A transformative gathering for Black changemakers
Plus! Post-Retreat Online Integration Circles – September 3 & October 22, 2026
Apply Today for the 2026 Embodied Justice Retreat
Early Bird Special: Save $75 when you apply and register by May 15
The Embodied Justice Leadership Retreat is a homecoming. Three days of deep practice, genuine rest, and collective power. Rooted in a healing-centered approach to leadership, the retreat builds community and honors our well-being as essential to how we lead.
For two years, the Embodied Justice Retreat has brought together Black nonprofit leaders, equity strategists, organizers, advocates, academics, therapists, and community builders, people doing change work in all kinds of forms. What keeps drawing folks back is something most of us rarely find: space to rest, reflect, and be in community.
The space we’ve created together has always been shaped by our shared experiences and the long tradition of making room for ourselves, despite the challenges thrown our way.
And right now, those challenges are intensifying. We’re living through a coordinated assault on the infrastructure of social change — federal disinvestment, the rollback of equity commitments, and a political environment designed to make this work feel impossible. And still, people are showing up. Still doing the work even as the ground shifts and familiar structures change. What people in our network keep naming is not only the need for rest. It’s the clarity that comes when you have time and space to hear yourself think, assess the landscape honestly, and identify where your contributions are most needed now.
Zora Neale Hurston wrote that there are years that ask questions and years that answer them. This is a year that’s asking. Now in our third year, the Embodied Justice Retreat is a gathering for Black changemakers ready to meet the questions from the full depth of who they are — their wisdom, ancestral grounding, collective power, and vision for what comes next.
Join us for three days at a Black-owned farm in Brandywine, Maryland, with a rustic barn and modern farmhouse cottages. This is space for practice, honest reflection, and courageous declaration about where we’ve been and where we are going. Room for rest, joy, recalibration in community, and simply being.
Reclaim your power. Root in your wisdom. Declare what comes next.
This retreat offers space to:
Draw on your cultural wisdom and ancestral lineage
Through guided reflection and story circles, connect with the sources of wisdom that have made your leadership possible — your lineage, your communities, your own survival — and name what you are building from that ground.
Reclaim Your Purpose in this Moment
The social change ecosystem is reorganizing and the terrain is shifting. This retreat creates dedicated space to examine where you have been, envision new possibilities, and claim with clarity the role that is yours to play right now.
Stay Grounded Under Pressure
Explore somatic (body-based) tools that support you in remaining present during conflict, crisis, and complexity — so you can respond from clarity and wisdom rather than fear or reaction.
Practice Boundaries as an Act of Power
Reclaiming your power means protecting it. Practice saying no with dignity to protect your wellbeing and sustain your capacity to live out your purpose more fully.
Declare Who You’re Becoming
The retreat culminates in a written leadership declaration — a present-tense commitment to who you are becoming — crafted in community and witnessed by your cohort.
Build Community and Lasting Connections
The Embodied Justice retreat brings together a cohort of Black changemakers who come to know one another’s declarations and leadership journeys. That collective continues through two post-retreat integration sessions, sustaining the community and the practice.
Set on a Black-owned farm in Brandywine, Maryland with modern farmhouse cottages, this transformative three-day retreat offers participants the opportunity to:
Release stress and recalibrate in a supportive, space that prioritizes rest and renewal.
Dream and declare powerful visions to stay connected to what matters most for yourself and the communities you love and serve.
Learn and practice somatic (body-based), mindfulness, and restorative approaches to build resilience and sustain leadership in the face of challenges.
Connect with other Black changemakers in a space that centers our emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being.
Facilitators for the retreat include:
What to Expect
Mornings begin with nourishing food, easy conversation, and quiet time for yourself. Retreat sessions move through facilitated practice, storytelling, somatic work, and collective reflection. Evenings belong to community — to laughter, to honest conversation, to the kind of connection that only happens when Black folks gather.
Through self and group reflection, time in nature, restorative yoga, meditation, storytelling, creative expression, and more, this retreat provides space to:
Plus! Two post-retreat online integration sessions to support you as integrate the insights gained during the retreat into your daily life and leadership.
The Embodied Justice Retreat is an invitation to return to yourself, to the power of community, and to the vision of a future where we all thrive.
Retreat Details
This retreat is designed for Black changemakers including nonprofit leaders, government staff, community organizers, consultants, and others navigating significant transitions — in their organizations, in their fields, or in their own sense of purpose and direction.
People who have been carrying a lot, for a long time, for communities they love.
You do not have to have everything figured out. You simply have to be ready to go deeper, rest well, reclaim what is yours, and be in honest community with people who already understand what you’re carrying.
The retreat is open to all genders and is an LGBTQ+ affirming space.
The retreat is Friday, July 31 through Sunday, August 2. Check-in begins at 3 p.m. on Friday and the retreat concludes at 12:30 pm on Sunday.
The retreat will be held at a farm with modern cottages in Brandywine, MD, approximately 30 minutes outside Washington, DC area. The exact location will be provided after you register. The retreat venue is easily accessible from all three DC area airports.
If you have questions about the location, please contact us.
Please complete this short form to apply. Applications will be processed in the order they are received. After CURE reviews your eligibility, you will receive a link to register for the retreat. Details, including the exact retreat location, will be provided at that time. To ensure the safety of participants, we are not publishing location information online.
This year’s retreat is held at a Black-owned farm in Brandywine, Maryland — 30 minutes from Washington, DC. You’ll stay in one of several cottages on the property, each with its own full kitchen and patio. Cottages will hold up to three people, with everyone assigned their own room.
Registration is based on room type. Choose the arrangement that feels right for you:
| Twin Bed, Shared Bath | $850 |
| Full Bed, Shared Bath | $950 |
| Full Bed, Private Ensuite | $1,050 |
| Queen Bed, Shared Bath | $1,050 |
| Queen Bed, Private Ensuite | $1,150 |
Your registration is all-inclusive and includes:
In the first two years of the Embodied Justice Retreat, grant funding allowed us to offer deeper subsidies and scholarships. While that funding is no longer available, we’ve made intentional changes to this year’s retreat — including moving the location — to bring costs down while preserving everything that makes this gathering what it is. All registration rates are already subsidized and reflect a significant portion, but not all, of the true cost of producing the retreat.
If you still need financial assistance beyond the pricing tiers, please contact us.
Please note: with the retreat location 35 minutes from the nearest airport, we are not providing transportation to and from the airport this year. CURE will help make connections between participants willing to offer rides and participants who need one.
We want the cost to be as small a barrier as possible. Here are a few ways participants have covered or offset their retreat registration:
Employer or organizational sponsorship. Many employers have professional development, leadership training, or wellness budgets that can cover retreat costs. The Embodied Justice Leadership Retreat is a leadership development experience grounded in somatic practice, community building, and strategic reflection — language that often aligns with how these funds are designated. If it would help to have a description you can share with your supervisor or HR department, email us at info[at]urbanandracialequity.org and we’ll provide one.
Fiscal sponsor or grant funds. If you work independently or lead a small organization, check whether your fiscal sponsor, fellowship, or current grant includes funds for wellness, professional development or capacity building.
Community fundraising. Some past participants have raised funds through personal networks through an ask on social media or an email to a small circle of supporters.
CURE is committed to supporting and nurturing the health and safety of our team and retreat participants. By registering for the retreat, you agree to (1) take a COVID-19 test within 72 hours before the retreat and (2) opt-out of attending if you’re experiencing symptoms or test positive for COVID-19. By attending the retreat, attendees voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19.
We welcome and support participants who choose to mask at any time during the retreat. Your comfort and safety are important to us, and masking is always respected.
Should COVID-19 community levels increase or local, state and federal guidelines change, CURE reserves the right to modify this policy.
For More Information
Feel free to reach out to us with any questions or concerns. We look forward to you joining us at the retreat.
Judy Lubin
Dr. Judy is an applied sociologist, racial equity changemaker, yoga and mindfulness practitioner, author, auntie, bestie and beach lover. Judy’s elemental nature is water, and with her she brings calming, reflective energy to hold space for deep listening, inner work and transformative dialogue.
The curator of the Embodied Justice program, she hosts the accompanying podcast and co-facilitates events and dialogues focused on the collective healing and sustainability of Black changemakers.
At CURE, Dr. Judy has built transformative racial equity frameworks and change management processes that have impacted thousands of lives. She began her career focused on health disparities, recognizing that stress from societal racism can become embodied and manifested through “weathering” that prematurely ages the body and shortens the lifespan of racially marginalized communities.
She is unapologetically committed to centering Black people and the communities that have inspired her life’s work. The daughter of Haitian immigrants, she grew up in South Florida surrounded by music, her grandmother’s herbal garden, and the struggle to make it in a country that saw her family as outsiders.
In 2022, after experiencing multiple health emergencies coupled with burnout from the intensity of the “racial reckoning” that increased demand for CURE’s racial equity services, Judy began a process of listening to the wisdom of her body, healing old trauma wounds, and reclaiming rest and her love of mind-body healing. During this time she explored somatics, indigenous and and ancestral healing practices and earned certifications in multiple healing modalities including yoga and energy medicine.
Emerging from a place of rest and listening to what her soul wanted to share, she now weaves mindfulness, body-awareness and spiritual activism to support changemakers and organizations to regenerate their leadership and give to the world from a place of ease and wholeness.
Long committed to promoting women’s health and wellness, she is the author of The Heart of Living Well: Six Principles for a Life of Health, Beauty and Balance.
Find Judy on instagram or linkedin at @drjudylubin, where she (occasionally) shares posts celebrating Black joy, healing and well-being.
Shawn J. Moore
Residing at the intersection of leadership and mindfulness, Shawn creates sacred spaces for stillness and self-inquiry to help social impact leaders align their strengths, intention, and impact. Through his integrative approach, he holds transformative containers for self-renewal, personal discovery, and capacity-building that ease clients on their journey towards peace, clarity, and freedom.
Shawn is committed to empower changemakers to become embodied leaders – unified in mind, body, and heart – with the tools to mindfully pause, reconnect to their inner knowing, make strengths-driven decisions, and lead the change they believe the world needs.
Reckoning with his own contemplation of burnout, purpose, and alignment, Shawn transitioned out of his role as Associate Dean of Student Life & Leadership at Morehouse College in the fall of 2021 to focus more on mindfulness and stillness-based training programs and workshops.
While leadership resonates with him deeply, it is his personal and spiritual practices that allows him to continue to show up for himself and others. He is a yoga teacher (E-RYT® 200, RYT® 500, YACEP®), sound and reiki practitioner, meditation teacher, Yoga Nidra facilitator, and Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach, all focused through a Buddhist lens and 17 years of personal practice. He has contributed workshops, practices, and educational opportunities for celebrities like Questlove and Dyllón Burnside, and various yoga studios and colleges, Yoga International, Omstars, Melanin Moves Project, the Human Rights Campaign, Spotify and Lululemon. He currently serves as the Facilitation and Community Manager for BEAM (Black Emotional & Mental Health Collective).
Shawn hosts a podcast called The Mindful Rebel® Podcast that creates a platform to continually explore this unique intersection of leadership and mindfulness. Find him on instagram @shawnj_moore
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