The Olive Grove Retreat 2027
May 6-13 & May 13-19
Ready To Be Inspired For Your Next Season? To Begin or To Finish Your Book?
Good! because Your muse is here, and she wants to help you.
From ancient times, the Olive Grove has been a source of food and ritual, light and healing. She’s a Change Maker, and the home of Muses—all nine of them. As soon as you walk into this grove on the island of Lesvos, you’re in the presence of mythic & practical magic that nurtures your creative growth. That’s just the way it is.
If you hear the call, come to meet us on the island.
Join us for a one (or two) week retreat filled with Creative Transformations. And really great food.
The Olive Grove on Lesvos offers us Muse Time.
With guidance and a light touch, the trees (and Karen, and the group circle) help each participant return to creative work and play. Bring it: whatever you need to do, to change, to make. Greece has been famous for transformative flow states for millenia.
Here, writing and making art is not a decorative option, nor a painful struggle. In the Greek ethos, it’s part of life. It’s play. And good medicine. And as deep as the sea herself.
People who come to the Olive Grove want to begin a new chapter, metaphorically and literally. We enter this field together; newness and change are part of Spring on the island.
An established writer, hesitating before a difficult project, began anyway. Within a year post-retreat, she’d written the first solid draft of her new book. Another woman wrote directly through a long fear-filled writer’s block. And finished her book in months.
One returned from a dangerous tunnel of grief to re-enter her life and creative process as a song-writer. Another discovered what it feels like to be celebrated & accepted just as she is. Her body and physical pain levels changed in dramatically positive ways.
Who is this for?
writers, poets, artists, crafters, from professionals to beginners who are committed to writing / making art in their own olive tree studio
women who are ready to reconnect with their creative power and focus
women who want to learn a mixture of neuroscience-based techniques and simple, ancient rituals to aid in their creative (& bodily) health
women who want to cultivate a mythic and sacred connection to art-making and play in the Grove.
The island of Lesvos has inspired painters, writers, philosophers & scientists from antiquity all the down to you and me.
Ancient history is alive when you’re on the land; it’s right now. Your company here is a few like-minded humans . . . and thirty beautiful trees near the village of Eresos on the Aegean Sea.
The Olive Grove Retreat makes space for you as a woman, an artist, a being in the midst of growth, like the Spring-singing earth around us.
Each day begins with a walk into the grove, to your chosen tree. Each participant has a table, a chair, and a place to lie down.
When you walk up into the grove, where will you be?
Which olive tree is yours? Come and find out.
Group is limited to eight participants.
What You Will Learn
A combination of practical & creative theory classes to help you leap or step back into your creative process.
Writing-wise: Thematic Resonance. Skillfull techniques to build setting, character and narrative power, through a lens of self-&-other inquiry. Somatic visualizations that aid the creative process.
Psychodynamic/Self-wise: Master classes in nature-based trance for self-hypnosis. A seminar in Observed and Experiential Integration (OEI) a somatic and nervous system healing method, ideal for gifted & creative empaths.
Within the group, receive coaching/direct instruction on your creative work and resources, including resolving procrastination, stuckness and creative (family) wounds.
Emotional support. While the retreat is not ‘therapy,’ work and play in the Grove is healing.
A fun day trip with sea views from a mountain and a cave.
The Sea. Quiet. Starlight. Olive oil from your own tree.
Organizational details
We provide transfers to and from Mytilene airport.
Participants stay in a sweet seaside hotel very near the sea. All rooms are single, well-equipped, with double beds. The hotel is small, very clean and family-run.
We meet in the Grove each day. Learning time takes place daily from 10:00 am to 2 pm (This includes your catered communal lunch hour).
On Day One, guests are welcome to a complimentary dinner in the Grove or in the village. At Retreat’s end, you also receive a complimentary farewell dinner.
Breakfast is available at a nominal charge at the hotel. Dinners are served at reasonable prices in Skala Eresos, the sea-side village close to the Grove.
For Two Week participants, simple lunches in the Grove are provided, as well as a closing dinner (excluding orders of fancy fish & alcohol.)
The second week is a Creation Week (no structured classes) offered at a significantly lower cost.
NOTE: You must cover your air-tickets and travel health insurance. All participants must have health insurance for this trip.
Early Bird Price for one week, available until Nov 20, 2026
$4800 CAD
(approx $3400 USD)
The Early Bird Price can be secured with a $1000 CAN deposit by Nov. 20.
Sea view rooms are given to those who sign up first.
Payment plans available.
Regular Price for one week, available after Nov 20, 2026
$5300 CAD
(approx $3760 USD)
Sea view rooms may be available; land view rooms are also just steps from the sea.
For WEEK Two, add
+$3000 CAD
Early Bird 2-Week Total:
$7800 CAD
($5530 USD)
After Nov 20, 2026, 2-Week Total:
$8300 CAD
($5880 USD)
Payment plans available.
Love from our retreat participants
“Kaz introduced us to the most extraordinary place, practices, and practical magic in the family grove on Lesvos. I went two retreats in one year, one for creative rejuvenation (I needed it!) and one for writing craft. Kaz and Rob’s Olive Grove is one of the most beautiful, safe and unique places I’ve ever been in my life. My healing and my writing practice both accelerated . . . Thank you!”
Doley Henderson 
“After a year of deep grief after the loss of my beloved, in the grove, I felt invited to unwind, let go and rest into the land, the Olive Grove and to swim in the Aegean Sea. Each day, Karen led us in gentle, deceptively simple exercises in self hypnosis and eye-to-brain self-connection work. These practices regulated and calmed me. They are part of the gift I brought back with me from Greece.
Karen is an excellent guide to the Grove, to Lesvos, to its history and people, and equally seems at home in Greek myths (which often came into our time together). She is at home with metaphor, to working with what interferes with our creative expression in the moment. I count my time on retreat with Karen as a pivotal part of my healing and creative journey.”
Somae Osler
With the help of the Olive Grove Muses, Cynthia Overcomes Writer’s Block
Cynthia was a recent participant (May 2026) and became the (loving) envy of the our retreat group: once unblocked, she wrote every day until she finished her book. It was an extraordinary thing to witness: a woman intent on connecting to her creative voice and power, with the Olive Grove supplying flow, rootedness and inspiration.
More kind words from Doley and Carmen about their experiences.
Would you like to have a Discovery Call to learn more about the retreat?
Reach out and I’ll get back to you within 24 hours.
– Kaz