I’ve watched it happen hundreds of times in my studio.
A client sits across from me for a makeup lesson, face freshly cleansed, and I place my hands on her temples to begin our facial mapping work. Her breath catches. Her shoulders drop two inches. Sometimes tears come.
“I didn’t realize I was holding everything so tight,” she says.
This is what the beauty industry won’t tell you: your skin can’t radiate when your nervous system is vigilant. You can buy every botanical serum, memorize every ingredient list, perfect your facial massage technique – but if you’re applying it all in a dysregulated state, you’re asking your body to do something it physiologically cannot do.
Radiance isn’t a product. It’s a state of being.
And you can’t think your way into that state. You have to be guided there.
From Terrain to Truth: What Regulated & Radiant Teaches
When I created Regulated & Radiant, I distilled 28 years of clinical skincare training, medical spa work, and beauty artistry into one truth: your skin is a terrain, not a problem to fix.
The course teaches you to read that terrain. To understand the five conversations your skin is always having – barrier function, inflammation response, oil production, cellular turnover, microbial balance. To build your personal pharmacy with botanical intelligence instead of marketing promises. To create daily rituals that regulate your nervous system first, apply products second.
You learn the language. You understand the method. You can look at your face in the mirror and finally decode what it’s telling you.
But here’s what I’ve learned after three decades of touching faces, reading skin, and holding space for transformation:
Knowledge lives in your head. Radiance lives in your body.
The Missing Piece: Embodied Prescription
You can watch a video of me demonstrating gua sha. You can read about lymphatic drainage patterns and fascial release. You can understand intellectually that slower, intentional touch signals safety to your nervous system.
But until someone guides your hands on your own face, adjusts your pressure, shows you where you’re unconsciously bracing – you don’t actually know if you’re doing it right. You don’t feel the difference between “doing the technique” and “allowing the release.”
This is why I’m bringing Regulated & Radiant into the sanctuary.
The course is complete on its own. I realize some of us need witnessed, hands-on facilitation to bridge the gap between understanding and embodiment.
Some of us need personalized prescription – not a general protocol, but someone who knows botanical skincare and nervous system regulation looking at YOUR specific skin, YOUR stress patterns, YOUR life circumstances and saying: “Here. This is what you need. Not what worked for someone else. What will work for the terrain you’re living in right now.”
Four Days at the Creek: The Replenish Retreat
Friday through Monday on my Portland sanctuary property. The place I’ve spent this past year building into what my nervous system needed to heal. Imagine a quiet, creek-side sanctuary. Step into the sauna, sit at the Japanese Ashiyu foot soak while sipping tea. Sit around the fire circle, surrounded by trees and chirping birds.
This isn’t a spa experience. This is terrain restoration.
You arrive early Friday morning. Maybe you’re local and drove across town. Maybe you flew in and found a nearby hotel. Either way, you’re walking onto land that’s designed to help your body remember what regulated actually feels like.
We start with sunrise movement. Not rigorous yoga or choreographed dance – just embodied presence as the forest wakes up. Then we gather for the work.
What Happens Over Four Days
Every single practice you learned in Regulated & Radiant becomes hands-on, personalized, and witnessed.
The Shiatsu Facial Massage you watched me demonstrate? I’m guiding your hands on your own face now, adjusting pressure, showing you where you hold tension in your jaw you didn’t even know existed. You’re not mimicking a video – you’re learning to read your own facial landscape.
The Botanical Assessment you studied? We’re doing it together with actual products in front of us. Testing oils on your skin. Watching how it responds in real time. Building your personal pharmacy not from a worksheet but from direct observation of your terrain. You leave with your exact prescription – not a maybe, not a general recommendation. Your specific protocol.
The Mini Facial is where everything integrates. You pre-book your slot, come into my studio, and receive personalized treatment using the method you’re learning. Not as a passive recipient, but as an active participant understanding what’s happening and why.
Beyond Skin: The Full Terrain
But we go deeper than skincare. Because your face is just the surface of a much larger terrain.
Traci Thomsen facilitates the energetics work – Success Codex, elements of Human Design, the patterns that keep you looping through the same cycles. This is about understanding the energy underneath the inflammation, the stress patterns driving the breakouts, the beliefs creating the vigilance.
Angela guides somatic breathwork. Not a specific modality or branded technique – just intelligent breathwork that meets your nervous system where it actually is and helps you move what’s stuck without forcing or performing.
Throughout the four days, we weave in the sanctuary practices: Ashiyu foot soaks, journaling by the creek and tea ceremony. Sauna sessions where heat meets release. Sunset movement as the day closes. A fire ceremony to release what no longer serves.
We provide daytime meals and snacks during retreat hours. Everything you need is here.
The Transformation You’re Actually Seeking
You don’t come to this retreat to learn more information. You come because you’re tired of knowing what to do and still feeling disconnected from your own radiance.
You come because you’ve tried everything:
-the expensive serums & botox/fillers
-the 12-step routines
-the jade rollers & gua sha tools
AND your skin still mirrors back stress, inflammation and exhaustion.
You come because you finally understand that the answer isn’t another product. It’s learning to exist in a regulated state long enough that your body remembers what ease actually feels like.
Four days of co-regulation with other people doing the same work. Four days of being touched with intention instead of urgency. Four days of being witnessed and learning how to assess. Think of this as your custom prescription. We didn’t get it from an algorithm or a quiz. We understand it through your wisdom coupled with three decades of experience reading skin as terrain.
This is how you move from intellectual understanding to embodied practice.
This is how prescription becomes personal.
This is how you finally make everything come together in a way that actually makes sense for how YOU feel and what YOUR body needs to radiate through stress instead of shutting down under it.
What You’ll Receive
Your Welcome Kit includes – hair care matched to your type, exfoliant and vitamin C serums, beauty oil, custom masks and customized skincare, mineral sunscreen, gua sha stone and a journal for integration.
Innersense Hair Kit for your Hair Type
Glo Skin Beauty Exfoliant & Vitamin C Serum Drops
Epionce – Enriched Firming Mask & Skin Care Pack for your Skin Type
Epionce Sunscreens
Journal – Rituals & Wellness by Wilde House Paper – for every order they will plant a tree!
Four full days of facilitation with me, Traci, and Angela. Your personalized skincare prescription session. Your mini facial. Access to all sanctuary experiences. All meals during retreat hours.
What’s not included: accommodation. If you’re traveling, you’ll find lodging nearby. If you’re local, you’ll arrive each morning and return home each evening.
Investment & Next Steps
The Replenish Retreat is four FULL immersive days.
You’ll understand your terrain. You’ll have your prescription. You’ll know what your skin needs and how to give it exactly that without second-guessing or chasing the next promised solution.
What to Bring
Comfortable layers for Pacific Northwest weather that changes fast. Swimsuit for sauna sessions. Water bottle. Journal and pen. Any medications or supplements. Movement clothes that work wet or dry – we’ll be near the creek. Sandals that can get wet.
Your willingness to be seen, guided, and supported.
Your readiness to finally stop performing and let yourself be held by this work.
The Wait List will open soon! If you’re signed up for my newsletter you have priority notification when registration goes live. The sanctuary is ready. Your prescription is waiting. Come home to your terrain.
