The retreat starts before any guest arrives.
Every woman who attends Sole Rooted, Olivia Ramirez Smith’s six-day return-to-self retreat in Joshua Tree, California, goes through a one-on-one Zoom call with Olivia herself before she is invited. There is no automated calendar. There is no booking page. There is a conversation, woman to woman, and only after that conversation does an invitation arrive.
The intentional gatekeeping is the point. Sole Rooted is limited to twelve women per cohort. Olivia Ramirez Smith wants to know, before that group forms, that each woman is in the right place at the right time for what the retreat asks of her.
When the cohort arrives, it lands at Gaia Villa, a four thousand square foot adobe estate on three and a half acres of high desert outside Joshua Tree. The villa is rented exclusively for the event. No other guests. No other groups. Six bedrooms. A rooftop patio open to the stars. A stone fire circle for evening ceremonies. A saltwater pool with a grotto waterfall. Two cold plunges. A seven-person hot tub. Forty-five minutes from Palm Springs International Airport. Once a guest is on the grounds, the rest of the world goes quiet.
The retreat unfolds across six intentionally sequenced days.
Day one is Unplug. Phones go into a wooden box. The calendar disappears. For most of the women in the room, this is the first stretch of hours in years where nothing is being asked of them.
Day two is Ground. Bare feet on warm desert sand. Earthing meditations at sunrise. Somatic breathwork on stone, led by Olivia Ramirez Smith. By the end of the day, most guests notice they have not had a full breath in months.
Day three is Nourish. Organic, plant-forward meals prepared by the retreat chef, shared at a long candlelit table. Spacious unscheduled afternoons. Naps allowed. Reading allowed. Silence allowed. The body begins to register that rest is not a reward for productivity but its precondition.
Day four is Open. In a held, confidential container of sage, sound, journaling, and guided ceremony, the things each woman has been carrying are given room to set themselves down. Olivia Ramirez Smith’s training as a Master Neurolinguistic Practitioner (NLP) and a certified Mental and Emotional Release (MER) specialist shapes what happens in this part of the retreat. The work is held with care. It is not performed. It is not extracted. It is allowed.
Days five and six are Return. Sound healing under the desert stars. Restorative yoga as the sun rises. A closing ceremony at the labyrinth. Each woman leaves with a personal practice she can carry into the rest of her life.
The whole structure rests on Olivia Ramirez Smith’s central conviction. Women do not need to become someone new. They need to come back to the woman they have always been.
The retreat is not a wellness vacation. There is no spa menu. There is no pool day, in the typical sense of the phrase. There is movement, rest, food, ceremony, and a small group of women who have been quietly vetted to be in the room with each other.
That is the design. It is the same design that informs Olivia Ramirez Smith’s other work — her bestselling book The Mother Earth Effect, her contribution to the award-winning Earthing Movie and number one bestseller Sacred Spaces, as well as her philanthropy grounding twenty thousand firefighters. Each of those reaches different people in different forms. Sole Rooted is the deepest, most personal version of the work she does.
The women who go return changed. Not transformed into a new self. Returned to one that was already there.
That, for Olivia Ramirez Smith, is the whole point.
