"Queer People Need Spaces to Recalibrate." | Queer Retreats

Facilitator Ora Özer shares why LGBTQ+ wellness experiences like Queer Retreats are so important.

Ora is a community strategist at Omek, and a founding member of Periferia Cimarronas, an Afrocentric creative space and theater in Barcelona. She is a certified meditation teacher and coach, a seasoned D&I consultant with over a decade of experience in the film industry, and has extensive experience as a mentor and facilitator. Ora supports creatives, leaders, and changemakers in crafting bolder and bigger visions for the future and walk the steps to reach them. Her mission is to restore agency to those who've lost it and to foster and nurture communities where we learn, support each other, and collectively craft a shared vision of a thriving world that embraces us all.

As a Queer Retreats facilitator, Ora was kind enough to share with us their perspectives on why wellness spaces like Queer Retreats are so important for the LGBTQ+ community.

[Retreats] are a time where you can walk away from the world, work on something and then come back to the world with something changed within you. It's a very unique opportunity. - Ora Özer

I remember as a teenager in a fast-paced world, dealing with studies and exams, I felt like life was like a train and I wish it stopped at some point, just so I could catch a breath. And then I found meditation and it was the first time that I felt, this is stopping the train. I stop the train... Retreats are the next level, this is really stopping time. It's enough to go back to the world and feel recharged. - Ora Özer

Ora reflected on how important it is for LGBTQ+ individuals to feel able to show up as their full selves. In a holistic wellness space especially, feeling the need to compartmentalise aspects of our self will limit our ability to recharge and connect with ourselves and others. While our participants come from all different walks of life, their shared queerness creates commonality across life experiences and as Ora explains, this often creates a sense of instant safety.

The tendency with minorities is that our struggle tends to overpower the conversation. There's such a focus on what's painful, what needs to change, what needs to move forward. And that is very important, I'm not saying it's not. What I'm saying is we need spaces to recalibrate, to rebalance, to show ourselves that beauty also belongs to us. Queerness is not just fight and survival. - Ora Özer

If you’re a queer professional or leader feeling the weight of burnout, isolation, or the need to reconnect to your purpose—our wellness experiences are built with you in mind. Find your retreat.

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