Awakening Through the Body Retreat

A 5-Day Retreat for Young Adults Age 18-35

With Corey Hess

At Claymont Retreat Center in Charles Town, West Virginia

October 15th - 19th, 2025

*~Waitlist Only ~*

We invite you to come get into your body and deepen your essence in this powerful retreat with Corey Hess. This is not traditional meditation retreat, but instead a space of exploration where people can deeply investigate what is at the heart of their lived experience through stillness and movement. Together, we’ll explore how to connect with our internal process in diverse ways throughout the retreat, including seated meditation, Zhan Zhuang, Non-Directed Body Movement, walking, and optional touch therapy.

Corey is a trusted and beloved teacher of the Dharma Gates community. His background includes training for many years at Sogenji, a renowned Rinzai zen monastery in Japan, under the guidance of Shodo Harada Roshi. Corey now runs an international energy collective born from his deep experiences in Zen Training. The somatic and energetic methods he teaches are highly supportive to any meditation practice, and the warmth and approachability he brings to his teaching style contribute to his retreats being not only transformative, but fun. We’re thrilled to be hosting him for this unique retreat.

Corey holds multiple online classes weekly. If you’re interested in attending this retreat, we highly recommend joining some of his classes before the retreat. This will help give you a sense of the practices we’ll be doing together, as well as lay the foundation for you to experience a deeper practice throughout the multi-day retreat. If you have any questions about Corey’s online classes or need financial assistance to attend, please reach out to us at team@dharma-gates.org!

This retreat is currently full.

To be placed on the waitlist, please email offerings@dharma-gates.org

About the Teacher

Corey Ichigen Hess spent his twenties training under the great Zen master and energy master, Shodo Harada Roshi.  He was ordained in 2005. Corey brings a physical, embodied, energetic approach to practice. His profound struggles and the necessary creativity of practice brought him unique insights about the cellular process of opening up to reality.  After coming back to society and starting a family, he spent two decades maturing and ripening. Along the way people began to ask questions about their internal process, and his blog and classes began to take shape out of that. Currently, working as a licensed body worker, he leads the Energy Collective, an international group of practitioners, with retreats in Europe and North America. Practices include seated zazen, Zhan Zhuang, Qigong, and Non-Directed body Movement. Classes are fun and lighthearted, no nonsense, energetically palpable and direct.

He lives with his wife and three daughters on an island north of Seattle.

Tentative Daily Schedule

Noble Silence: Please note that we will be practicing noble silence until after dinner each day.

  • 7am - 8am Coffee/Tea Free Practice

  • 8am  30-Minute Wuji / Zazen

  • 8:30am Warm Up and Zhan Zhuang

  • 9am Eight Folded Brocade and/or Movement, Qigong, NDBM, Creative Movement

  • 10am Breakfast

  • 10:30 Morning Walk/Free Practice/Creative Time.

  • 11:15 Touch Exploration (Optional).

    • A really simple touch exploration. Take what you have felt in the ZZ and NDBM and explore that while touching someone else. Try not to think of doing it right or wrong. Examples of touch would be placing your hands on another person’s feet or head or sacrum, fully clothed, for fifteen minutes.

  • 12pm Lunch

  • 1pm Tea and Chat/Practice Discussion

  • 2pm Sitting/Wuji

  • 2:30pm Zhan Zhuang

  • 3pm Free Playing with KI/NDBM

  • 4pm Break

  • 5 or 5:30pm Dinner

  • 6:30-7:30pm Open Question Hour

After, we will have various optional activities going on. At any point, participants can elect to go sit or stand on their own. Sound bath? Music? Fire? More touch aspect? Seiki? Dance? Free movement?  Optional touch aspect or sitting again. 

Let’s use the time creatively. Let’s use the whole retreat as a physical creative exploration. So walking around, cooking, sleeping, sitting on the couch in the evening, playing music, making tea, etc all as a physical integration exploration.

These practices are powerful.  Don't be a hero. Find the pace where you can meet the energy and work with it.  This is a whole practice in itself.

This will be a very warm and inclusive atmosphere.  A time to explore with the safety of a supportive container.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • No. All experience levels are welcome, including beginners.

  • Nope. You do not have to be Buddhist to participate in this retreat. Corey Hess’ teachings are rooted in his Zen Training and include ways of relating that may be challenging for some. The invitation is to encounter the teachings, to build confidence in the teachings as we verify them in our experience, and to maintain a healthy, open, discerning, and inquisitive mind towards what we cannot verify in our own experience.

  • The retreat is run on a donation basis in the spirit of dana. There is no required attendance fee. We ask that participants give a deposit of $100 in order to claim your place at the retreat. This deposit is returned back to you at the end of the retreat unless you choose to donate it. We keep your deposit in the case that you don’t show up, or you cancel within 3-weeks of the start of the retreat. For this retreat, that’s end of day, 5pm, EST August 20th.

    We ask you to donate the amount that feels appropriate and generous for you, given your situation and desire for Dharma Gates to continue to exist in the future.

  • Noble silence will be practiced until after dinner each night, when we’ll gather for an evening activity.

  • The food served at the retreat will be vegan. If you have specific allergies or requests, please let us know. We do our best to able to accommodate all dietary requests.

  • The 5 precepts are training guidelines as the foundation of sīla (ethics). Throughout this retreat we will all be maintaining the 5 precepts so that we can we can practice in harmony.

    1. I will not engage in physical violence or intentionally cause bodily harm to myself or others

    2. I will not steal or damage other people’s property.

    3. I will refrain from forced, coercive, or non-consensual sexual contact or any other form of sexual harassment against others. For this retreat we will be practicing celibacy.

    4. I will not intentionally insult or verbally abuse others.

    5. I will not consume intoxicating substances including, but not limited to, alcohol, marijuana, psychedelics or any other illegal substances.

  • Dharma Gates wholeheartedly welcomes people of all cultural, ethnic and racial backgrounds, sexual orientations, and gender identities. There will be gender neutral bathrooms available and we may be able to provide single rooms if that would make you more comfortable. Our aim is to make retreat practice accessible to all young people—if there’s something we can to do help you feel comfortable to attending, please do not hesitate to reach out to us (team@dharma-gates.org.)

  • This retreat will be at the Claymont Retreat Center in Charles Town, West Virginia. The address is 667 Huyett Rd., Charles Town WV, 25414.

    Dharma Gates will provide a spreadsheet for participants to self-organize ride shares.

  • Arrival: Please arrive between 2:00pm - 4:30pm on Wednesday, October 15th. It is important you arrive during this window so you can go through the check-in process before the evening activities begin.

    Departure: The retreat will end at 1:00pm on Sunday, October 19th.

  • We ask that everyone who attends wears modest loose clothing, with subdued colors, prints, and minimal/no words for the duration of the retreat.

    We ask you to bring fragrance-free products to support those with fragrance allergies or sensitivities.

  • We are no longer requiring testing for Covid-19. We are still committed to the safety and health of the retreat container. The intention is to move towards a culture of taking care of ourselves and others by self-monitoring symptoms, and reducing transmission of any possible sickness.