Vegan Wellness Retreat Ohio | Nature, Art & Healing | Raven & Dustin

Link for the show notes

In today’s episode, we’ll be talking to Raven Morgan and Dustin Weatherby, the creators of Raven’s Retreat Hocking Hills in Ohio.

Raven’s Retreat is an adults-only, vegan-friendly retreat center set on 58 acres of nature preserve, where wellness, creativity, sustainability, and time in nature all come together. Raven and Dustin will be sharing how they created this intentional space, what guests can experience during a retreat, why creativity is such an important part of wellness, and how their work helps people reset, reconnect, and recover from burnout.

We’ll also hear about the beautiful Hocking Hills area, including nearby places like Old Man’s Cave, Rock House, and Conkles Hollow State Nature Preserve.

There are a lot of resources and places we talk about in this episode, so make sure you look at the show notes and the blog post for this episode to get all the details.

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Transcript

Ep 235 - Raven and Dustin - Raven's Retreat Hocking Hills
Cleaned transcript
Brighde: [00:00:00] Welcome, Raven and Dustin, to the World Vegan Travel Podcast.
Raven: How are you doing?
Dustin: Thank you.
Brighde: I'm doing just great, and I'm so excited to have you on the podcast to talk about a wonderful vegan travel experience that you guys have put together and run. Would each of you mind sharing a little bit about yourselves and Raven's Retreat Hocking Hills Retreat Center?
Dustin, would you like to start?
Dustin: We come from a martial arts background, and we have since turned our focus onto wellness. We created this space down here in the Hocking Hills of Ohio. It's focused on helping people become the best version of themselves. We take people from rock bottom to just wanting to tighten up a few things.
We integrate a whole lot of experiences, whether it's creative activation, which is like sculpture-type workshops, trying to get them to foster their creative thinking, [00:01:00] which influences a lot of other things in their life, whether that be in fitness, their job, or just their everyday lives.
Brighde: Wow. Raven, would you like to add to that?
Raven: Yeah. I mean, he covered it pretty well there. People come to us for different reasons, but essentially, it's a space where art, nature, wellness, and sustainability are all merged as one, and they work as one unit. It's kind of like overall wellness. Some retreat centers are all about their yoga or things like that, but if you don't integrate creativity and ignite creative thinking, you're not using all parts of your brain.
And then, with sustainability, that's really important too, whether it's sustainable habits within your lifestyle or how you interact with the environment. We lead by example. We try not to be preachy, but when people come here, typically they're like, "Wow, you guys do things a lot differently."
And we're like, "Yeah."
Brighde: What inspired you to create Raven's Retreat Hocking Hills?
Dustin: Raven, do you want to take this one?
Raven: Okay. So, my family comes from a background where [00:02:00] I've got a lot of environmentalists. But aside from that, my younger brother actually died by suicide, and that kind of set our family through a spiral of destruction, basically. And I always tell people, "You never know who is ill."
Most people are kind of in survival mode. We're all kind of animals, and we're masking it. Overall, we don't want it to get to that point. So, whether someone just needs a burnout reset or a creative reset, or they're just trying to connect with their partner or themselves, we want to be a space for that, and our spaces are extremely intentional.
When it comes to food and some of our values, we weave vegan values into the way we run our space because we would never do anything with our guests or suggest anything with our guests, lifestyle, food, anything like that, that we wouldn't do in our own lives.
So it's really important that we lead by example. And like I said, we kind of veer away from being preachy, but we do lead by example with our fitness, with our lifestyle, quality sleep, and things like that.
Dustin: So we didn't want to just be like a [00:03:00] cabin in the woods for people to stay at. We wanted to take it a step further and help people become better versions of themselves, whatever that looks like.
Brighde: So what is a retreat like when they come to you? I'm imagining that it's at least a couple of days, and that you have a program every day. What kind of activities could people experience during their time with you?
Dustin: A typical retreat looks like this: we give them an integration time when they first get there and get kind of settled in. And then, the first morning, we start with some movement, trying to get the blood flowing.
We have in-house chefs that we bring in, and we give them optimal nutrition after their exercise so that they're able to heal up quickly. Then they also have rest times. And we will take them out into the woods and show them what types of foods they can eat when they're wild foraging.
Basically, we cater each [00:04:00] experience that we have to our retreat attendees and what they need. So we do have kind of a base retreat format, but it kind of slants toward whatever that person needs, whether it's burnout, or maybe it's somebody who is focused on wanting to lose weight or get fit.
We also have an integration time at the end of the day where they can rest. We also have other experiences like sound baths and forest bathing. We have another person that we've partnered with for that, and he's very good at what he does also. Basically, it's like heightening people's senses and using nature to heal themselves.
Brighde: Oh my goodness, that sounds absolutely wonderful. I think most of us could say that we are really trying to connect with nature more, and having a retreat to be able to really mindfully and intentionally do that sounds like something that so many of us need. How many participants do you usually have on your [00:05:00] retreats?
Raven: So, for a day retreat, we do off-sites for companies, work groups, and kind of niche groups. So I'm going to kind of work my way down with the numbers. We don't take more than 30 a day for an off-site, like a work off-site. And the reason why we don't is because, with too many people, we can't optimize our experience as well.
We want to make sure we get with everybody. As well as that, it can cause a little stress on the nature preserve. So we are a wildlife release site for animals that have been rehabilitated, whether they're orphaned or they've just... So first things first, we are a nature preserve, but within that nature preserve, we have humans that visit.
And when they come down here, usually they do pretty well. But sometimes there are some extra guidelines that they're like, "Oh, I never thought about that." And we're like, "You know, it's just a lot of things you don't think about." So, 30 people if it's an off-site, 30 people if it's a wedding, a micro-wedding, or an elopement.
It has to be eco-friendly and eco-conscious. [00:06:00] As we go down in numbers, when it comes to retreat groups, let's say it's a men's retreat or a women's retreat, we don't take more than 18 in our sleeping spaces. We have sleeping for 18 in 12 separate single beds, and we don't have any bunk beds. It's an adults-only space, so we focus on adults.
So that's with the larger groups. But we also do a lot of solo retreats and couples' retreats. So we use our bungalow for that, and that's a perfect space. It's almost like a wellness fort there when people stay there. We've had extremely good results with those people. So I guess it goes 30, 18 at max, then a lot of the groups, where there are 12 single beds, and then it can go down to one or two people as well.
So we have some diversity.
Brighde: Can you tell us a little bit about how you have decided to make this land that you are on a nature preserve? Dustin, would you share?
Dustin: Yeah. I mean, that's our primary focus: taking care of nature and those animals that don't really have [00:07:00] the decisive power of humans. Humans can kind of come in and shape things, excavate, all that type of stuff. We want to work symbiotically with nature so that we can basically weave the human experience in with them.
And so that's how we developed everything. It was in a symbiotic fashion with nature so that we're just trying to leave a light footprint when it comes to our preserve.
Brighde: I love it. And how much land do you have? I'm guessing you're surrounded by other forest or other land as well, but how much land do you have?
Dustin: It's 58 acres.
Brighde: Ooh, that's a lot.
Dustin: Yes. There's a lot going on at once.
Brighde: I'm very much in awe of people who decide to carefully and intentionally take over large swathes of land and try to keep it as natural as necessary, because I know it is not just a case of letting it go and letting it be. It [00:08:00] really needs to be carefully looked after in order to become a healthy ecosystem and a healthy home for wild animals.
So respect to you for that. May I ask you, Raven, what is the food experience like?
Raven: We have people that we partner with for catering, and then we have some chefs. So I'd say I have three main groups that I look for when it comes to bringing a chef in. There's a man up in Columbus; he runs the only, I think I'd say, the only plant-based butcher shop in the Midwest.
And he does very well. He makes all those products, and people really like them. So, when it comes to people who aren't used to eating a lot of plant-based options, he's a great option to transition them to some of the flavors and textures that they're used to. Then we have a place nearby called The Well.
They make a lot of natural foods. Now, not everything they serve is vegetarian or vegan, but a lot of it is. [00:09:00] So I lean on them for some options as well. And there's also a place in Columbus called Portia's Cafe that several of our guests have gotten some food brought down from, and our guests really like that place as well.
And I know that for some of our guests, it's almost like we have to be careful. If they perceive it as things are too healthy, they might not like it. But we've had 100% success with these places so far, so we're pretty happy.
Brighde: That's amazing. And I'm guessing you provide three meals a day plus some snacks or something like that. And another thing I'm curious about is if you have alcohol on-site, or have you decided to make it alcohol-free?
Raven: Yeah. A lot of times, for a lot of retreats, we actually feed them twice a day. Often, we want to encourage them to fast a lot of their days. A lot of people tend to eat potentially more than they need. So we like to work them out in the mornings.
Now, if they have some type of health concern, like [00:10:00] some type of diabetic or metabolic issue, that's another story. We do house snacks, so it's free-flowing with the snacks. They're always plant-based. But additional to that, typically, we're feeding people... We usually do a brunch and a dinner.
And like I said, there are unlimited snacks, so there's that.
Dustin: And we're not really an alcohol-free place. If someone were to bring their own retreat in here and that was something that they were doing, I guess we don't wear that alcohol-free on our sleeve, but we don't provide it for anyone.
Brighde: Right. So if I understand you well, you run your own retreats, but your center is also available for a retreat host to come and run their own retreat and just use the facilities that you have, I guess. I love it.
Okay, so something I'm curious about is this area of Ohio and the Hocking Hills, because when you mentioned it earlier, it made me think, [00:11:00] the way you're saying it makes me feel like this is a famous place, and I just don't know about it. So can you maybe orient me a little bit about this part of the world?
Dustin: Ohio in general is kind of like a swing state where it goes back and forth from conservative to liberal, depending on who's running for office or whatever. But this particular area of Ohio is more conservative. It's farmers, it's hill people, things like that, and we're kind of like a small vegan oasis in there.
So that's why we make sure that we can contain our experiences here so that we can foster that vegan lifestyle for our retreat attendees. But people around here are very friendly.
Brighde: Okay. And is it close by to some larger towns and cities?
Dustin: It's 1.5 or 1.7 miles, technically, to our small town of Laurelville, and there's a grocery store there in town, a gas station, a mill, and things like that.
Brighde: Okay. And I'm curious, Raven, are you able to share any stories of transformation that your retreat participants have had?
Raven: One thing I might [00:12:00] mention as he was kind of changing the topic there is, we're really close to a really famous park, Hocking Hills State Park. But part of that is Old Man's Cave, and people kind of go crazy over that. There are very big caves, and we're really close to Rock House and Conkles Hollow State Nature Preserve.
A lot of waterfalls, a lot of caves. It's very difficult to believe this is even in Ohio.
Dustin: So one of the recent retreats that we've had was from a lady who works for P&G, which is a big company. She's basically an engineer who leads other engineers.
She also takes care of her son, who is bipolar, and he's also in college now and has done some pretty bad things to other people. And so she's being pulled in so many different directions. She came here for a burnout retreat, like a nervous system reset.
And what we had done with her is I had a creative activation with her, where I prefabricate pieces for a sculpture, so it makes it [00:13:00] fail-safe no matter how they are to put it together. But then they get to orient it how they want and make it their own. And she hasn't really used that creative part of her brain as far as something like that, where she didn't feel like she was in all these guidelines, you know what I mean, with her work.
And so she also did a digital detox while she was here, and I was putting her through exercises each morning. She was getting fed great food that she... She actually is not a vegan person, but she was very appreciative of the food. She loved what we gave her. And she left and has texted us since, and she's like, "Every time I walk past..."
She got to take the sculpture home with her, right? So she said, "Every time I walk past this sculpture, I'm reminded of my time there." It's kind of like a reflection point in her house for her to look at that and reflect on herself and how she's doing moving forward.
Brighde: Oh, [00:14:00] that is a lovely story. Yeah, I can really relate to this idea of needing support and assistance to nurture creativity. I feel like, overall, I'm very happy with how my life is, but definitely, I think I would benefit from nurturing my creativity. It's on the to-do list.
Anyway, Raven, do you have any other stories of transformation to share?
Raven: There was a group that came in last year. It was a group of, I think, less than 10 people, maybe about 10 people. It was a work group. Depending on the day retreat, we'll have them come in at different times. But basically, they came in. We have some type of tea that we get from the land.
It could be spicebush tea or sassafras tea. We serve that. We kind of have an opening chat. Immediately, they were reporting that they felt so calm in the space, very welcome in the space. It actually is a group of individuals who focus on creativity in Columbus. So we were very thankful to have them here because we felt like they would really blossom in our space.
They [00:15:00] came in, and they were reporting that they felt a lot better already. They started chatting with each other in ways that were very connective. So one guy was telling the group something, and they're like, "Wow, we never knew that about you." There was just... It was so impactful to watch them start to bond.
Dustin led a creative activation for their group. They made a giant wind chime. It was metal and different parts of wood, and it was very attractive. They had a workout class. They all seemed to be happier while they were here. At least, they reported that, and they seemed that way.
We fed them plant-based food, vegan food. They loved that as well. We can't solve everybody's problems, but when people feel lighter and we shift them out of survival mode, that is huge.
They can now make better decisions as individuals. We have to treat this on an individual level. There's a lot that goes on with this. I work in sleep medicine, so every bedroom is optimized for proper sleep, because if we're not sleeping well, it's affecting us significantly.
They reported they were sleeping better. They were eating healthier while they were [00:16:00] here. They were connecting with their work group. When they left, they had such nice things to say. I haven't been able to even process all the reviews because they were just so appreciative.
Brighde: I think something magical happens when you bring a group of people that have something in common, whether it's being vegan or maybe working together, and you just take them out of that space, and you give them the space to just be and to connect, and to just not have any of the stresses.
Like, take all of the everyday stress out of the equation. And you can just enjoy each other rather than being frustrated that this person hasn't emailed you back in a timely manner or doesn't have the same sense of urgency as you, and just create time and space to nurture that.
I mean, I see it on our vegan trips all the time. When you take people out of their everyday lives and put them with like-minded people in a no-stress environment where no one has to make any big [00:17:00] decisions, magic just unfolds. It's just so lovely and one of the reasons why getting away and switching up the daily routine is just so beneficial, I think.
Dustin: Yeah. I mean, one of the things that happens with groups like that is they collectively have a shift.
Brighde: Mm.
Dustin: One of the things that we want to do mostly when people are here is help them find themselves. And then, when they do that, they can start to reflect on that, and then they can find ways to better themselves.
It doesn't have to happen all at once, but it's... You take little bits at a time. And I had a wrestling coach in college who used to always say, "You're either getting better or you're getting worse." And so I've kind of carried that, like, "Am I going to get better or am I going to get worse?"
Brighde: Right. Do you want to add to that, Raven?
Raven: I think you made a really good point. It's got to be done for you. They get decision fatigue. There's a reason why they're burnt out. There's a reason why they need a digital detox. [00:18:00] There's a reason why they need a nervous system reset, and if we plunge them into an environment where they have to make a bunch of decisions, that kind of defeats the whole purpose.
You said, "Take away all these big decisions and just bring them together. Make it very low-stress." It's important, and that's why we have our calls before we do our retreats and kind of curate them.
Now, we have some structure, but we're not going to give them the same exact retreat. It's going to be a little bit different, and we want to remove that decision fatigue.
Brighde: So is there anything else about Raven's Retreat that makes it unique and special in some way?
Raven: Yeah. So we created this space, and we knew it was going to be one of a kind because it's being created by two artists. But it was important to us that we use recycled materials and upcycled materials. We were creating a space that works well with nature, as Dustin said. But we wanted a really limited amount of spaces and [00:19:00] a boutique feel, because we don't feel good about giving something that everybody else has.
We do want everything customized. So in the Midwest, that's been a little bit tricky because we don't have any competitors in the Midwest that we could find. But that's okay. We're happy to be the only space kind of focused on wellness, art, and sustainability all in one. We kind of take pleasure in that.
Brighde: I love it.
Dustin: And I would like to add that it's really easy to go to the store and buy your materials and get something new. It's a lot easier to install things like that when you don't have to, for instance, have a 100-year-old piece of wood that you have to tool down and get it to the way you want it.
But the mindset is, you know, we live in a consumer culture. Everything is like buy, throw away, get new. And repurposing, I think, is the way forward with our world. If we want to try to preserve what we have, we can't just keep buying and wasting things.
And materials, a lot of materials inherently already have a beauty in them. [00:20:00] It's just how you tool them and how you display them. You can make a milk jug into a lighting fixture, you know? Something like that. Or a plant milk jug.
Brighde: I love it. And so true. I'm not very good at reusing and upcycling and things like that, but I do appreciate it when I see that thoughtfully and tastefully done.
I am sure that many people listening to this podcast would love the idea of doing a retreat at Raven's Retreat. Can you let people know how they can find you and the process for booking a retreat at your retreat center?
Raven: Yeah. They can go to our website, which is ravensretreathockinghills.com, and it's spelled H-O-C-K, not H-A-W-K. We're also available on Instagram, same thing: Raven's Retreat Hocking Hills. TikTok, I think our handle is ravensretreathh, so a little different. But yeah, they can find us on there.
So we don't accept everybody for retreats. [00:21:00] We have a chat, and if we can help them, we will. But we definitely kind of screen them. We're very careful to just chat with them and make sure it's a good fit for them. If they have some type of food issue where they can only eat meat, we can't serve them.
So, you know, we can't serve everybody. We definitely do our best to serve the people we can.
Brighde: I love that. Okay, listeners, I really encourage you to go and check out Raven's Retreat Hocking Hills, and I want to thank you both so much for taking the time on a Sunday to be on the podcast. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Dustin: Thank you for having us.
Raven: Thank you.