The Fine Art of Retreat Leadership
A live virtual training for yoga and wellness leaders ready to lead retreats with clarity, care, and staying power.
with Jill & Michael Knouse
Live on Zoom · Attend from anywhere in the world · Dates announced soon
Lead retreats with clarity and care — without losing money, burning out, or learning the long, lonely way.
Dates announced soon.
Get on the interest list:
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Who this is for
This is for yoga teachers and wellness leaders who feel the pull toward retreat leadership and want to step into it for real. Not someday. Not when it’s perfect. But with honest insight, real structure, and the kind of knowing that only comes from having done the work.
Why this training exists
For more than 18 years, Michael and I have been leading retreats, immersions, and facilitated experiences — close to home and around the world. Between us, we’ve guided 65+ retreats and gatherings and welcomed over 1,250 people into experiences built on yoga, leadership, presence, and care — from intimate weekend retreats to large international adventures across Mexico, Greece, Croatia, Costa Rica, India, Africa, and beyond.
Here’s what we’ve learned, again and again: leading a retreat isn’t about a beautiful location or a well-built schedule. Those matter, but they aren’t the work. The work is holding people. Navigating uncertainty. Making hundreds of small decisions in real time. Staying regulated enough that everyone around you can feel safe.
This training exists to hand you what only experience usually teaches — so you don’t have to learn it through trial, error, and isolation.
What makes this training different
Most retreat trainings teach you how to plan a retreat. This one teaches you how to lead one — and how to sustain yourself while you do.
I bring nearly two decades in yoga and embodied leadership, group facilitation, retreat design, and teaching through real-life complexity. Michael brings decades as a business coach, leadership guide, and strategist, helping individuals, councils, and organizations move through growth and hard decisions.
Together we cover both halves of the work:
- the inner craft — presence, discernment, and nervous-system awareness
- the outer craft — clarity, structure, boundaries, and sustainability
A retreat doesn’t just need heart. It needs clear thinking, ethical leadership, and systems you can actually rely on.
And here’s something most trainings won’t tell you: your ideal guest — successful, decisive, adventurous — is often your hardest leadership moment. The qualities that make someone a great guest are the same ones that make them resist surrendering to your design. We talk about that.
A taste of what we actually teach
Most people lead with the destination. They fall in love with Portugal, build a beautiful vision, and then realize they have no one to call. We teach it the other way around. The retreat is not the beginning. The relationship is — the warm list you’ve been quietly tending for years before you ever name a place.
And then: say yes before you know where it leads. You can’t engineer the chain of events that builds this work. You can only keep showing up, doing good work, and staying open to where it goes. The warm list makes saying yes viable. Saying yes grows the list. One flywheel — and it’s where everything else begins.
What experience has taught us — the part most people don’t talk about
Over the years we’ve led retreats through some very real moments:
- an impending hurricane
- a large international retreat where more than a third of the group came down with norovirus
- complex group dynamics and strong personalities
- partners who didn’t follow through the way we’d planned
- retreats that didn’t fill the way we hoped
- financial uncertainty and last-minute pivots
In moments like these, leadership stops being theoretical. You’re holding logistics, communication, care, and decision-making all at once — while staying steady enough that everyone else can feel safe.
Those experiences shaped how we lead, and clarified what actually matters. This training exists so you don’t have to meet those moments alone or unprepared.
What you’ll leave with
- honest clarity on whether retreat leadership is right for you — and right for you now
- why the warm list comes before the venue, and how to build yours
- how to price a retreat so you break even at 60–70% capacity, not a full room
- the legal and insurance floor — LLC, waivers, evacuation coverage — before you take a single deposit
- how to design a retreat with a spine, read a room from day one, and protect your own capacity to care
- how to handle the things nobody talks about: the difficult guest, the retreat that doesn’t fill, the clean way to close a door
- confidence that comes from being prepared, not from performing
In their words
“Jill has been a teacher, mentor, and friend to me for many years, and is someone of deep and true integrity. I reached out to her for guidance when I was beginning to create yoga retreats — a business offering I felt a deep calling to, but also felt intimidated by. I had a hunch she’d be open to sharing her experience, but was delightfully surprised to discover how her clear, practical, and heartfelt support catalyzed the beginning of a retreat business that would become the most joyful and fulfilling work I’ve ever known.
She reminded me of my strengths and helped me trust myself, while also offering a deep well of knowledge from her abundant experience as a teacher and business owner, which gave me confidence and clarity. Most importantly, it helped me feel I wasn’t alone in what I was creating. I am deeply grateful for her mentorship and wholeheartedly recommend working with her.”
— Emily Wright, Infinite Heart
“Working with Jill has been a game changer in my business! I have learned tactical skills, I’ve refined my WHY, and I have a greater sense of confidence in all that I am offering. She provided an unwavering support system through one-on-one calls, weekly prep forms, and session recaps with all my homework concisely organized. She couldn’t have made it easier for me to focus on and tackle the big stuff. While working with Jill I increased my offerings, my revenue, and have a clearer vision of what’s next. My only regret is that I didn’t work with her sooner!”
— Emily Taylor, Emily Taylor Yoga
“Jill’s journal assignments have been masterfully crafted and sequenced — you will find your edges, but that’s where the good stuff happens! I had the pleasure of experiencing one-on-one sessions with Jill. I haven’t met anyone as giving of themselves, their time, and their knowledge — an amazing opportunity to access all of her experience in focused, personalized settings, with that special Jill-style love.”
— DS
“I took a class from Jill at a yoga conference many many years ago and really enjoyed her nurturing voice and her supportive vibe. I’ve been receiving her newsletters ever since — nearly a decade — and when her Forest Bathing retreat came up, I just knew I had to go! Jill brought us all together, along with her team of healers, and made the weekend so much fun, so insightful, inspiring, and nourishing. I highly recommend Jill’s retreats — they are magic!”
— Inga Rouches, River Tree Yoga
The dates aren’t set yet — but the people who thrive in this work tend to be the ones who move toward it before everything is perfect.
When things go wrong — and they will — how you hold that moment is the retreat. That’s what we’re here to teach.
Dates announced soon.
Get on the interest list:
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Prefer one-on-one? We also offer private, customized coaching for retreat leaders — focused, personal time with Jill and Michael, built around exactly what you’re creating.
Email us at Jill@JillKnouseYoga.com and tell us what you’re working on.
