What does it really take to build your dream yoga retreat center—from scratch?
In this episode, I sit down with Kayla Nielsen, who shares the raw, inspiring truth behind building a yoga retreat space from the ground up. From buying land abroad to pricing retreats and navigating local logistics, Kayla opens up about the entrepreneurial journey few yoga teachers talk about.
We cover:
🔹 How to navigate land ownership and logistics in a foreign country
🔹 Smart strategies for planning, pricing, and co-teaching retreat
🔹 Why patience and community are the foundation of a sustainable retreat center
🔹 The beauty of letting your retreat space tell a story that reflects your values
Whether you’re a yoga teacher dreaming of retreats or an entrepreneur craving land-based living, this conversation is your roadmap to turning inspiration into action.
GUEST EXPERT: Kayla Nielsen | @Kaylalanielsen | kaylalanielsen.com
Kayla Nielsen is a yoga teacher with over 1000 hours of training. Founder of international retreat business and yoga alliance registered yoga school, glow yoga retreats. CEO and co-founder of still salty escape, a hotel and retreat center in northern nicaragua.
She’s been teaching and leading retreats around the world for 10 years, and established a successful online yoga app 3 years ago with thousands of subscribers.
Check out Kayla’s retreat center: https://www.stillsaltyescape.com/
FREE Practice: Somatic Yoga Workout for Weight Loss | Awaken the Body & Release Negative Emotions
Relevant Blog: How to Plan a Yoga Retreat That Earns 6 Figures
Relevant to Today’s Episode:
✅ 200-hour Online Yoga Teacher Training
🔮 300-hour Online Yoga Teacher Training
🎧 Also Listen to:
#299 – Strategies to Slay Imposter Syndrome and Share Your Gifts
#354 – Redefining “Niche” with Carla Cline Thomas
#365 – Launch Ugly! My Top 5 Business Tips for Yoga Entrepreneurs
© 2026 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com
Transcript:
[Brett Larkin]
It’s time for you to walk through the world with the confidence and serenity of someone who’s deeply tethered to their inner wisdom. If you have this insatiable hunger to uplift your personal life and make a bigger impact in your wellness career, leveraging yoga’s ancient wisdom, welcome. I’ve certified thousands of yoga instructors online, I teach to over half a million subscribers on YouTube, but I still haven’t remotely quenched my thirst for more yogic knowledge.
I’m Brett Larkin, founder of Uplifted Yoga, and this is the Uplifted Yoga Podcast. Let’s get started. Welcome back, yoga family.
This is our first episode of a brand new year, if you are listening in real time, congratulations to those of you that are finishing my Evolve Somatic Yoga Challenge right now. I hope you’re loving it. Today’s the last day and keep an eye on your inbox for a special offer to my Uplifted membership.
You can keep practicing yoga with me all year. Yes, it’s fun to chit chat on the podcast, but the magic happens on the mat too. And there’s so many beautiful Yoga Alliance continuing education courses in the app as well.
Deeper philosophy lectures, discussions on the eight limbs of yoga, the yamas, the niyamas, different archetypes like Kali and Lakshmi, Kundalini Yoga, Yoga Nidra, so much more. So if you are not yet an Uplifted member, absolutely consider getting the app, supporting the show. And I’m so excited to introduce today’s guest.
So many of you, because I’ve trained a lot of yoga teachers over the years, and a reoccurring dream that I hear is people who want to own their own retreat center, or maybe this is just kind of a fantasy for you, but who doesn’t want to know how to build a retreat center from scratch? And that’s why I’m so excited to sit down with Kayla Nielsen today. She shares the raw, inspiring truth behind building a yoga retreat space from the ground up.
We’re going to talk about land ownership, logistics, including all of that in foreign countries. We’re going to talk about smart strategies for planning, pricing, and co-teaching retreats. Whether you’re a yoga teacher dreaming of retreats or an entrepreneur craving land-based living, this conversation is your roadmap to turn inspiration into action.
No joke, I walked away learning so much from this episode. If you don’t know Kayla, she is an Instagram celebrity, so go check her out on Instagram. She’s also a yoga teacher with over 1,000 hours of training, and she’s the founder of an international yoga retreat business.
She’s been leading retreats for 10 years. All of her links are in the show notes in addition to my blog post about how to plan a yoga retreat that earns six figures. So without further ado, let’s start dreaming about our retreat centers or retreats and jump into this incredible conversation with Kayla.
Welcome Kayla to the Uplifted Yoga Podcast. I’m so excited you’re here. Thank you for having me.
And I’m really giddy about our topic today, which is basically recreating a yoga retreat center from scratch, from nothing. Truly nothing, just raw land, yes. And I know the yoga retreat center is a dream that so many people have.
I feel like when I teach 300-hour yoga teacher training, there’s always three or four, usually women, who it’s like they have a vision. And it’s always really unique. Sometimes it’s about healing people who’ve been through trauma or abuse.
Sometimes it’s about mothers and daughters. They always have a very beautiful, unique vision and flavor, but it’s very overwhelming when you have a dream that big of like, how do I actually do this? And it can seem like you might need a lot of startup costs, like you’re visualizing a resort and buildings.
And what you have done or what you can teach us or tell us about is that actually just with raw land, you can start bringing this vision to reality. And tell us about your journey and what this looked like for you.
[Kayla Nielsen]
Yes. So, well, I will just preface by saying most of the time you do need startup funds.
[Brett Larkin]
But you know, you maybe don’t need like half a million dollars and a construction crew right away.
[Kayla Nielsen]
Right. Right. And it’s also, you know, comparatively our, for instance, our piece of land, which I’ll get to is two acres.
It’s on the ocean. So, you know, I’m from California, getting something like that in California, very different price range, you know, tens of millions of dollars here. So you don’t need those kinds of startup funds, but you do still, you know, and you can roll things out in phases.
So for me, I was also somebody who travel has always been my greatest teacher, even kind of before yoga, even though I’ve been doing yoga, just a little background on me for a long time. My mom was a yoga teacher. So I started when I was 12, but I became a traveler, like a real kind of hardcore traveler when I was about 21.
So travel was always a really, really big component of my life. I traveled for a living and always kind of, even before I was a yoga teacher, I did yoga, but even before I was a teacher, I always thought, oh, one day I’m going to get land and build my own place, whether it is, you know, I think this was even before Airbnb, I don’t remember, but you know, that kind of style of just some sort of homestay type of place where I’m able to invite people in. And then when I became a yoga teacher, it was like, okay, you know, retreats, because I started teaching retreats very soon after I became a teacher and really fell in love with that modality of teaching.
And so that was probably all 10 years, I want to say, maybe eight years before I actually bought the land. So just for a little bit of a timeline for people.
[Brett Larkin]
Yeah. And those retreats that you were leading were all over the world, I’m assuming. You were taking people to other places.
[Kayla Nielsen]
Exactly. Exactly. So I started, and I’ve taught all different kinds of retreats.
Sometimes I’ll just rent a big villa somewhere. Sometimes it would be a full retreat center, you know, so I’ve done all different styles of venues and all different countries all over the world. And the more that I was doing it, I was like, yes, this would be, this would be amazing.
And also I luckily had the foresight to think, is it as amazing as it seems? Because I know, you know, sometimes it can look a certain way, especially when you’re staying somewhere as a guest versus how it is running, operating it. There are a lot of logistics, particularly if it is in another country that you are not a citizen of.
You know, there’s so many logistics, legalities and everything. So I started working at a retreat center. I lived in the Philippines for about five years.
That was my home base. And I started working at a retreat center there just as their resident yoga teacher, but I was really good friends with the owner. And so I was kind of just seeing and witnessing a lot of what it really took on the back end to run things.
And it was a really good experience for me because before that, you know, again, it was sort of like this romanticized version in my head. And then once I started seeing things and it was like, wait, I don’t know if I do want to do this. This is a lot more work than it looks like, you know, also just managing employees.
And again, when you go and stay somewhere as a guest, you’re seeing the final product most of the time or close to a final product that has been many years in the making. And you’re not, and it is like, yes, you took something, you made it beautiful. You’ve created this gathering space for people.
And also it’s a totally different job to be a business owner, to be an employer, than to be a yoga teacher teaching killer classes or even a retreat teacher. You know, those are two totally different jobs. And so that was something that all the, then I kind of started having doubts about it where I was like, I don’t know if I do want to do this actually.
I don’t know. But at this point you loved leading retreats. I loved leading retreats.
[Brett Larkin]
You’re thinking about, do I want to be a retreat owner? But before we shift gears, I just, because there’s so many new perspective yoga teachers listening to this. Can you give them just a couple of tips about like, if they’re thinking about leading a retreat for the first time, or maybe it’s something new that they want to do.
Like they’re not at the retreat center stage yet, but I just feel like you have a wealth of wisdom here and I can’t let you off the show without giving us some tips.
[Kayla Nielsen]
I love helping people plan their retreats. And that is actually a huge part of what I do now. I have a course that’s called Retreat Lab.
And so I help teachers with exactly this, of planning their retreat from start to finish marketing it, selling it. Because again, you know, you start as a yoga teacher, you’re like, I love yoga. I want to teach more than just my hour drop in class that people are coming to.
I want to go deeper into certain subjects. I want to go deeper than maybe you’ve already taught workshops, you know, so you’re wanting to give more. And teaching a retreat, it is a lot more.
So you will get that financial reward of more, but it’s also a lot of energy and a lot of organization and a lot of management and planning. And if you are doing it again internationally, then there’s a lot of logistics again. So it’s kind of just like honing everything in.
So I think if you do have that pull to be a retreat teacher, I do kind of encourage people to just start, not start small as in sell yourself short and you can’t do the big thing, but just start in a way that feels manageable to you, especially if you aren’t able to either co-teach it with someone or hire an assistant to help with the logistics. If you’re someone that’s like, I love the yoga and the creative part, but the organization and the kind of admin of it all is not really for me, then start in a way that could even be like a day retreat, like a staycation type of place and slowly grow from there. I think a slow growth and a really organic growth that way can be super helpful for you to get comfortable with it.
And again, to kind of just dip your toe in and see, do I even like this? Because again, it can sound really nice and then you do it and you’re like, that was not how I thought it was going to be. So kind of test the waters first, also see what your students like, have it be a very engaged experience with them where you’re asking, what time of year are you guys wanting to go?
What kind of place are you wanting to go to? And of course you can’t please everyone. So you are going to have to take that into account, but have it be something that you kind of co-create with your students to make sure you’re following that demand as well.
And then once it comes to looking for the venue and everything, then it really would be, it really is based around your budget ultimately, because there’s so many options. So like I said, I’ve definitely had retreats where I’ve rented a villa kind of Airbnb style and that’s worked great. And then I’ve had others where I do rent a full retreat center, which is usually more pricey.
So it really just depends on what you’re able to kind of afford because it is an upfront cost for you and that’s where it is. It can be scary. So that’s why it’s helpful to have that kind of slow start at first to just, if you do a sort of day retreat somewhere close to where you are, usually the cost of renting wherever you’re going to do that is going to be very minimal compared to a big international retreat center, for instance.
[Brett Larkin]
Yeah. I teach very similarly that, I think the ideal progression is like local half day or day long retreat. Like, see if you actually like holding space for humans for like consecutive eight hours.
And then, you know, a long weekend, maybe somewhere again, somewhat local that you can drive to and then kind of building up from there. So, you know, not doing like the international one week thing as your kickoff. So absolutely great.
And I’m just wondering also, do you have any advice, because I get so many questions from students about retreat pricing and people just feeling really insecure about, you know, is someone going to want to spend this much? And just curious, any thoughts there? It was interesting.
Someone had posted in one of our 300 hour teacher training forums recently, her retreat price. And she was kind of asking other people to help validate it or pump it up. And one of our other incredible alumni had written that she once did this exercise, I think you’ll get a kick out of this, where she reversed out the cost of her retreat to like an hourly wage for herself.
Exactly. Like how much she was actually earning per hour. And it was essentially like minimum wage or something when she did it.
And really, like you are on 24 seven. Like if someone needs something in the middle of the night, if there’s a roommate situation, if there’s, you are on. And so you have to consider those working hours, as well as considering the opportunity cost of you being away from your main business or where you’re teaching.
But okay, what is your take on retreat pricing?
[Kayla Nielsen]
Yeah. So all of that is so true, you know. And even again, as yoga teachers, even if you don’t teach a retreat, I’m sure people have heard this.
Let’s say you get paid $40 for your yoga class or $50 for your yoga class and your friends could say, you could be $50 an hour. That’s so amazing. And you’re like, it’s not an hour.
It’s not a real hour of work. It’s also the driving and the planning of the class. And once you do start pricing it out, you see how many hours it actually is.
And so I think retreats can be similar where people think, wow, that’s a lot of money to make in one week, but you’re like, it’s so much more than this week too. So it’s like that week is a lot of energy in and of itself, but also it’s a lot of work to get to that point. So yeah, I mean, I’m all for yoga teachers making money.
It can be kind of a tricky topic because yoga is obviously a spiritual practice and traditionally yoga was free. This was something that was given to for free. And also traditionally, you know, a true yogi in India was cared for by the community.
They were taken in, they were housed, they were fed, you know, they were treated kind of as they were a spiritual guru in their community and they gave yoga. It was very reciprocal for, you know, but we don’t have that in the West. We’re not being housed and clothed and fed by people for teaching yoga classes.
So we need money to pay our rent and to survive. And I think historically we’ve been very underpaid and overworked as yoga teachers. So I think it’s just remembering that it’s not a bad thing to make money as a yoga teacher.
It’s not something that you should feel shameful about at all. It’s something that you should be really proud of, if anything. And also, again, look at how much your education was just to become a yoga teacher.
That’s just to pay yourself back, just to start breaking even. You know, there’s so many costs that come into being a teacher. So for me, I totally get it.
I was also similar, especially when I first started out. And so for me, it was always my importance really landed on the teaching itself, because I wanted if I was going to charge a certain amount, I wanted to make sure that I was providing that same amount with my teaching. So that was for me what really helped was just to focus on the quality of my teaching so that I could feel confident enough to say, yes, this is worth that.
So this is something I also really like to encourage people who are going to do a retreat for the first time of make sure your classes are more and better than what you would just provide in your everyday Wednesday afternoon class. You know, you do want to give people more because, yes, they’re paying for more and they’re getting a whole experience and they are getting other activities and food and all of this stuff. But you do kind of want to give that oomph and give more depth and you would be able to in your everyday class.
So I really encourage people to focus on your teaching and get really empowered in your teaching so that that kind of translates financially where you’re like, yeah, I am worth this much. It’s a no brainer.
[Brett Larkin]
Oh, I love that tip. And I feel like this is reciprocal, too, because it’s like you don’t want to resent your retreat. I feel like the retreat that I priced high and felt like a stretch, it changed the energy and the way I showed up to those retreats because I was like, this is so, you know, I’m being paid to be here.
I have got to be on. This has got to be incredible. I thought about so many more just like nuances, details, little things of, you know, exactly what the class should be like when they come in and they’re jet lagged compared to, you know, how we’re going to build the arc throughout the week.
And of course, you’re planning meals and so many other things as well. So I think that’s just such a great point. I’m curious before we move on and I promise everyone we’re going to talk about retreat centers.
But in terms of filling retreats, obviously you have a huge social media following. Everyone go follow Kayla if you’re not already. And you also mentioned, you know, a lot of teaching in person.
Can you talk to some of the yogis and teachers who are listening a little bit about that evolution from maybe starting, filling these retreats with people you knew in real life? And I think that idea of kind of getting their buy in early is great. I used to do that, too.
I’m like, hey, so are you free in March? Like, would you want to go to Italy with me? But how that probably then evolved towards it being filled with, I’m guessing, also people who are following you on social media and just any any tips about trying to fill those retreat slots?
[Kayla Nielsen]
Yes. So this is also, I think, a very common misconception of people that you have to have a big social media in order to fill a retreat. And when I taught my first retreat, I think I had 500 followers.
I had less than a thousand followers. And I filled my first retreat. And because I started doing retreats, I think it was like 11 or 12 years ago.
So a long time ago, there was still Instagram, not in the way that we know it. And I was all building at the same time. But a lot of students that I work with now, they tell me this all the time after they take my course.
I just sold out my first retreat with the launch strategy you gave us. And they have also less than a thousand followers. So it’s not it’s not just about following.
I just want to say that up front. Of course, it can be helpful the larger your audience is because you have a wider net to cast. But I honestly think that you have a much stronger connection and you have much more value in your in-person students.
Those are people that get to know you and you also know them because when it comes to following, even if you’re highly engaged with with your community and in the DMs and everything, you will never really know them the way that they know you. It still is a more kind of one sided relationship versus your students who are coming to your, like I said, that Wednesday class every day. You get to know them much better and therefore there’s higher trust.
And when you have a deeper trust, then you will have a higher conversion rate because if someone trusts you, they’re much more willing to be like, here’s thousands of dollars and take me to Italy, you know, and trust you to guide them on this experience somewhere in the world. So that trust really needs to be there. And I actually started retreats and kind of Instagram at the same time.
I was I wasn’t teaching at a studio when I first started teaching. I was just teaching donation classes in the park. And what I did was partnered with other teachers who had more experience than me, who had a stronger student base already.
So it was my retreat. I hired them and I paid them. But it was really helpful for me also confidence wise to again know that people were getting their full value out of it.
But it was also helpful, again, for that wider net to be cast so that I’m able to reach more people, even if I didn’t really have a strong in-person following yet. But whenever I work with people who are like, I teach full time, but I have, yes, less than a thousand followers, I’m like, no, you’re in a great position. That’s actually, I think, a better position to cultivate those connections in person.
And then online is kind of a bonus.
[Brett Larkin]
Yeah, because people want to go on vacation with people they know, not a stranger. And when you were kind of networking with these, you know, let’s call them more experienced teachers at the time. Was that more to, you know, be able to tap into their audience and lead a bigger retreat?
You said you were leaning on them. So was that more like for the logistics piece? Like they were helping more with the logistics and financial planning?
Or it was more like so they could co-teach with you or just say a little bit more about that? Because I think it’s really interesting to explore partnerships and a lot of yoga teachers want to do that. But then there is often a dark side to that where maybe boundaries aren’t clear or roles aren’t defined.
And then what is like the finances of something look like that?
[Kayla Nielsen]
Yeah, so I always encourage, even to this day, like I said, I’ve been teaching retreats for however many years now, I still almost always bring a co-teacher with me, not because I’m incapable, but because I’ve also, I mean, just on a side note, had crazy experiences where I’ve ended up in the hospital or like one of my co-teachers got bit by a dog. I got appendicitis where literally I couldn’t teach the retreat and someone had to step in. So it’s helpful for that, you know, not to be a disaster person, but that can happen.
But it is it’s just also I really like having a kind of confidant there with me who we can kind of go back and we can debrief and say, did you see what was going on with this person? I think it helps people feel more supported. And it just for me, I feel more supported, even if I my last retreat I taught, I think I taught every class and my co-teacher taught one.
So it wasn’t even about the teaching. It was just I feel supported having someone else there with me when I’m holding space for a group of 20 plus people.
[Brett Larkin]
It’s a huge emotional output. It’s a huge. I love that you’re sharing and talking about this because I don’t think we talk about this enough and that it’s like, you know, you don’t need a co-teacher at this point.
You can fill a retreat solo, but you that you actually still choose to do it because it’s supportive for you.
[Kayla Nielsen]
Yes. Yes. I always recommend that.
And you can partner with people for so many reasons. You can partner with, OK, I don’t have that big of an audience or a student following yet. So us working together will help us to fill the retreat.
You can partner with them just for that mental support. Maybe it’s physical support that they have some physical skill that you don’t have or some other interest yoga wise, you know, that you don’t have. I do try to partner with people who are complementary to me to where we won’t be contradictory of each other, but also have some other thing that they’re really into that I’m like, yeah, that’s cool.
But like, let’s say chanting, for instance, or some something else that I’m like, I like that, but I don’t teach that. That’s just not me. I like them to be able to bring this other flavor into the retreat as well.
And then as far as the logistics go, this is so important. I don’t care if this person is your best friend. Please, please have a contract.
Always have a contract. It can sound people, again, yoga spiritual. When you bring business into that, they can get kind of funny with it and, oh, it feels cold and I trust you.
It’s not about trust. It really is just about if you’re going to you’re going to have so many conversations with this person, you’ll be sending voice notes and texts and all of this communication. And the contract is just this thing you can refer to that says this is the exchange.
This is what I’m doing. This is what you’re doing. It’s very clear.
So there’s no confusion. Those boundaries aren’t crossed. It is agreed upon before any deposit is placed anywhere, before you’re really planning, planning the retreat.
Have a contract no matter what. For me, I started my own retreat business, so I always hired teachers. I’m also highly organized and one of those more type A yoga teachers, even though I’m also ethereal and creative.
But I don’t have a problem with the organization of it all. So I don’t mind doing that. I was always the one that was in contact with the students and it was really my retreat and I hired the teacher and I would still give them the freedom to do whatever they wanted to do.
We would talk about it and they would kind of say, oh, is this OK? Is that OK? You know, because it was still ultimately my retreat.
They were hired to work for me on it. I always preferred that personally than going in with someone and then having to decide everything together, especially if you are very similar, then you could start butting heads. And how do you actually decide certain things?
I also know tons of people that have started retreat businesses with their best friend, with their partner, whoever, and it’s worked out fine. You just have to have those clear boundaries and the clear definition of roles and contract before and then you’ll be good. I love that.
[Brett Larkin]
And I think there’s a lot of creativity that can be there, too, because I think the assumption is like, oh, if you’re running a retreat together, it’s just like 50-50, right? But you’re showing us, no, it doesn’t have to be like that. It actually can be your retreat and that person’s getting paid, you know, not a salary, but the equivalent of like compensation for the time that they’re there supporting.
And maybe then if they bring someone on the retreat, they get a bonus for that or or, you know, there’s a lot of business can be so creative and feminine when we want it to be. So I just want to throw that out there. OK, so flash forward, just knowing a little bit about your journey.
It seems that, you know, when you were younger, maybe it was, you know, exploring and going to these different places. And then I think maybe this vision for like having your own space or sometimes I know people also maybe want to like live at their retreat center. And it’s more like this rooting, like planting roots, maybe like a little bit later stage of life, you know, owning land, which is, you know, such so beautiful because we can care for that land.
And you start getting this idea of maybe opening your own place. And you’re kind of observing behind the scenes in Thailand of what it takes to actually run a retreat center and that it’s a lot more work than you thought. What happens next where you’re like, OK, cool, I’m going to do this.
[Kayla Nielsen]
Whenever I would land any place that I really liked, always just out of curiosity, I would always ask around about land prices and just also what are the legalities? There’s there’s always different laws in different countries as to whether foreigners can even own the land or does it have to be a long term lease? Or there’s so many, so many different options I couldn’t even possibly get into all of every country.
But there’s there’s a lot of logistics that go into it. So I had looked at land in several places before and had been interested in it. And I actually had a deposit on a piece of land in the Philippines.
And then Covid happened. I didn’t know, obviously, any of that was going to happen. We were kind of just in this waiting period because it was a whole a whole thing with the title.
And there was like 10 siblings on there. It was a whole thing. So I had left the Philippines and went to Nicaragua.
And I went to Nicaragua. I actually had, I think, two months in between retreats. And I was about to this was coming into 2020.
It’s the end of 2019. 2020, I had nine retreats planned, which was the most I had ever done. And I’m like, OK, I only had this two month break.
And I was like, I’m just going to not open my laptop the whole time. All I wanted to do was go and learn how to surf. That was all I wanted to do.
I just wanted to go to a totally new place, be in a different environment, off the grid. I had this whole kind of image of Nicaragua in my head. I don’t know where this image came from.
This was just made up in my head. I had never been there. So I get there and I landed down south in Nicaragua.
It wasn’t super aligned with that image in my head because it was just a little bit more. There’s just more infrastructure. There’s more partying.
It was just a different vibe there. I was picturing kind of like country and cows and empty waves and warm water. So I stayed down there for about two weeks.
And when I was down there, I was staying in a surf camp against my will. I was in a dorm room. I did not want to be there.
I’m 31. And I’m like, I have outgrown this. I don’t want to be in a dorm.
It just felt so juvenile to me, you know, but it was the only the only thing that was available. This was over Christmas, New Year’s, really high season. So the person who was my roommate, I met her the first night I got in there.
I’m kind of grumpy, just like I don’t want to be. I don’t want to have a roommate, whatever. But we clicked right away.
It just is very good friends. We got along right away. This is a huge spoiler.
[Brett Larkin]
All right, quick pause, because I need to tell you something exciting. My new book, Healing with Somatic Yoga, A Six Week Journey to Release Emotions, Rewire Your Nervous System and Reclaim Your Body is finally here. If you’ve been listening to this podcast and thinking, I wish I could go deeper, I wish I had all this information about the nervous system and somatic yoga and healing in one place.
Well, this book is the nervous system guide I wish had existed when I was struggling. It’s practical, it’s gentle, it’s nervous system healing designed for yogis and filled with the exact tools I teach inside my trainings. And because you’re part of this podcast community, I’m giving you something special.
If you leave an Amazon review for the book, I’ll ship you my 2026 somatic desk calendar for free. It’s gorgeous, filled with month by month reminders and nervous system grounding cues to support your whole year. Enjoy the book and screenshot your review.
Submit it at brettlarkin.com/somaticreview Thank you for helping this book reach the yogis who need it. And now back to the episode.
[Kayla Nielsen]
We are married now, so I didn’t know that that was going to happen, but I met her and we became good friends. She was there for just five days. She ended up leaving, going back to the States.
She works in corporate tech America, very different life. She went back to the States. I stayed in Nicaragua.
I really didn’t like it down south. I went up north because I was like, I’m just going to go check out another place, see if I like it. As soon as I got up there, it met that vision in my head where it was just so quiet, nothing around, so remote, warm water, empty waves.
And I was staying at a surf camp and would walk to the surf every day. It was maybe, I don’t know, 10 minute walk. And I every day I would walk past this sign.
It said, call land for sale. So, and I did this all the time in various countries. It was not unusual for me.
I’m like, I’m just going to call. I’m just going to see. And so I called and looked at the land and it ruined me because I had just, I had never had that feeling before where it was just that 100% yes.
But the downfall was, I told you it’s two acres, so it was a lot bigger than I was planning on and therefore a lot more expensive than I was planning on about twice as much as I wanted to spend. But I was like, this is the land. And so I called the girl who I met three weeks ago in my dorm room and said, do you want to buy this land with me?
And she said, no, you’re crazy because that’s crazy. I don’t even know you. And I said, you don’t understand.
You have to come back. You have to see. It’s so different than down South.
You have to come back and see for yourself. So I convinced her to come back. She came back for 10 days.
That was kind of also when we fell in love, even though we didn’t really realize that we were in love and we thought we were just best friends. And I convinced her to buy the land with me. So we bought this land together as best friends.
And at the time, I was like, OK, this is a huge chunk of my savings. It’s going to take me another few years to even start to build. The way that it’s titled is funny now because, again, we’re married and everything, but it’s split exactly down the middle.
Like, this is her half. This is my half. And she was kind of in the same boat where she was like, yeah, I’m eventually going to retire from corporate.
I’m probably going to just like build a little house and, you know, maybe a little B&B or something. And at this point, I was still like, I don’t know if I want to do a retreat center. I just know I want to have a little home.
I want something that’s for me. And yeah, maybe I’ll invite some like there will be a yoga space. And I don’t know, it was just everything was kind of up in the air.
And then her and I officially got together maybe two weeks later and just fell in love super hard. We knew that we were each other’s person and everything. And so we knew right away when we get married, we’re going to get married on our land.
And so we knew that we knew that we wanted to do that. And I was thinking, oh, it’s going to be this like camping rustic thing. Cool.
Her dad is 80. He’s a lot older. And she’s like, he can’t do that.
Like, we need to have some sort of structure or something. So this was how it started, was we just wanted to have something for the wedding. And then it kept growing and growing into eventually a retreat center because it started as just our house we wanted to have.
And like I said, I always knew there would be a yoga space and we have two acres. So it’s a lot of space. And then it was like, well, if we’re going to have a big yoga space, we might as well have at least a cabana on there for Airbnb.
And, you know, and then it was like, but then if if that’s there, then that’s almost a retreat size. So we might as well put another one. And we just kept adding stuff.
And next thing you know, we have a retreat center. So it was kind of unplanned in some ways, even though that was what I had always wanted. But that was really how it happened.
It was kind of unplanned in some ways.
[Brett Larkin]
Well, it’s like the land brought you together. Yeah, it’s this is such a beautiful story. And then it’s like the the impetus to have the wedding on the land is what initiated the retreat center.
And talk to us about how you had the confidence as an American woman to research and buy land in a foreign country and then figure out all the logistics of getting something actually built. And what were those first things that were built and what needed to happen? Because I think to the average listener or even to me, like it seems so intimidating.
Like, do you speak the language? Like, how do you know you’re not getting ripped off? Like, how do you know what’s possible and not possible?
And I think a lot of us have a fantasy, especially in this day and age, of maybe not living in the U.S. or living elsewhere. And like, what is that process actually like?
[Kayla Nielsen]
How did you have the confidence to do this? I don’t know where the confidence comes from. I’m just a little bit delusional that way, where I’m like, that’s just how I roll.
I just come in guns a blazing. But I also had, like I said, I’ve been traveling for a long time. I had a lot of tons of friends at this point who had bought land in all different countries.
So I did know questions to ask. The most important being, like I said, you don’t always know if as a foreigner you can even own the land outright. In Nicaragua, you can.
So that was a huge, huge, that was really attractive for me. Versus, you know, Indonesia or Bali is a really popular place that people are always interested in. You cannot own land outright there as a foreigner.
So they’re really long-term leases. And, you know, there’s other ways of doing it, of putting it in a local person’s name. That’s a huge risk because they could just say, this is my business now.
You know, so there’s always risks. You’re not a citizen wherever you are. There’s always one.
[Brett Larkin]
So if you buy two acres, does that, like, come with citizenship or no? You’re still, that’s a totally separate process.
[Kayla Nielsen]
Yeah. No, it’s not a dumb question because some countries, I don’t know if it’s exactly those ratios, but some countries it is like that where if you essentially invest, it could be in a house, it could be in land, whatever, a certain amount, then it does come with, I don’t know if it’s citizenship or if it’s like residency kind of equivalent to a green card. I know some countries have that.
I don’t know what the exact exchange is, but that can happen sometimes. So with Nicaragua, no, we can get our residency pretty easily actually. And you can get your residency, I believe, without having a business there.
That might not be wrong. So maybe fact check me on that. But yeah, with Nicaragua, that stuff was pretty straightforward.
And we had met another American expat there who owned land. So he was super helpful in kind of telling us these are things to look for. He connected us with his lawyer.
You want to do it all legally. Also super helpful because the title was clean that sometimes it’s like oftentimes land is left to an entire family. It’s like in someone’s family’s name.
And oftentimes in many places, people have a lot of kids. Like I said, in the, with the Philippines, the title was not clean and not all of the 10 kids who were owned these tiny sections of the land had kind of signed off on it. So these are things that you want to look out for.
That might not be a bad thing. It could just take longer. Whereas we said, we like this.
And they were like, cool, the title’s clean. We can drop the paperwork. It happened in 72 hours.
So it was really fast. Of course, there’s always a risk of this legit. I’m about to send a huge wire and I want, you know, you will always feel that way.
I think there’s always a risk at the time. No, I did not speak Spanish yet. I do now, luckily, because I spend half the year there.
So yeah, there was, I mean, huge risks, huge risks that could have happened. But luckily where we were and just the, the overall kind of exchange and laws, it was super smooth. And that being said, still at any time, because we’re not citizens there, at any time, a government official or something could say, actually, this is mine now.
You know, like those are all risks that can happen. Anytime you’re not a citizen anywhere, you don’t have the same protection and rights that you would in your country of origin. So there’s always risks to consider for sure.
[Brett Larkin]
Do you have to pay taxes there?
[Kayla Nielsen]
Yeah, we pay taxes. We pay both because our business is also registered in the States.
[Brett Larkin]
I mean, there’s a lot of tax implications and, you know, you definitely want a lawyer who is specialized in that. Now, when someone’s buying a piece of land, your land had nothing on it, right? So had you double checked that, like, we can pump water in here and electricity and infrastructure?
Can you talk people through just some of the nuts and bolts of maybe things that they should really consider asking or can, you know, think about before plopping down some money for acreage?
[Kayla Nielsen]
Yes. Super important. So when we bought our land, they had already showed us on the map of these are the areas of that would be good for wells.
So they did know. And I think that at least where we are, that’s pretty common, where they kind of site out places where this is where you would get the best water for wells. So we did know that we could get water.
There was no well, there was no water there. During construction, we obviously needed electricity before we’ve had electricity ourselves. And so, again, we live in an amazing community.
People are so sweet. They’re like, oh, you can run it from this person and just pay them directly. And, you know, so there’s there was some workarounds there until we had our electricity set up.
One thing that we had no service, no cell service there. So we also had to put in a Wi-Fi tower because my wife still works corporate America and I also do a lot of my work online. So we we do need to be connected.
We have actually better service now, even without the Wi-Fi. But that was another thing that you don’t you might not necessarily know before you buy the land. You can certainly reach out to a provider and have them come and test and see.
But we have a I think it’s like 150 foot Wi-Fi tower. They had to go super high for that to get us like two bars of service. Another really important thing for people to look out for.
We didn’t run into this issue on our piece of land. I had a very direct access point as far as a road that leads to it. But other places that I’ve looked that have been more remote, you want to make sure that there is an actual it sounds strange to say like that there is a road there.
But what you might not realize is the road you take there might be someone else’s. And they might say, oh, well, now that you own that, I’m closing that off. Or you might have to pay them for it.
So these are that’s really important. I think that most people don’t really know to ask about to just make sure that there is that access point, because that can be misleading to sometimes where it seems like this is the road to get there. But then all of a sudden you find out after the transaction, no, that actually belongs to someone.
[Brett Larkin]
That’s such a great tip. So what were the first things that happened on the land? I’m assuming water, electricity, Wi-Fi tower, but for you to be actually able to do the wedding there, if the wedding did happen there.
[Kayla Nielsen]
The wedding did happen there. We were planning on getting our wedding was initially planned for. I’m trying.
It was initially planned for two years after we had met. We got engaged exactly a year after we met and then we were planning it for the next year, which would have been the year that we were done building. So that didn’t happen because building was a nightmare.
Yeah, but I was going to be my next question is like, how fast did this happen? So what you see today that we have. So we opened in one year from the time that we broke ground to the time that we held our first retreat.
It was one year, which is kind of crazy. That seems crazy fast. Yeah, but we didn’t it did not look how it looks now.
I will say we literally had to open because we already had the retreats booked and we were there was so many problems with construction. Just again, we didn’t know what we were doing. We had never asked questions.
This is where the delusion works against me, where I’m like, how hard could it be? It should be fine. No, it can be hard.
And there is so many things that that’s how I learned Spanish actually was being there, managing the construction of it all, managing 60 men and also trying to just learn about construction for the first time at all. So it was very humbling. That’s for sure.
But at the very first thing, I think the first stuff that they did, they were also just testing the soil to make sure kind of like the height of the buildings that you can can do for everything. Different countries will have different regulations of how close you can build to the shoreline or the high tide line, which is obviously for things like tsunami risks or just like flooding and whatnot. So it’s kind of just mapping out and work.
We worked with an architect to design what we wanted to do and where everything was going to go and the kind of sloping of everything. Our land is slightly sloped. And then the really the big stuff that they were doing first were all the foundations because they hand dug the foundation to everything.
We have our house is super tall. It’s two stories, but it’s also just has really high ceilings. It’s a really tall house.
And they hand dug the foundation to that house, which is that alone took several months because it’s just a bunch of guys with shovels, you know, so they were digging that. The well was also hand dug, the septic, all of that stuff that was kind of happening that you would go and it didn’t look like anything was happening, but there was just a lot of prep work before you actually see things starting to pop up. And then, yeah, so they were kind of simultaneously working on our house and then our hotel side of things at the same time or the retreat center side of things at the same time.
And after our first season of operation, then we closed for the wet season and then that’s when we put in the pool and we added some other kind of just other things that we needed to have that we didn’t have when we first started.
[Brett Larkin]
Are you comfortable sharing with listeners just, and it doesn’t have to be exact, but like rough numbers or budgets, like if someone has a fantasy like this where they’re like, I want to do this and I know it’s going to be different based on different countries, but I feel like actually you’re the perfect person to talk to because you are amazing and called all the different countries and saw, but like maybe even just using yours as an example, if you’re comfortable, like ballpark, like what is kind of the cost of land compared and then like the construction cost and then, I don’t know, are you comfortable sharing at all?
[Kayla Nielsen]
Yeah, I’m fine. So we, our land, I think it was like 127 or something like that, something like that 127,000. So that was for about two acres, like I said, right on the ocean.
If you were doing two acres on the ocean in a place like Bali, for instance, it could very well be in the millions. Bali is very expensive. Ocean views is different than on the beach, so that could be a different situation.
Also in a place like Bali, and I just mentioned Bali a lot because people, obviously that’s a big yoga spot and people are always dreaming about, and it totally depends which part of the island you’re on too. I would say that Nicaragua is pretty comparable with a place like Costa Rica, Guatemala, you know, also big yoga hub type of places. I mean, again, it depends where you are in Costa Rica.
If you got two acres on the beach there, I’m sure it would be actually a lot more than 127,000. So yeah, it was, you know, it’s a lot of money, but it’s still for what you’re getting is a good price. I know that can sound crazy to some people.
And then building-wise, we had a budget. I can’t even, I want to say our initial budget was, it was either 250 or 300,000, and that was including our house, but for four cabanas, yoga space, our house, we have a rancho, which is like the restaurant area, a kitchen, two staff rooms, like this is a lot of building. And of course, we talked about it with the contractor, with the architect, they’re like, yeah, oh, that was also supposed to include all of the furnishing because that’s another thing, furnishing.
You’re like, oh yeah, I have to now buy 25 beds and pillows and all of this stuff. And so they were like, yep, yep, no problem, no problem. And that’s one of the things where we’re like, well, of course we believe you, like that’s what you do.
And by the way, they were not local. When our architect was Spanish, our contractor was from the US, and we stupidly thought that that would maybe make them more reputable or just also there was a language barrier and we’re just thinking, oh, this will be more streamlined for us. So as we’re getting deeper into the construction process, and we’re already reaching that kind of amount that we had agreed on, and we’re like, there’s still so much to do.
And they’re like, well, yeah, it’s going to be more now. And so we probably, I don’t even remember how much extra we spent, definitely more than double, probably close to triple of what we had planned on. But that was when we were also just in a really difficult situation of, okay, not only did we already have retreats booked, but also where we are, because it is this raw untouched land, you’re right on the ocean, it’s beautiful, but the elements are so strong there.
The ocean, you take a beating from the elements. If you would just said, okay, actually we can’t afford to finish building this until next year and you left it, it would be even more work for you because the way that the jungle would take over, it would just be, it would be horrible. So yeah, we ended up spending a lot.
It was a highly stressful time, a very challenging first year of marriage, but we survived it. And the other thing I will mention just about financing is that this is also different than, at least in the States, I’m sure there’s some countries that might offer financing, but you are paying cash for everything. There’s no mortgage, there’s no loans, or you can get a personal loan from a bank in the States of just like a personal loan and then use that, but it’s really cash for everything.
[Brett Larkin]
That one year in, what was actually there for those first retreat participants who came? Was it like, you’re in a tent and we have a toilet, or was it like buildings or like what?
[Kayla Nielsen]
No, no, no. It wasn’t that bad. It was just, no, it was all, the cabanas that we have now, those were all there.
At the time, we’ve always, the cabanas are pretty big. They’ve always been two stories. At the time, there was just the bottom story and that, because that was what we initially thought it was going to be.
And the top was sort of like an open air, sort of just like hang out roof deck kind of thing. It was still covered. And then after, we were never planning on converting those into rooms because our bottom story still sleeps 16 people.
So it was always, you know, that’s fine for a retreat. We have a huge yoga space and that has been, that was actually the very first thing that was completely finished on the whole property. It’s really beautiful.
And then we have, like I said, the rancho, which is kind of like an open air restaurant. And then the, we have two staff rooms and a kitchen and public bathroom if you’re in the restaurant area and everything. So we didn’t have the pool.
And the biggest thing was that that season also just happened to be a really dry, wet season, which worked for us for construction. It was actually really helpful. But the land, it really gets decimated from construction no matter what.
But then on top of it being parched, it just looked like a dust bowl. We had any of the landscaping that we had tried to do, it was just like so pathetic. These little droopy plants that were there, which one wet season really made a huge difference.
And that’s kind of the vibe of our place now. It is extremely lush. We love our garden.
And we also, this was another thing is we really wanted to grow food on the land as well, which had, it had never had any food successfully grown there. So that also took a really long time to just get to the point that we are now where we have a really booming food garden as well. But all of that took time and just kind of getting it to a place where it didn’t look so sad, where it was just dusty and brown.
[Brett Larkin]
So tell us about your life now as we wrap up, like you now are a retreat center owner. I’m assuming that means you have staff who’s there right now, like looking after the retreat center while you’re not there. I’m assuming that means that other people rent and use it.
So it’s an income source, even if you don’t teach again or don’t choose to. I know you said you mentioned splitting your time half the year there, half. So paint the picture of like what this looks like now.
And of course, how fun it must have been to design your own house.
[Kayla Nielsen]
Yeah, fun. And then also it makes you really realize like I have to decide where the outlets go. Like you really decide every last little thing.
So I do love whenever we’re there and just looking around and thinking like everything I see has a story. I remember exactly deciding and choosing everything. So that is fun.
But we pretty much split our time there. We spend mostly the winters there in Nicaragua. That is also our highest season there.
So around November till March or so. The first the first year we spent nine months there because it was just it was a lot of work, a lot of trial and error with staff. We actually first started with some foreigner staff who was helping with management because where we are is pretty remote.
Most most locals don’t know any English. And all of the locals who did know English already worked at other hotels or hostels and whatnot. And we actually had really bad experiences with foreign staff.
And now we have all local staff. We don’t allow any work trade or any of that kind of stuff because our goal was also to really give back to our local community and contribute to the economy and create jobs for them instead of taking jobs from them. So that was kind of that was a separate thing.
But we probably have 20 people who work there. We we usually close for the rainiest part of the year, not only for maintenance, because there is a lot of maintenance that happens. You know, like we’re replacing our roofs every few years.
We’re repainting multiple times every year. And there’s like I said, the elements are so strong there. So it’s just things get eaten alive by the saltwater, by the wind, by by the jungle.
So there’s a lot of maintenance. We close for that. And primarily, I don’t I don’t think I’ve taught a retreat there.
It’s been over two years since I’ve been in my fertility journey and everything. And so that has really been the focus. And I haven’t been wanting to plan retreats when I’m trying to get pregnant because I don’t want to have to then cancel the retreat if I can’t travel or IVF complications and everything.
And so I have just been in this limbo for a few years now. It’s been not super fun, but it has also shown me how much I do. I love being in this.
It’s a totally different kind of retreat host. It’s like hosting as the venue and also really helping the teachers because I do have a lot of experience to be able to help them curate their best possible experience. And it is something that teachers always say when they come here.
They’re like, oh, you can really tell that a yoga teacher runs this place compared to other places because of the things that we’ve thought of because I have done retreats all over the place. So it’s always like a really nice thing for me to hear. That is so cool.
What’s the name of the place? It’s called Still Salty Escape.
[Brett Larkin]
And is it profitable? Like, is this an income generator for you and your partner?
[Kayla Nielsen]
Yeah, it definitely took a little while to get there and it was very helpful that I already had a retreat business and was established as a retreat teacher so that I could book it out for the first season and just start bringing people there. So we opened in January 1st, 2022. So still kind of COVID times as well.
Not the best time to open a hotel. Usually the hardest part for us, which is getting better, is not just, it’s really selling the country. There’s a lot of misconceptions around Nicaragua.
People still have a lot of fear around traveling to Nicaragua. And so it’s really been just trying to convince people to come to the country. And that’s usually so much of what we do.
It’s like, yes, we have a social media presence and I’m familiar with content and all of that kind of stuff. But so much of how people come, it really is through word of mouth where a teacher holds their retreat. One of their students is probably also a teacher.
They fall in love with it. They fall in love with our staff. Our staff is literally what makes the place what it is between our staff and the land.
It just has a very unique energy to it. We try to be at as many retreats as we can in the high season. We’ll go up and we’ll talk to people and we’ll meet everyone.
But there’s a ton of retreats that we’re not at as well. So it’s really our staff that holds down the fort and keeps everyone super happy and just gives them the best experience possible.
[Brett Larkin]
Well, what I love about this story and this project, aside from bringing you together with your soulmate, is that it seems like now it’s really its own independent entity and business that can support you, regardless of whether you choose to teach yoga or not or end up eventually like full time momming it or not. And I think it’s really inspiring for everyone listening, hopefully, to like have this bigger vision. It doesn’t have to be a retreat center, but to think about also what’s next, what’s after yoga.
It’s been so incredibly inspiring to hear your story. And I think people are hopefully walking away with a lot of tips. I think really knowing the country, hopefully, that you want to invest in, knowing the language if it helps, knowing a fellow expat who’s maybe done it.
It seems like there were a lot of little pieces that came together that made this possible. But then also having this vision in the back of your mind and that for years you’d been asking and price comparing. And so I think even if you’re someone listening where this feels very far away, I think what I admire so much about you and getting to hear your story is how you had that seed and you were thinking about how to research and potentially manage it and working at that place in Thailand and seeing how that worked.
It’s really been fun because obviously I know you through social media, but I feel like I really got to know this whole other like super amazing hardcore business side of you today that I just didn’t know as much about. So it’s been just really fun to have you on the show. Are there any parting words you’d leave with maybe fellow teachers who are listening, who are just like really wanting to either lead that first retreat or have that big vision of wanting to live on land and host people on it?
[Kayla Nielsen]
Yeah, I think exactly what you said. If you are feeling that thing that I was feeling for so long, it’s two parts. It’s staying very open to that and staying curious and knowing literally what’s the worst that could happen.
If you do call and see a sign that says, call a land for sale, you call, you see it. If it falls through, fine, you know, but it’s like just start and it can just be those little steps to just start and then also stay really patient because like I said, for me, it was eight, 10 years before that seed really was watered and then I bought the land and things happened. So it’s stay patient with it and if you can, whether it is somebody that you know personally or a mentor, someone that you could hire to have you kind of like hold your hand through the process.
I think if you have that ability to either hire someone or maybe you have a friend that’s already done this, but really lean into those resources because they will be infinitely valuable for you.
[Brett Larkin]
Amazing. So friends, I’m going to put Kayla’s social media, her website, and of course the website of the retreat venue. Maybe some of you want to host a retreat there and that way you can, you know, stay in touch with her and see all the things.
Start dreaming this week. I think that’s a great call to action for all of us. Like let’s just dream a little bit about what this could look like and Kayla, thank you so much for being with us.
[Kayla Nielsen]
Thank you for having me. It was so fun.
[Brett Larkin]
Before you go, I want to remind you that my new book, Healing with Somatic Yoga, a six-week journey to release emotions, rewire your nervous system, and reclaim your body is officially out in the world. If this podcast has supported you, inspired you, or helped you feel even a tiny bit more home in your animal body, this book is the safe hug that your nervous system has been longing for. Inside, I take you through my full six-week rest method, somatic shaking, decoding your survival responses, breath and safety, the whole journey.
It’s everything I teach in my trainings distilled into something that you can curl up with on your couch. And here’s my little thank you gift to you. If you buy the book and leave an Amazon review, heartfelt, honest, short or long, I will send you my brand new 2026 Somatic Deaths Calendar for free as a gift.
This calendar contains monthly somatic reminders and little nervous system love notes to keep you regulated all year long. Go to brettlarkin.com/somaticreview to claim your calendar. Your reviews really truly matter.
They help more yogis discover somatic yoga and finally feel safe coming home into their bodies. Thank you for being here and I’ll see you in the next episode.
