BEAR YOUR SOUL SUMMER CAMP

WEDNESDAY - (Arrivals for Alumni Day Only)

7:00 PM - 8:00 PM: Dinner - Dining Room (circle 6:50)

8:00 PM - 9:30 PM: Sharing Circle - Great Room

THURSDAY - (Alumni Only)

8:30 AM - 9:30 AM: Breakfast - Dining Room

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM: Lunch - Dining Room

THURSDAY (Start of Full Program)

5:00 pm - 6:00 pm  

Welcome Reception - Sun Room
Get acquainted before dinner with non-alcoholic beverages, cheese and crackers.  

6:00 pm - 7:00 pm 

Dinner with our Houses - Great Room (meet at 5:50 for Dinner Circle)  

7:30 pm - 9:00 pm 

Opening Circle - Great Room
Gather to hear about all the exciting things we have planned and set our intentions for the retreat! 

9:30 pm - 10:30 pm

Puppy Pile with Jay Freeman - Temple
A warm and fuzzy clothing-on, non-erotic guided group snuggle and relaxation experience. This is a great way to ease into the retreat with some connection and warmth!

FRIDAY

7:30 am - 8:30 am 

Morning Yoga - with Tim Cooley - Great Room
Join Tim for a yoga practice emphasizing listening to your body. Fine for beginners or more advanced yogis!  

12- Step Meeting - Hunter Reynolds Room
All traditions welcome.

8:30 am - 9:30 am 

Breakfast 

9:30 am - 10:30 am 

Small Groups - Various Locations
Please attend your small group and be on time

11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Yes, No, Maybe & More! - with Shane Scott and Tyler Wansley - Great Room
How do ask for what you want? How do you say YES to what works for you and say NO with kindness and clarity?  How do you deal with rejection? What are some tools to get more connection at the retreat and beyond? We will try to answer some of these questions together through sharing, non erotic touch, and role play exercises! Come open the toolbox! This is a CORE Bear Your Soul workshop. It is recommended that participants attend, especially newcomers. 

1:00 pm - 2:00 pm 

Lunch

2:30 pm - 4:30 pm

Loving Our Bear Bodies - with Goldenheart and Jay Freeman -  Temple
A chance to affirm the beauty of your body and erotic self. Through touch exercises, we will give and receive support and appreciation with our brothers. The workshop involves nudity & erotic touch. This is a core workshop of Bear Your Soul. This is a CORE Bear Your Soul workshop. It is recommended that participants attend, especially newcomers. If you are interested, but apprehensive, speak to your group leader or a host.

5:00 pm - 6:30 pm 

Erotic Self Care: The Internal Journey with Jon Carl Lewis - Great Room
Mindfulness is the key to self-care in any aspect of our lives, and self-care is the key to a fruitful, healthy life. Erotic self-care is a mindful approach to the aspects of our lives where we connect most intimately with others, with ourselves, and with God. As we explore our own inner, beautifully complex and shifting landscapes of desire, we can discern which of the myriad forms of relating as whole, embodied persons on a spiritual path make the most sense for us given our particular context, our unique inclinations and highest aspirations. As we care for ourselves in the erotic realm, we heal our own sexual and relational trauma, and create a healthy contagion that allows others—and our whole culture—to reorient away from our broken ways of relating and towards living into God's best dream of the healing and reconciliation of all things. This session will help you explore your own inner, erotic landscape and landscapes of desire using tangible as well as spiritual practices. This session will involve self-touch with no expectation that this self touch needs to be erotic. There will also be no expectation of nudity, although the clothes-optional nature of the weekend festival will be honored. 

The Gravity of Desire with Conjure Bear - Temple
This is a fire magic ceremony disguised as a workshop. We will discuss gravity as the divine force that binds the whole universe together. No gravity, no atoms, no molecules, no sun, no stars, no solar system, no planets, no galaxies, no atmosphere, no cohesion, no life, no cosmos, no thing. That same gravity is expressed as desire in living beings, in us. This ceremony makes space to dip down into our primal desires to discover what it is the universe wants to express through us. That's what natural desire is. And it wants us to make connections, cultivate community, align with the joyful urges of life, heal ourselves and others, and to co-create with it to make our lives and the world a more beautiful and CONNECTED place. And that's what magic does, too. We will create individual intentions as well as a group intention and conclude with some good old-fashioned fire magic. Attendees will receive a special Brighid's flame candle to take the fire magic home with them. 

7:00 pm - 8:00 pm 

Dinner - (meet at 6:50 for Dinner Circle) 

8:30 pm - 10:00 pm

Bear Games: 3-Some with your host Jay Freeman - Great Room
Join our new Interactive Game Show Night. Start thinking about what you might want to share or participate in. We will have forms to fill out for some of the games at the Welcome Reception! The evening will feature: 

• Dirty Laundry - You get to submit shocking facts about yourself and the audience will guess who it is about! 

• Mad Lib Madness - You get to help create and act out a funny scene based on gay classics! 

• Hookup Theater - Submit your funny hookups stories. (You can remain anonymous) Someone will narrate your story while others act it out!

10:00 pm - ??? 

Sauna/Bear Den/Board Games
Our Wood-Fired Sauna will be running and space in the Temple is open to connect, discover, and play! There is also a closet full of games you can play together in the Sun Room!

SATURDAY

7:30 am - 8:30 am 

Morning Yoga - with Tim Cooley - Great Room
Join Tim for a yoga practice emphasizing listening to your body. Fine for beginners or more advanced yogis! 

12- Step Meeting - Hunter Reynolds Room
All traditions welcome. 

8:30 am - 9:30 am 

Breakfast 

9:30 am - 10:30 am 

Small Groups - Various Locations
Please attend your small group and be on time

11:00 am - 12:30 pm 

Enlightened Leadership of The Tao Te Ching with Rev Yolanda - Great Room
We will read a chapter or two (chapters are short) from the Tao Te Ching , translated by Rev. Regina Dawn Akers. After reading we will go into group contemplation (silence) for about 10mins and then share how the reading resonates with each person in the group. We will learn from each other-from the Spirit Field of Wisdom- that already exists in the room and in our hearts. 

The Bacchanalia  - with Conjure Bear - Temple
Ever wanted to join the witches' sabbat, dance around a fire naked, and participate in one of the oldest mystery rites in the world? Dionysus and the Mother Goddess are bringing their Bachanalia to Easton Mountain. This ritual celebrates the life-sustaining forces of nature, ourselves, our ancestors, our elders of place and practice, and the old gods in a true-blue Hellenistic communion. This SEX rite incorporates ancient elements and themes from the Orphic, Eleusinian, and Bacchic mystery traditions with a Conjure bear's dirt sorcery to create an old-style ceremony celebrating nature, desire, ecstasy, lust, passion, creativity, healing, pleasure, play, comfort, joy, and love though a ceremonial exploration of sex and magic. But it's not an orgy. The sex magic comes from auto-erotic self-gratification in the presence of, and in communion with, the other men in our circle. You don't have to orgasm for the magic to work. Just relax and enjoy the lusty part of the ceremony any way that works for you. I have tailored this rite for Bear Your Soul as a celebration of queerness and brotherly love. Dress comfortably and casually or do what the witches did and go full sky clad! It could be a toga party, I guess. Bring a drum, rattle, or some other kind of noise maker, and let's celebrate our bodies, hearts, and spirits with each other around the need-fire in communion with our ancestors, elders of practice, and the Old Ones in their ancient way. 

1:00 pm - 2:00 pm 

Lunch

2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Erotic Self-Care: Sharing from Our Power - Jon Carl Lewis - Great Room
A healthy erotic life begins with our own self-care and exploration of our own desire nature and boundaries. It also involves exploring connections with others in ways that create mutual pleasure as well as mutually satisfying patterns of relating. As we come to explore our own inner, beautifully complex and shifting landscapes of desire, we can discern which of the myriad forms of relating as whole, embodied persons on a spiritual path make the most sense for us given our particular context, our unique inclinations and highest aspirations. This session will help you explore how to relate in satisfying ways with others out of the abundance of love and wisdom you are discovering in yourself. This session will involve role-play and invitations to not-necessarily-erotic touch with other participants according to your individual and mutual comfort levels. There will be no expectation of nudity, although the clothes-optional nature of the weekend festival will be honored.

The Bear Necessities - with Tyler Wansley and Les Wright - Temple
Gay men, and especially bears, are often not aware of our own history and how the culture we thrive in was formed. Typically, it is only through others like ourselves that we get to know queer folks of the past. This workshop is meant to tap into our collective knowledge to see what we know, where we learned it, and how that informs how we see our own identities as gay men and bears.

4:30 pm - 6:30 pm 

Massage a Trios with Adam B. Shapiro and Goldenheart - Great Room
Join us for an erotic massage experience. We will work in trios, each taking a turn on the table, building individual and communal erotic energy. Nudity and erotic touch are required for this workshop. Space is limited, so sign up! 

Dick Decorating Workshop Part 1 with BearPad - Location TBA
Come join BearPad for an interactive art workshop celebrating dicks of all shapes and sizes. Draw your own on a piece of plywood, or have BearPad draw yours for you! [We will be cutting these out of wood for PART 2 - which is Sunday Afternoon] Also, get crafty and collaborate with your bear brethren by decorating a larger than life chode which will be displayed all weekend.

7:00 pm - 8:00 pm 

Dinner - (meet at 6:50 for Dinner Circle) 

8:30 pm - 10:00 pm 

Bearz Got Talent with your host Sapphire - Great Room
It’s time for you to share from your heart with your brothers. You can sing, dance, juggle, read, whatever! Everyone has something to share! Show us what you got! (Signup required)

10:00 pm - ??? 

Sauna/Bear Den/Board Games
Our Wood-Fired Sauna will be running and space in the Temple is open to connect, discover, and play! There is also a closet full of games you can play together in the Sun Room!

SUNDAY

7:30 am - 8:30 am 

Morning Yoga - with Tim Cooley - Great Room
Join Tim for a yoga practice emphasizing listening to your body. Fine for beginners or more advanced yogis!  

12- Step Meeting - Hunter Reynolds Room
All traditions welcome.

8:30 am - 9:30 am 

Breakfast 

9:30 am - 10:30 am 

Small Groups - Various Locations
Please attend your small group and be on time

11:00 am - 12:30 am

Unmasking Masculinity with Ace “Justice” Ricker - Great Room
An interactive workshop, looking at the 'masks' we wear due to what society has deemed masculine and what that may or may not mean to us. Taking a dive into how masculinity has molded us through generations... To acknowledge, discuss and reflect

Behold the Bear with Shane Scott and Wayne Leiss - Temple
This workshop will be an opportunity to challenge the way you see yourself, and how the outside world sees you. Participants will engage in discussion, education, and group exercises that will allow them to begin to look at their own perceptions of themselves and their bodies. You will also be given an opportunity to hear from other people what they see in you, and help you reflect on how you may judge yourself. This will be a workshop where you will be disrobing and will be without clothing.  

1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Lunch

Outdoor BEARFEST

2:30 pm - 4:00 pm - Bearmazing Race  - Adam - Meet in Great Room
4:00 pm - 5:15 pm - Slippy Slide/Dick Decorating 2 with BearPad/Body Painting
5:15 pm - 6:50 pm - Bears Go to the Circus Deck Party featuring live music from Tom Goss, DTL, and more! 

7:00 pm - 8:00 pm 

Dinner - (meet at 6:50 for Dinner Circle) 

8:30 pm - 9:30 pm  

Bonfire Naming Ritual with Laniakea and Conjure Bear - Fire Pit (Meet on Deck)
Your chance to step fully into the tribe, claim your name, and celebrate your brother bears. We will head out to the yard, where we will drum, chant, celebrate and honor everyone! An important ritual of Bear Your Soul you don't want to miss! 

9:30 pm (approx)

Bears in Motion with DJ Sean - Great Room
Immediately following the ritual, we'll head back inside for our dance party celebration! DJ Sean McLaughlin, former 25+ year veteran of "HomoRadio," will get you movin' and groovin' with his big bear boogie! Cooler weather is ready to start creeping in soon, but this party's gonna be HOT!!! Feel free to dress up, raid the drag closet, come as you are, or strip down as bare as you dare, and dance your ass off to a non-stop mix of fresh, fab, and funky flashbacks!

MONDAY

7:30 am - 8:30 am 

Morning Yoga - with Tim Cooley - Great Room
Join Tim for a yoga practice emphasizing listening to your body. Fine for beginners or more advanced yogis!  

12- Step Meeting - Hunter Reynolds Room
All traditions welcome.

8:30 am - 9:30 am 

Continental Breakfast 

9:30 am - 10:30 am 

Small Groups - Various Locations
Please attend your small group and be on time

11:00 am - 12:00 pm

Old Time Gospel Brunch with Rev. Yolanda - Great Room
Join a “God optional, non-denominational musical celebration of love and human spirit

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* Late Night Fun

• The wood fired Sauna will be available each night at 10 pm starting Friday night.

• The hot tub is always available for your use. 

• We have a full closet of games in the Great Room that folks can play together. 

• The Bear Den is a space for adult connection available at 10 pm each evening in the Temple starting Friday. Please use it in accordance with our guidelines and vision which you can read by clicking below.