Offering our signature "Cultivating Joy" Ketamine-Assisted Mindfulness Retreats to couples, individuals, and licensed mental health professionals.
We are dedicated to working with integrity, love, and commitment at all of our retreats. As a team we value and share each other's unique and extensive practice and professional expertise. We value collaboration, honesty, generosity, sharing, kindness and respect for what we each bring into our programs. Together we make an extraordinary team and we hope you'll join our community.
Together we hold the space for participants to explore the inner landscape of their relationships and the innate intelligence and empathy that can emerge when safety and trust are restored. Ketamine, as we have experienced, is one spoke on the wheel. We introduce couples, individuals and professionals to this powerful medicine with respect and recognition that integration, mindfulness and other mind manifesting non drug practices are also important change agents.
Join us for a safe, structured, and deeply nourishing four-day retreat at the intersection of science and spirituality, held in the serene beauty of the Catskill Mountains at Menla Retreat and Spa. This experience is guided by an exceptional team of licensed and experienced therapists and physicians and also serves as a practicum for the Emerging Leaders Program Cohort 2.
Together, we explore the profound landscape of the human experience.
This retreat is open to individuals from all walks of life, whether you arrive with a personal intention, a professional lens, or simple curiosity. All levels of experience are welcome. If you feel called to explore the fullness of your being, your vitality, spirit, trust, openness, and above all, your presence, this may be a transformative weekend for you.
You are invited to come if you carry a deep desire to touch into the heart of grief and loss, and equally, into love and joy within yourself, in connection with others, and in relationship with the wider world.
The structure of the retreat is designed for those ready to deepen their personal growth within a supportive group setting. As human beings with the innate capacity both to heal and to be healers, we will slow down together. We will gently move beneath our defenses and reconnect with emotions we may have set aside in order to survive. In doing so, we rediscover pathways toward self-care, connection, and flourishing.
Ketamine is offered as an optional component across three sessions. When chosen, it can support this process by softening defenses and reducing anxiety, allowing access to stillness, insight, and love. It can open the mind and heart to what lives within, especially in places that may feel distant or forgotten. Many participants experience increased clarity, compassion, and a non-defensive perspective that supports meaningful transformation.
At the heart of this retreat are guided practices, poetry, movement, and skillful, compassionate facilitation. These elements support a return to your own inner intelligence. No matter what arises moment to moment, we each hold an inherent capacity for presence, kindness, and compassion toward ourselves and one another.
As we attune to our shared humanity, something powerful unfolds: the group itself becomes the medicine.
The Cultivating JOY model is emerging as a transformative approach to group work, integrating evidence-based mindfulness practices with experiential and relational healing. This retreat offers a powerful opportunity to reconnect with what matters most and to step more fully into a conscious and purposeful life.
As Jon Kabat-Zinn reminds us:
“There is more right with you than wrong with you.”
Safety is our highest priority. Each participant is carefully screened to ensure readiness for the group experience and the safe, appropriate use of ketamine if chosen. This retreat is not a residential treatment program and is not appropriate for individuals experiencing an acute mental health crisis or unmanaged chronic psychiatric conditions.
Steps to join:
Step 1: Fill out the initial application to attend this retreat. After we receive that, the next step will be to conduct a screening call over Zoom with our Co-Founder and Lead Facilitator, Jayne Gumpel, LCSW (the confirmation email will include instructions on how to book this).
Step 2: If the phone or Zoom screening results in a sense that there is a good fit (mutually decided, of course), you will be asked to make a deposit of 50% of the retreat fee (please note, this does not include the cost of housing).
Step 3: After paying the deposit to confirm your enrollment, you will receive an email with detailed instructions for all your next steps, including scheduling a medical screening appointment, booking housing at Menla Retreat Center, and choosing your Pre-Retreat Preparation Group Video Call with other retreat participants. You’ll also receive a login to our Customer Portal, where you’ll find all this information and more in one place, to help you prepare for the retreat.
This is a safe, structured retreat for couples led by a staff of licensed and highly experienced therapists and physicians in the beautiful Catskill Mountains at Menla Retreat and Spa.
“Joy as medicine, love as practice”
This retreat is an invitation for couples to slow down and deeply celebrate the nuances of their relationship, including aspects of joy and intimacy. Together, you will learn to understand each other’s needs and navigate challenges collaboratively. At the heart of the work is what we call noble communication: clear and compassionate exchange that lays the foundation for healthy relationships. As these skills deepen, couples often discover greater connection, more joy, and a deeper sense of unity.
Ketamine is used here as a tool to explore profound existential realms and open loving communication. We see joy as a core aspect of our being. When unblocked, it enhances not only our intimacy but also our overall health and happiness. Ketamine-assisted sessions are designed to open mental, emotional, and physical channels, allowing participants to meet these parts of themselves with clarity, insight, and acceptance. Mindfulness and meditation are woven throughout the retreat, supporting the ability to regulate emotions and thoughts and to meet each moment with balance and grace. Poetry and art are also offered as supportive practices, opening space for creativity and wonder and helping create the conditions for cultivating joy.
The program deepens personal and interpersonal connection within a group setting. The group is part of the medicine. Structured, meaningful conversations and guided practices support the exploration of relationship and intimacy in a nurturing environment. No prior experience with ketamine or other psychedelic medicines is required, and every couple begins with a screening call to ensure the retreat is a good fit. Preparation and integration are woven throughout the retreat so that what emerges can be understood and carried home into everyday life.
Please note: This retreat is not a short-term residential treatment and is not suitable for anyone experiencing an acute mental health crisis or living with severe, persistent psychiatric conditions. It is also not intended as mediation for couples considering breakup or divorce. Medical Interview required for attendance.
Steps to Join:
Step 1: Complete the retreat application form. Once we receive your application, you’ll get an email with instructions for scheduling a screening call with our Co-Founder and Lead Facilitator, Jayne Gumpel, LCSW. This call will be held over Zoom.
Step 2: If both you and our team feel the retreat is a good fit, we’ll ask you to make a 50% deposit of the retreat fee (note: housing costs are not included in this fee).
Step 3: After your deposit secures your spot, you’ll receive a welcome email with important next steps, including:
You’ll also receive access to the RetreatPortal, where you can find all of this information and more to help you prepare for the retreat.
We appreciate your understanding. Many, many steps go into creating this experience for you.
This is a safe, structured retreat led by a staff of licensed and highly experienced therapists and physicians in the beautiful Catskill Mountains at Menla Retreat and Spa.
“Perhaps aging is not a process of becoming less. Perhaps it is a process of remembering more.”
For much of our lives, many of us have worked very hard to be good: a good daughter or son, a good partner, a good parent, a good professional, a good citizen of whatever tribe we happened to belong to. We were so good at it that we forgot we were performing. The role became the self. Then, without asking permission, the cracks appear. A certainty dissolves. A role no longer fits. And we find ourselves asking a question that refuses to go away: what if this is not the whole story?
This retreat is an invitation to meet that question in community and to discover the unexpected joy of aging. The stories crack, the masks loosen, and beneath it all we find something ancient, something tender, and something surprisingly intact. Not a new self. The self that was waiting all along.
The retreat is open to individuals from all walks of life, ages and all levels of experience, whether you arrive with a personal intention, a professional lens, or simple curiosity. It is designed for those ready to deepen their personal growth within a supportive group setting. Together we will slow down, move gently beneath our defenses, and reconnect with the emotions we may have set aside in order to survive. Awakening contains grief: not because something is wrong, but because something is ending. We will honor the identities that carried us here even as we make room for what is emerging.
Ketamine is offered not as a mandatory component across three sessions. When chosen, it can support this process by softening defenses and reducing anxiety, allowing access to stillness, insight, and love. Many participants experience increased clarity, compassion, and a non-defensive perspective that supports meaningful transformation. Alongside the medicine work, we offer many portals for cultivating joy: meditation, breathwork, poetry, art, and time in the gardens and mountains that surround Menla. These practices open space for creativity and wonder and help create the conditions for cultivating joy.
At the heart of this retreat is the circle. Healing rarely happens in isolation. Wisdom is shared, truth ripens in community, and the group itself becomes the medicine. Again and again we watch the moment of sacred recognition arrive: the realization that we are not alone. So come. Pull up a chair. Bring your questions, your grief, and your joy. The circle is forming, and there is room for you.
Safety is our highest priority. Each participant is carefully screened to ensure readiness for the group experience and the safe, appropriate use of ketamine if chosen. This retreat is not a residential treatment program and is not appropriate for individuals experiencing an acute mental health crisis or unmanaged chronic psychiatric conditions. A medical interview is required for attendance.
Application coming soon. To join the waitlist, email david@relationshipresources.info.
Steps to Join:
Step 1: Complete the retreat application form. Once we receive your application, you’ll get an email with instructions for scheduling a screening call with our Co-Founder and Lead Facilitator, Jayne Gumpel, LCSW. This call will be held over Zoom.
Step 2: If both you and our team feel the retreat is a good fit, we’ll ask you to make a 50% deposit of the retreat fee (note: housing costs are not included in this fee).
Step 3: After your deposit secures your spot, you’ll receive a welcome email with important next steps, including:
You’ll also receive access to the RetreatPortal, where you can find all of this information and more to help you prepare for the retreat.
We appreciate your understanding. Many, many steps go into creating this experience for you.
Jayne is the founder of Relationship Resources LLC. Jayne is a psychotherapist, trainer, and teacher with 30 years of experience working with couples, individuals, and groups in New York City and Woodstock, NY.
Jayne is a professional clinical trainer in Psychedelic Integration Psychotherapy, is a member of the Woodstock Therapy Center’s Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) team, and has completed MDMA-assisted psychotherapy training through the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).
Jayne describes meditation as a core life practice, is a teacher of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, and she includes mindfulness practice as a foundation of her work with clients.
She is additionally trained in Imago Relationship Therapy and Gestalt Psychotherapy. Jayne is a co-founder of accessmindfulness.org, a 501c3, along with her son David. Her passion is supporting clients on their journey towards inner wisdom and healing from trauma to have more rich and satisfying lives and relationships.
David is a co-founder of Relationship Resources and a teacher devoted to presence, connection, and joy. His work rests on a simple belief: when we gather with open hearts, we rediscover our shared humanity and the simple aliveness of being together.
Drawing on psychology, mindfulness, and experiential psychotherapy, David brings steadiness, curiosity, and care to the spaces he leads. He is an Integral Master Coach, a qualified teacher of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) through UMass Medical School, and holds an MA in Psychology from The New School for Social Research. He is also the co-founder of Access Mindfulness, a nonprofit bringing mindfulness programs to schools and youth organizations.
David walks this path in gratitude for the many teachers who have guided him, and for the communities that continue to teach him how to live and lead from the heart.
Saundra is an Adjunct Clinical Affiliate, School of Nursing, at The University of Texas at Austin, and a psychotherapist in private practice. Her research explores the connection between wellness-enhancing practices and improvements in disease and wellness markers, as well as its anti-inflammatory effects. Dr. Jain is a co-creator of the WILD 5 Wellness Program and co-author of a well-received workbook written for those interested in improving their mental wellness, WILD 5 - A Proven Path to Wellness. WILD 5 is an evidence-based wellness intervention that combines five elements of wellness (exercise, mindfulness, sleep, social connectedness, nutrition and positive psychology “practices) into an easy-to-follow program.
Dr. Jain is co-creator of the Psychedelics and Wellness Survey (PAWS) exploring the intersection between psychedelics and wellness. She serves as a member of the Psych Congress Steering Committee providing direction regarding educational gaps/needs for mental health practitioners, and Sana Symposium providing psychedelics education for mental health and addiction professionals.
In her words: “Client care, education, and research light me up. Engaging in group work paves the way for meaningful connections with others and fosters a deeper connection with our authentic selves, forming the bedrock of genuine healing. Embracing a life centered around wellness practices and being part of a supportive community is my path.”
Julia is a Swiss trained psychiatrist and psychotherapist for adults, adolescents and children working for over a decade in a private practice in Geneva, Switzerland. She is a graduate of the CIIS Certificate Program in Psychedelic Therapy and Research (2021 Boston Cohort) and has completed the five-part training in MDMA-assisted psychotherapy with the MAPS organization. She is the Founder of the Compassionate Care Center in Geneva, Switzerland, providing legal compassion focused psychedelic assisted psychotherapy for the treatment of PTSD, depression and existential distress in patients with terminal illness. She turns to poetry as a daily meditative and meaning-making practice. Julia is an avid Wim Hof breathwork practitioner enjoying year round open water swimming in Lac Léman.
Rohini is a Boulder based Board Certified Family Physician. She has served in hospice and palliative care for over a decade, currently as Associate Medical Director at Mountain Valley Hospice and Palliative Care in NC. She completed a fellowship in Integrative Psychiatry through the Integrative Psychiatry Institute, and serves at the Integrative Psychiatry Centers, as well as leading Physician support for the Experiential aspect of the IPI Psychedelic Assisted Therapy Training. She is a hybrid of science, art and sacred, and is always ready to play
In her words “I am called "the patient whisperer" by colleagues. I am a physician who brings insight, intelligence and love to patient care, and humor and innovative thinking to my teams. I am a leader who is deeply present and curious, searching for underlying patterns and concerns to resolve conflict.”
Irina is a board certified Internal Medicine physician and LGBTQ+ health and HIV specialist whose integrative medicine practice, Contemplative Medicine, focuses at the intersection of physical illness, emotional trauma, and spirituality. Irina has supplemented her rigorous medical education with training in Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy with Drs. Phil Wolfson and Bessel van der Kolk, Internal Family Systems Therapy (Level 1), Core Energetics (a somatic psychotherapy modality), and over a decade of Vipassana meditation practice.
Irina grew up in the former Soviet Union in a family deeply burdened with mental illness, violence, and post-Holocaust trauma. Her own healing journey via somatic trauma therapy, Vipassana meditation, and psychedelic-assisted therapy in the US and the Peruvian Amazon opened her eyes to the complex nature of health and illness - complexity reaching far beyond her Western medical education. Irina has come to regard most illness as the body’s attempt to communicate, in an increasingly insistent voice, deep-seated imbalances within. Her clinical approach is one of deep listening and root-level healing of the body, mind, spirit, and ancestry. Irina speaks multiple languages and is passionate about bringing multi-dimensional, tailored healing to individuals, groups, and communities, with a primary focus on populations deeply impacted by systemic violence, poverty, and ancestral trauma.
Irina is an avid hiker, mushroom forager, and adventurer who splits her time between the Hudson Valley and Brooklyn.
Sylvia Rosenfeld LCSW is a licensed couples and sex therapist with three decades of experience. She is also trained in ketamine assisted psychotherapy. At the age of 74 Sylvia married Terry. They are committed to making this the last and best chapter of their lives- spiritually, emotionally, sexually, intellectually, and physically- discovering all the joys of aging.
Donna is a psychotherapist with over 20 years experience working with adults, children, adolescents, couples, and groups. She is the Director of the Woodstock Therapy Center and the Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) Program at WTC.
She is also the Director of a new Ketamine-Assisted Therapy Certificate program. Donna has spent her career working with diverse clients in multiple settings.
Donna’s current private practice includes KAP, Psychotherapy, and Psychedelic Integration Psychotherapy. In addition to KAP training Donna has completed training in MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy for PTSD through the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Donna has a background in the creative arts.
She was a sushi chef, caterer, and enjoys painting and gardening. Donna is inspired in her work as a psychotherapist to help us move toward individual and collective transformation.
Board Certified in Psychiatry. Voted one of the Best Psychiatrists of Tampa Bay in 2022 & 2023 from the Tampa Magazine award program.
Matthias is a board-certified Family Physician with an active practice in the Hudson Valley. Matthias received training in Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy at the prestigious Ketamine Training Institute and is a team member of the KAP team at the Woodstock Therapy Center. Matthias became inspired to do psychedelic psychotherapy work after experiencing indigenous medicine ceremonies in Peru with the Shipibo people. Since then he has deepened his knowledge of shamanic practices with training at The Four Winds Academy. Matthias feels passionately about couples work, particularly using ketamine as a tool for building trust and intimacy.
He has been married 32 years and has raised two children with his wife Susan. They have lived in the Hudson Valley since 1999 after training as a rural physician in the Scottish Highlands. Matthias is a 200h certified yoga teacher and has completed Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) as an active meditator. He has recently became a student in sound healing and enjoys trail running with his two German Shepherds.
Dan is a board-certified psychiatrist in private practice in New York City.
Dan completed his residency at MGH/McLean in Boston, where he received the Hackett Award for academic research. He subsequently completed a public psychiatry fellowship at Bellevue Hospital.
As a former English literature major who gravitates toward subjectivist and hermeneutical understandings of the mind, Dan is a “throwback” to the days when psychiatrists were versed in psychotherapeutic theory and methods, in addition to psychopharmacology. Upon discovering and training in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy since last year, Dan has been most thrilled to work with a medicine that can facilitate and enhance the psychotherapy process.
Dan recently opened a group psychiatry practice in the city called Acheron, where he trains therapists and treats patients using conventional and psychedelic psychiatry methods.
Dan lives in Park Slope with his spouse Amanda, a neuropsychology professor at Cornell Neurosurgery, and his two young sons, Jonah and Gabriel.