Gay Wellness Retreats: The Types, What Happens at Each, and How to Choose

Last updated: September 8, 2026 · By Joe Ghafari, CEO of Visiting Wrld

The short answer: "Gay wellness retreat" is one phrase doing the work of five. A spiritual weekend, a yoga retreat, a tantra workshop, a sober retreat and a fitness retreat with mindset work all get sold under it, and the only thing they reliably have in common is that everyone there is a gay man. Pick by what you want to come home with, not by the word wellness.

We run gay fitness retreats with a mindset track built in, so we sit in one of those five lanes and we are not neutral about it. This guide still covers all five honestly, including the ones we would point you to instead of us. If what you want is silence and ceremony, there are people who have been running that for thirty years, and they are named below.

What a gay wellness retreat actually is (and what it is not)

A wellness retreat is a multi-day trip where a group of gay men live together and follow a daily rhythm built around a practice: reflection, movement, connection, or all three. The retreat part is the structure. Shared meals, sessions led by somebody, a schedule you did not have to build yourself. The wellness part is whatever the practice is, and that is where the word starts to mean very different things.

Two things it is not. It is not a spa weekend at a resort that put a rainbow flag on the booking page; that is a hotel with a policy, and we go through the difference in gay resorts vs gay retreats. And it is not a circuit party in a villa. Some trips sold as retreats are exactly that, and if a party is what you want, book the party. It will be cheaper and more honest.

Here is the pattern we hear on nearly every call: the practice is the excuse and the people are the reason. Men book a fitness retreat, a yoga retreat or a spiritual weekend and then describe what they are actually after in the same words. Feeling stuck. Being around gay men outside a bar. Wanting a week where nobody is judging the body they brought. Read the five types below with that in mind, because the practice you pick decides the kind of men you will be sitting next to at dinner.

The five kinds of gay wellness retreat

1. Spiritual retreats

The oldest lane and the one with the deepest lineage. Gay Men's Spiritual Retreat (GMSR) has run every June from 1991 onward at Camp Stevens in Julian, California: a sober weekend of sharing circles, reflection and ritual, non-religious, with every session optional. Easton Mountain in upstate New York was founded by gay men in 2000 and runs a year-round catalog of programs for queer men, so it is less a single retreat than a place you keep going back to. Spirit Camp in the Northern California redwoods aims at midlife: where you are, what is next, and who you are doing it with.

A day at one of these looks like: an early circle, a morning session on a theme (grief, fathers, coming out late, whatever the weekend is built around), a long lunch, an afternoon of workshops or free time, an evening ritual. Phones tend to go away. People cry, and nobody makes a thing of it. If you want to be heard by other gay men and you want it to go deeper than a bar conversation ever can, this is your lane.

One name shows up in the same search results and does not belong on this list. Journey Into Manhood is run by Brothers Road, formerly People Can Change, an organization for men who want to reduce or reject their attraction to other men. It is not a gay retreat, and no major medical body supports what it sets out to do. If you found this page looking for it, you are welcome here anyway.

2. Yoga and meditation retreats

Outermost in Provincetown is the established gay men's yoga retreat in the US: two practices a day, meditation, simple food, early nights, and a town outside the door that is as gay as any place on earth. Internationally, Ubud in Bali is where gay yoga retreats gather. It is not far from where our Bali group stays, and more than a few of our guys have tacked a yoga week on before or after.

Who it suits: you already have a practice, or you want one, and you want to switch off rather than switch on. If you have never done yoga, a week of it as your first experience is a lot. A retreat that mixes it with other things is an easier way in.

3. Tantra and body work

This is the lane people are most nervous to ask about, so plainly: tantra and embodiment retreats for gay men are structured, consent-based workshops about breath, touch, boundaries and being present in your body. They are not sex parties. Some are clothing optional. Body Electric has run its men's workshops since the 1980s and is the reference point for the whole category. Frog Meadow in Vermont is a small men's sanctuary that hosts weekend workshops and retreats in the same spirit, at a much gentler scale.

The question to ask any tantra retreat before you book is what the container is. Who facilitates, what the agreements are, what happens if you want to sit something out. A serious operator will answer all of that without flinching. If the answer is vague, it is not the retreat you are looking for.

4. Sober and recovery retreats

So much of gay social life runs through bars that a week without drinking, around other gay men, is its own kind of reset. Brotherhood Retreats in the Poconos is built exactly for that: meditation, breathwork and emotional connection, alcohol free by design. GMSR is also sober. If drinking has been the thing that gets you out of the house and into a room of gay men, a sober retreat shows you that the room works without it.

For honesty's sake: our retreats are not sober retreats. There is an open bar on the yacht day. But a week that starts in the gym every morning changes what your evenings look like without anyone having to announce a rule, and a lot of guys tell us afterwards that it was the least they had drunk on a trip in years.

5. Fitness retreats with a mindset track

This is us, so read it as us. A gay fitness retreat puts coach-led resistance training at the gym at the center of every day, then builds the rest of the week around it: nutrition workshops, evening mindset sessions, family-style dinners, and one big excursion day. On ours that is a private yacht with snorkeling, and depending on the destination a waterfall hike or a cenote. We run six days and five nights in Costa Rica and Mexico, nine days and eight nights in Bali and Thailand, in a private villa, with everyone eating together every night.

The mindset part is not decoration. It is the part of the week the guys reference months later, because the training gives everyone a shared thing to be bad at together in the morning and the evening sessions give them permission to say the real thing at night. Ketanga runs the domestic version as a long weekend. The full comparison of everybody in this lane is in the best gay fitness retreats.

Side by side

Type	Length	Where	Best if you want to	You come home with
Spiritual	Long weekend	California, New York	Be heard, go deep	A few honest friendships and a lot to process
Yoga and meditation	Weekend to a week	Provincetown, Ubud	Switch off	A calmer head and a practice
Tantra and body work	Weekend	Vermont, various	Feel at home in your body	Better boundaries, less shame
Sober	Weekend	Pennsylvania, California	Reset your relationship with drinking	Proof the room works without it
Fitness with mindset	6 to 9 days	Costa Rica, Mexico, Bali, Thailand	Move and talk	A routine you kept, a group chat that does not die

No prices in that table on purpose. They vary by length, destination and what is included far more than by type, and a weekend in Vermont and nine days in Bali are not the same purchase. We keep a separate, honest breakdown of what a gay men's retreat costs and what is usually left out of the headline number.

How to choose: four questions

1. What do you want to be different when you land back home? A decision made. A habit started. A body you are less at war with. A group chat with names in it. Say it out loud, then pick the retreat whose entire week is built around that one thing.
2. Do you want to talk, or move, or both? Talk only is a spiritual retreat. Move only is a fitness holiday, and there are plenty of straight ones. Both is a fitness retreat with a real mindset track, and both is what most gay men actually mean when they search for wellness.
3. How much structure can you take? A spiritual weekend asks you to give up your phone. A fitness retreat asks you to be in the gym at seven. A yoga retreat asks for early nights. Every one of them asks for something, and the asking is where the change happens.
4. Are you going alone? Ask the operator what share of the group comes solo. Ours is around 80 percent, and the schedule is built so nobody spends a meal finding their own company. There is a whole guide to going on a gay retreat by yourself if that is the thing holding you back.

Gay wellness retreats near me, or abroad?

If you are searching for a gay retreat near you in the US, the honest answer is that the domestic options are mostly weekends: GMSR in California, Easton Mountain in New York, Frog Meadow in Vermont, Brotherhood Retreats in Pennsylvania, Ketanga for fitness. A weekend gives you a taste and lets you drive home. It also lets you keep one foot in your normal life, which is exactly what most people do.

Abroad is a different bet. A week in Costa Rica or Bali removes your routine entirely, and that is the point. There is nobody to text for a way out at ten o'clock, no work in the morning, no apartment to go back to. The change sticks for the same reason. Most of our guys are first-time international travelers and we walk every one of them through the passport, the flights and the airport, so if the abroad part is the only thing stopping you, read what your first international trip actually looks like before you rule it out.

Where Visiting Wrld fits, honestly

If you want silence, ritual and a weekend of being properly heard, go to GMSR or Easton Mountain. We mean that. If you want a physical practice and nothing else, Outermost will serve you better than we will. If you want to come home stronger than you left, with a routine you kept for a week, evenings where somebody finally said the real thing, and a group of gay men you are still talking to in March, that is what we built. Our full guide to every type of gay men's retreat goes deeper on each of these, and the ranked list names our favorites in every lane.

If you would rather talk it through than read another guide, the retreat application call is a real conversation about what you are actually looking for. If a spiritual weekend is the better fit, we will say so. A $500 deposit locks your spot when it is us.