Relational Play & Existential Transitions
November 7, 10 am - 7 pm
Rushing Waters Retreat Center
Centerville, Utah
Masks & Unmasking
is an experiential Tantric event exploring the fluid territory of identity, relational play, and existential transition.
We all move through life wearing different masks:
social, professional, intimate, erotic, protective, playful.
Yet not all masks are created in the same way.
Some are shaped unconsciously through cultural programming, family systems, social conditioning, and the accumulated “shoulds” of belonging. We learn who we are expected to be, what is acceptable to reveal, what must remain hidden, how we should behave, love, relate, and belong. Over time, an inherited mask can become so familiar that we mistake it for identity, even when it no longer fits.
Unmasking begins with awareness and discernment.
Which expressions genuinely belong to me, and which have I inherited?
Which masks give me freedom, range, and creative possibility?
And which contract me into a version of myself I no longer wish to inhabit?
Unmasking doesn’t mean removing every mask.
It is an invitation to practice freedom and choice.
A consciously chosen mask can become a vehicle for embodied self-discovery.
A mask can also be a boundary, an intelligent relational interface, a conscious creation, or a portal into an aspect of ourselves that has not yet been fully lived.
A Mask as a Boundary
A mask can become an energetic filter and a conscious shield, regulating what we reveal, what we receive, and how deeply the outside world is allowed to enter our inner space. We do not owe every person, environment, or social field equal access to us. A consciously chosen mask can protect what is intimate, tender, emerging, or simply not available for public consumption, while still allowing us to remain present and connected.
A Mask as a Relational Interface
We do not have to bring the same fixed version of ourselves into every relational field. A mask can become a playful, consciously chosen interface through which we experiment with how we meet the world. We can try on mystery, boldness, sensuality, authority, innocence, eccentricity, elegance, even anonymity, and discover what the encounter awakens in us.
A consciously designed or chosen mask can become a vehicle for embodied self-discovery
We will explore both the masks we are ready to release and the ones we consciously choose.
The Inherited Masks: Revision and Reevaluation
Some masks were never consciously chosen. They were shaped by family, culture, religion, community, gender roles and the unspoken rules of belonging. They taught us who we should become, what parts of ourselves were acceptable, and what had to remain hidden to belong.
Some inherited masks may still carry wisdom and meaning; others may be ready to be released.
What do I honor and keep? What do I reshape? What am I finally ready to release?
And then there is Unmasking…
The intimate territory beyond our familiar interfaces.
Not everyone is entitled to every layer of us.
Intimacy is selective, relational, and alive.
It is the privilege of meeting another human being beyond the identities through which they ordinarily meet the world, and allowing ourselves to be encountered there in return.
Bardo means an intermediate or transitional state, the space between one form and another.
Human life is filled with such passages. An identity ends. A relationship changes us. A chapter closes.
An old way of knowing ourselves becomes too small, while what comes next has not yet taken form.
These thresholds can be disorienting, fertile, and profoundly transformative.
The Tantric Bardos - the space between identities.
We will enter the Bardo as an embodied inquiry into the space between identities.
What remains when the familiar structures through which we know ourselves begin to dissolve?
Can we stay present inside the unknown without immediately reaching for another mask, another certainty, another definition of who we are? And what becomes possible in that fertile interval between dissolution and emergence?
You’ll be guided to recognize what you have inherited, release what no longer belongs, consciously play with who you can become, discover what relationship reveals, and enter the mystery between who you have been and who you are becoming.
Through Tantric practice, breathwork, conscious mask work, movement, dyadic and group exploration, relational practices, witnessing, embodied inquiry, and an experiential journey into the Bardos, we create a field for deeper self-discovery, intimacy, and transformation.
When: November 7, 2026, 10 am - 7 pm
Where: Rushing Water Retreat Center, Centerville
(The address will be sent to you upon registration)
Investment:
Early Bird Registration for Individuals: $567 For Couples: $927
After November 1 Registration for Individuals: $618 For Couples: $1030
Facilitated by Lana Elco, Lacey Lynne & Lisa & Kris Tibbets, this event offers an experience of the living work of Ascension of Intimacy School of Tantra.
