ABOUT KOUMIDOU RETREAT CENTER

Nestled in the scenic foothills of New York’s Catskill Mountains, just a short journey north of New York City, the Koumidou Retreat Center is an oasis of tranquility designed for transformative experiences. 

Our picturesque setting is the ideal backdrop for your personal and relational growth. At the heart of our center, we offer bespoke private retreats for individuals, couples, and groups. Each retreat is expertly guided by me, Yolanda Koumidou, a seasoned psychotherapist with over 30 years of experience. Our unique approach to therapy is especially profound for couples, offering an experience comparable to six months of traditional therapy.

What sets our retreats apart is the exclusive focus on one couple, individual, or group at a time, ensuring a highly personalized and immersive experience. We believe in a flexible, non-clock-bound approach, allowing us to work deeply throughout the day with necessary breaks for reflection and rest.

Whether you’re seeking to deepen your relationship, explore personal challenges, or engage in group self-discovery, the Koumidou Retreat Center offers a nurturing environment for meaningful transformation. Here, you’ll find the space, guidance, and tools necessary to embark on a journey of profound self-awareness and positive change.

Meet Yolanda

Yolanda Koumidou, LCSW, BCD, CHt, has been sharing her natural talents and skills with couples, individuals, and groups for more than 30 years. As a psychotherapist, she pioneered a unique format for the private individual and couples retreats she conducts at the Koumidou Retreat Center and around the globe. As an author, she wrote one book and co-authored a second, and as a poet, she published six poetry collections and recorded one CD.

Yolanda is also the founder and director of a center that offers Board of Education-approved training to licensed mental health professionals. Through her podcast, Awareness Sucks, she happily shares her experience and wisdom with audiences interested in making the leap from awareness to action.

Yolanda’s unique retreats are rooted in her deep conviction to honor both the psychological and spiritual aspects of all human beings. She does this by integrating age-old teachings with cutting-edge psychological methodologies. All her retreats intertwine theories and practices such as Bonding Patterns, Voice Dialogue, ecopsychology, quantum physics, energy clearing, and hypnotherapy. Her respect for the common message in all esoteric traditions manifests as the thread that runs through all her work.

Yolanda’s long training started at the Ackerman Family Institute in New York and continued in California. There, she studied the Theory of the Psychology of the Selves directly with its creators, Drs. Hal and Sidra Stone. Her curiosity for the mystery in the Divine drove her to study the teachings of Meher Baba, Buddhism, Sufism, Christianity, and Judaism. 

Spiral Walk

Come take the Spiral Walk and gift yourself a moment of quietude while being surrounded by nature’s beauty. The Spiral Walk can be part of your walking meditation or your forest bathing. The entire experience might take anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours, depending on how slow or fast you wish to walk it.

What is forest bathing? In the last few years, it has been scientifically proven that time spent in the forest has immediate positive physical effects on the body and mind. This is one of the reasons why all the psycho-spiritual retreats at the Koumidou Retreat Center are conducted outdoors.