Young Men
Awake
Retreat
Four days. A barn. Some land. A fire.
A small group of young men ready for something real.
Imagine leaving four days in the Vermont mountains knowing exactly who you are and what you're about.
Walking back into your life with a clarity you haven't felt in years — maybe ever. With men in your corner who actually know you. With something solid under your feet that wasn't there before.
Most men your age are running on something close to empty and pretending otherwise. Moving fast. Staying busy. Keeping it together on the outside while something underneath quietly goes unaddressed. Not broken. Just not fully alive yet.
What's missing isn't more information or better habits or another thing to optimize. What's missing is what men have always needed and rarely get: a room where the act drops and something true gets to happen.
Lincoln, Vermont
The man who knows his own mind. Who walks into a room at ease in his own skin.
Who has friends — real ones — who know what he's actually made of. Who isn't running from anything because he's already faced it. Who knows what he wants and goes after it without the low-grade doubt that follows most men around.
That man isn't built by grinding harder or figuring it out alone. He's built through honest challenge, in the company of men who won't let him settle for less. Through the kind of depth and honesty that most men never get access to.
That's what we're offering.
Men who almost didn't come get the most out of this.
We've been doing this work for a long time — with young men in the mountains, in military settings, in community programs, in circles where something genuine got to happen.
We've watched men arrive guarded, skeptical, not sure why they came — and leave with something they didn't know they were missing. The guy who sat with his arms crossed the whole first morning, holding the room together by day three. Men who went home and had the conversation they'd been avoiding for years. Who ended the situation draining them. Who started the thing they'd been putting off.
Not because we did something to them. Because they finally had the space — and the company — to do it themselves.
The only way out is through. What we touch fully resolves completely. That's not a philosophy — it's what we've seen, again and again, in rooms full of young men who decided to trust the process and go all the way in.
Four days.
No script. No performance.
We're not going to lay out the full itinerary — partly because the best things that happen aren't plannable. Here's what we can tell you.
Private farmland.
Green Mountains.
Vermont sky.
Lincoln is a small town in the Green Mountains of Vermont — the kind of place that does something to you just by being in it. We gather in a barn set in the hills, camp outside under the Vermont sky, and spend real time in landscape that has a way of cutting through noise.
Late July in Vermont is as alive as it gets. That's not incidental — the land is part of the work.
Bring a tent. Basic amenities on site.
Full address shared upon registration.
Any man who feels the pull.
Men between 18 and 30 who know something is missing — even if they couldn't say exactly what.
Maybe you're between things — chapters, relationships, versions of yourself — and the next step isn't clear yet. Maybe you've been grinding forward and something underneath has quietly gone quiet. Maybe you have good friends, a decent life, and still this nagging sense that you're not quite living at full capacity.
You don't need experience with this kind of work. You don't need to know why it's calling you. You just need to be willing to show up and be honest.
If something in you has been waiting for a room like this — this is the room.
The four days open something.
The four weeks after are where it lands.
After the retreat we gather online once a week for a 90-minute integration session — the same group, the same honesty, continuing the work. Staying in relationship. Making sure what happened in Vermont doesn't just fade when ordinary life rushes back in.
Because the hardest part of this kind of work isn't the retreat. It's carrying it home.
Four weeks of online integration included in all pricing tiers.
A sliding scale.
Pick what's honest.
This isn't about what you can get away with paying — it's about what honestly fits your situation. All tiers include the four-day retreat and four weeks of online integration.
Payment plans available on all tiers. If none of these work, reach out before assuming it's not possible.
Everything you need
to know.
The men holding this.
I sat my first silent meditation retreat at fifteen. By eighteen, I was living in Honduras working with at-risk youth — an experience that broke me open and set the course for everything that followed. I went on to ordain as a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka, sit over 500 days of silent retreat, and train as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner working directly with the nervous system to heal trauma.
I was empowered as a dharma teacher by Rodney Smith, trained military psychologists and first responders through Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training — including resilience trainings in Ukraine — and am an assistant to Dr. Fleet Maull's breakthrough training The Initiation. I work with justice-impacted men through All Kings and have spent more than a decade in men's circles, initiatory quests, and embodied leadership work.
But the credentials only tell part of the story. Life has thoroughly humbled me. I only offer what I know from firsthand direct experience — healing avoidant attachment, recovering a nervous system stuck in flight mode, rebuilding my marriage, and learning what it actually takes to stay open when everything in me wanted to shut down. Becoming a father in 2026 cracked me open in a whole new way.
I'm based in Lincoln, Vermont — tucked into the Green Mountains with my wife Brittany, our son Talon, and our dog Zelda.
When I was invited to my first men's retreat in 2016 I was terrified. It made sense: I had been bullied by other boys as a kid, and felt an insecure wound deep down underneath all my male friendships. Plus I grew up with an emotionally absent father and without any male role models I could point to and say: "I respect you. I want to be like you."
Now I've sat in healing circles with men for a decade in living rooms, community centers, schools and around campfires. This work has transformed all my relationships — my friendships, my partnership and my relationship to myself — through the courage to be vulnerable, to express my full, authentic self, and to stand in my own loving power. I've run men's groups in NYC for years as well as facilitated with All Kings, the NY-based men's healing collective that centers justice-impacted men.
My core training is in Somatic Experiencing trauma healing, Nonviolent Communication, and conflict transformation. When I'm not doing men's work I do other peace work — supporting people's healing and transformation to create lasting peace in our families, communities, and nations. At home I do this as a somatic therapist, facilitating the Brooklyn Insight sangha, and as a community mediator with the New York Peace Institute. I also mentor and teach teens and young adults with Inward Bound Mindfulness and the Contemplative Semester.
Fifteen spots.
Small on purpose.
The application is short. Tell us who you are and what's calling you here. If someone comes to mind as you read this — send it to them.
Apply for a SpotOr reach out directly at james@jamesnepenthe.com
Men
Awake
Young Men Awake exists because young men deserve more than what they've been handed. More than the pressure to perform without ever being taught how to feel. More than the isolation that gets called independence. More than models of strength that quietly cost men their aliveness.
We build spaces where real work can happen — physical, honest, and grounded in experience that actually changes something. The Vermont retreat is one piece of it.
If you want to know about the larger program we're building — the Young Men's Embodied Leadership Fellowship, starting this fall — it's here.