There are good events. There are great events. And then there are events where, by day three, you are sitting on the lawn overlooking the Columbia River, your chakras are spinning at full speed, you have approximately 47 new best friends, your room is overflowing with skincare, and you are genuinely wondering how you are supposed to return to normal life.
Welcome back to the Awaken Esthetics Retreat.
2026 marked the second Awaken Esthetics Retreat, and somehow, founder Shawna Rocha and the Awaken team managed to capture the magic all over again.
And that is no small feat.
Creating a great inaugural event is one thing. There is excitement. There is novelty. Everyone is running on adrenaline and optimism.
Repeating it while preserving the same heart, trust, and sense of community? That is much harder.
Awaken did it.
L+A was incredibly proud to return for our second year as both Media Partner and Evergreen Sponsor, working alongside Shawna and her team to help create an experience that educated estheticians while giving them something arguably even more valuable: a place where they felt safe enough to be vulnerable.
Walls came down.
Stories came out.
People laughed. People cried. People learned. People changed.
And yes, occasionally Officer Kelly had to restore order.
Awaken Esthetics Retreat Is Built Differently
One Group. One Experience. One Very Well-Moisturized School of Fish.
One of the most unique elements of Awaken is that there are no competing breakout sessions.
You are not standing in a hallway staring at a conference app wondering whether you should learn about hyperpigmentation, bookkeeping, or personal growth while experiencing severe educational FOMO.
Everyone does everything.
Together.
Meals, classes, activations, morning wellness sessions, Innovation Lounge experiences, and Fireside Chats are shared as one group.
Picture a very hydrated, professionally exfoliated school of fish moving effortlessly around Skamania Lodge.
Even seating was intentionally designed to encourage connection. Assigned seats changed throughout the retreat, putting attendees beside people they may not have known.
It sounds simple.
It is actually brilliant.
Because by removing the tendency to stay attached to the people you already know, Awaken creates opportunities for unexpected conversations. Those conversations become relationships. Those relationships build trust.
And trust became the currency of the weekend.
Awaken Bingo Broke the Ice Fast
Because Nothing Says Networking Like Mildly Competitive Estheticians
L+A’s Jenni Nagle, Barry Eichner, and Dr. Krystal Briglia returned for their second Awaken, with Jenni and Barry kicking things off by hosting the Opening Night Mocktail Mixer.
Jenni also created Awaken Bingo, an icebreaker designed to get attendees talking to fellow attendees, speakers and sponsors to uncover answers to questions scattered throughout their bingo cards.
And people committed.
There was mingling. There was investigating. There were fun facts uncovered that probably would never have surfaced during traditional networking.
Within hours, strangers were talking like friends.
Mission accomplished.
The Awaken Education Lineup Was Basically Four Degrees in One Weekend
Business School Meets Esthetics School Meets Personal Growth Certification
Trying to categorize the Awaken curriculum is nearly impossible.
It was part business degree, part cosmetic formulation degree, part advanced esthetics education and part personal growth transformation certificate.
Which, frankly, should probably be its own degree.
Shawna Rocha opened conversations around community, connection and business growth with Take Your Seat. Jessica Lewan challenged attendees with What If It’s You?, asking them to look beyond the algorithm, economy and competition and examine their own role in creating change.
Kelly Conlan tackled imposter syndrome with Stay the Imposter: Why Growth Always Feels Like You’re Faking It, while Katrina Yokoyama explored client experience and pricing with The Luxury Esthetician: Elevating Your Client Experience & Charging Your Worth.
Lincoln Lee of Dermaesthetics Beverly Hills explored The Art of Gwang, while Barbara Devlin of Anna Lotan PRO dug into hyperpigmentation. Joe Glow brought massage education to life with a live demonstration.
Natalie Olmstead, CPA made bookkeeping slightly less terrifying with Beauty & Books: DIY Bookkeeping Basics for Esthetic Business Owners, while Holly Brown explored how philanthropy can become part of a business strategy in The Nonprofit Advantage: How Giving Back Can Grow Your Esthetics Business.
Savannah Grizzaffe explored authenticity as a business superpower. Ashley Scobey of ASCP tackled AI. Angie Parris of ASCP brought meditation into the experience.
Dr. Emily Loveland’s Self-Care for the Practitioner took wellness into very practical territory, including estheticians working out tight muscles with lacrosse balls against the wall.
Then Bridgette Rhine turned the entire room into content creators during her Instagram Reel session. Suddenly phones were everywhere and the room was buzzing as attendees learned practical skills they could immediately take home and use in their businesses.
L+A Took the Stage Too
Jenni and Barry tackled one of the industry’s biggest conversations: how estheticians can remain relevant as aesthetics continues moving toward medical treatments while continuing to operate within the scope of their licenses.
The message was simple. Staying in scope does not mean staying out of the game.
Dr. Krystal Briglia continued that future-focused conversation with Advanced Anatomy & Clinical Confidence for the Future-Ready Esthetician, giving attendees another layer of education designed to strengthen their understanding of the increasingly sophisticated aesthetics landscape.
This was Awaken education at its best.
Learn more. Understand more. Become more confident in what you already bring to the treatment room.
Meanwhile, Officer Kelly Was Maintaining Awaken Law + Order
Every great retreat apparently needs law enforcement.
Awaken had Kelly Conlan.
Kelly moderated the educational sessions and quickly earned the nickname Officer Kelly, thanks largely to her extremely effective speaker timing system.
There were flash cards.
Five minutes remaining.
One minute remaining.
The tension was palpable.
Officer Kelly also became responsible for gathering the group, maintaining schedules and occasionally deploying a highly effective glare toward anyone engaging in side chatter.
Barry felt personally victimized on multiple occasions.
Jenni began living in fear that Barry would attempt another conversation during a presentation and activate The Look.
Thank you, Officer Kelly, for your service.
Without you, Awaken could potentially still be on session three.
The Innovation Lounge Put Technology Into Attendees’ Hands
Because A Device Demo Is Worth About 10,000 Brochure Words
New for 2026 was the Innovation Lounge, and it was an important addition.
As device technology continues to expand within regenerative aesthetics, professionals need opportunities to experience technology beyond seeing a demonstration on social media or walking past a booth at a tradeshow.
Awaken gave attendees that opportunity.
The Innovation Lounge featured technologies ranging from microneedling and cold plasma to Dynamic Microcurrent with NeurotriS, mechanical resurfacing with DiamondTome, nanoinfusion with Rezenerate and NanoVeil technology with Ke Kō Botanicals.
Attendees received appointment cards and rotated through hands-on experiences with participating sponsors.
Watching the room light up as attendees connected technology with treatment possibilities was incredibly rewarding.
Devices can represent a significant business investment. Having time to touch, experience, ask questions and understand how a technology might translate into patient outcomes makes the decision-making process infinitely more valuable.
No pressure. No frantic tradeshow floor.
Just education, exploration and access.
Fireside Chats: Come for the Dessert, Stay for the Treatment Room Confessions
Then there were the legendary Fireside Chats.
The formula is dangerously effective.
Take a group of estheticians who have spent several days becoming increasingly comfortable with one another.
Put them around a fire.
Give them excellent desserts.
Then ask them to share their most embarrassing treatment room mishaps.
What could possibly happen?
Absolute chaos.
There were tears from laughing. Stories that started with “I probably shouldn’t tell this” and immediately became everyone’s favorite story. One person’s mortifying experience would inevitably be met by someone else saying some version of, “WAIT. THAT HAPPENED TO ME TOO.”
And that is exactly why these conversations mattered.
It did not feel like networking.
It felt like hanging out with friends.
The vulnerability encouraged throughout the educational sessions, particularly Jessica Lewan’s work, had created enough trust that people were willing to share the imperfect parts of their professional lives.
That is where the real connection lived.
Mornings at Awaken Hit Different
Mother Earth, Mother Nature + Mother Katrina
Mornings started slowly on the lawn at Skamania Lodge, coffee in hand, surrounded by the Columbia River and mountains.
Calling the view “beautiful” feels wildly inadequate.
Morning yoga, meditation and sound healing created space to regroup before another full day.
Angie Parris led gentle morning asanas. Katrina Yokoyama returned with her seemingly magical combination of sound bowls and crystal healing.
Each morning seemed to deepen the group’s connection. As attendees became more comfortable, they gave more of themselves to the experience.
By day three, everyone’s chakras appeared to be aligned, spinning at full speed and potentially generating enough energy to power portions of Washington State.
And Then There Were the Room Drops
Skincare Santa Came Every Night
Every attendee arrived to a gift bag packed with products.
Amazing.
But then came the discovery that gifts would also magically appear in their rooms every evening.
Suddenly everyone was living for one question:
WHAT IS IN MY ROOM TONIGHT?
Behind the magic were Andrea, Jessica, Emily, Kristaan, Tenille, Jackie, and Arielle, essentially Awaken’s skincare elves, quietly making their way around the lodge delivering nightly surprises.
Brands including TalaDerma, KM Herbals, Dermaesthetics Beverly Hills, Ke Kō Botanicals, Anna Lotan PRO, Hale & Hush, FACTORFIVE, TiZO, Rezenerate, Essence Ring and many others filled the retreat with products attendees could discover, experience and take home.
The room drops became another example of what Awaken does so well.
Details matter.
Awaken 2026 Was About More Than Education
We left Awaken with pages of notes, new product knowledge, new business ideas and new perspectives.
But those probably were not the most important things anyone took home.
Awaken created space for people to be honest about where they are, where they want to go and what might be standing in the way.
It created an environment where competitors became collaborators, strangers became friends and vulnerability became strength.
That is difficult to manufacture.
You cannot put it on an agenda.
You cannot order it from a catering menu.
You cannot put it inside a swag bag.
It has to be earned.
For the second year in a row, Shawna Rocha and the Awaken team earned it.
L+A was incredibly proud to return as Media Partner and Evergreen Sponsor and even prouder to watch this community grow stronger throughout the retreat.
We arrived as a group of esthetics professionals.
We left as that slightly chaotic, deeply connected, extremely well-moisturized school of fish.
And somewhere in Washington, Officer Kelly is probably still holding up the ONE MINUTE card.
