind works. Ofosu's preferred love language is the hip hop lyric. You will get to hear some of that too, once in a relaxing afternoon sound bath, and again in an evening concert. Neurodivergent used to just be called being an artist, after all.
There may also be an optional dance party on the last night, where everyone will be forced to bear witness to Jeff's alarming “electric hummingbird” dance moves.
We look forward to practising with you.
Jeff and Ofosu and Rachel and Matt
📍 Location: Art of the Living Retreat Center, Boone, North Carolina
🗓 Dates: July 16 - 19, 2026
Registration is now open.