Why I Host My Retreats at Design Hotels and What a Retreat Center Can't Deliver
Jessica Klimach, founder of FLEX&FLOW®, shares with us her honest take on why she prefers hosting her retreats at design hotels over anywhere else.
People ask me this more often than you might think. Why a hotel? Why not a retreat center tucked away in the mountains, or a rented villa, or one of those purpose-built wellness venues with matching linen and a juice bar?
The honest answer is: because I know the difference. And once you know it, you can’t un-know it.
Before I became a movement coach and founded FLEX&FLOW®, I spent years as a fashion stylist. I travelled constantly: campaigns, shoots, editorials, clients across Europe and beyond. I lived in hotels. Not just stayed in them, lived in them. And I learned very quickly what separates a space that looks good from a space that actually feels good. A beautiful lobby means nothing if the mattress is wrong or the bathroom smells like someone else’s decisions. You notice the magazines they chose to put out. The books on the shelf. Whether the merch makes sense or feels like an afterthought. Whether the interiors were curated by someone with a point of view or assembled by committee. Whether the scent when you walk in is the right one. Design is not decoration. Design is how a space makes you feel before you have the words for it.
That standard never left me. It runs through my classes, my method, and absolutely my retreats.
The first thing I think about when choosing a retreat location is not the spa.
Hotel Schwarzschmied
It’s the journey there.
I made a deliberate decision early on: every FLEX&FLOW® retreat will be somewhere genuinely reachable. Not forty minutes from a budget airport with two connections. Reachable by train, by car, or yes, by a reasonable flight. Because I believe the travel itself is part of the retreat. The moment you board a train and watch your city disappear behind you, something starts to shift. The distance does the first part of the work. You are already arriving before you arrive.
This is exactly why I keep returning to South Tyrol. Bolzano has its own airport with direct connections from Berlin. It sits at the intersection of rail lines from Munich and Verona. You get there without spending half your day in transit. And the landscape you move through, the Alps, the vineyards, the light, is already doing something to your nervous system before you even arrive.
A retreat that requires a complicated journey before it even begins is asking a lot. I prefer to let the ease of arrival be part of the welcome.
And while we are on the subject: I also made a conscious choice not to host retreats ninety minutes outside Berlin in Brandenburg. Real distance from daily life is part of what makes a retreat work. You need enough geography between you and your routine for the shift to happen.
When I walked into Hotel Schwarzmied in Lana for the first time, I understood immediately.
Hotel Schwarzschmied
Award-winning architecture. A Susanne Kaufmann Spa. Pools among the clouds, amber vineyards, low golden light, the Alps in every direction. A slow-food philosophy rooted in local ingredients that makes every meal feel intentional rather than obligatory.
This is what I mean by curation. Not just a beautiful room. A considered world.
Parkhotel Mondschein in Bolzano is the same spirit, entirely different character. Dating back to 1330, renovated with the precision of someone who deeply respects both history and design. The parquet floors, the high ceilings, the pool and park tucked inside the city. And outside the doors, Bolzano itself. A city worth exploring. Galleries, markets, restaurants that have nothing to do with the retreat and everything to do with why you will feel alive while you are there.
I did not build FLEX&FLOW® retreats around remote escape-to-nowhere venues. I built them around places where movement, inspiration, and real life exist in the same breath.
Here is something nobody talks about in the retreat world: participation freedom.
At a traditional retreat center, your day is managed. You eat what the kitchen prepared for the group. You coordinate if you want a coffee at an unusual hour. There is one room, one pace, one program, and you adapt.
At a hotel, you are a guest. Breakfasts and dinners are part of the retreat. We eat together, we share the table, that is part of it. But if you want to add something from the a la carte menu, you just do. If a dietary need shifts last minute, a proper restaurant kitchen handles it without drama or reorganization. You get a coffee from the bar at 10pm without asking anyone’s permission. You choose your room from actual options, different categories, different views, different configurations, and nobody is forcing you to share with a stranger unless you want to.
That autonomy is not a small thing. It is respect. It signals trust. And when people feel that freedom, when they know the retreat holds them without controlling them, they relax in a way that no amount of guided breathing can manufacture. A relaxed body learns faster, moves freer, and opens in ways that surprise even the most experienced movers.
The community that builds at these retreats still surprises me, every time.
Strangers walk into a space. Within hours, that FLEX&FLOW® energy is there. People recognizing each other through the method, through the movement, through something that goes way deeper than a workout.
I think about my old life sometimes. Styling was a loner’s job. Beautiful on the surface, but surface was all there was. You worked alone. Everyone left alone. I had no idea I was building the opposite of that. But I was. And I am.
The community builds itself every single time. And it builds faster, more genuinely, in spaces that already carry their own energy.
A retreat idea never starts with a spreadsheet.
Parkhotel Mondschein
It starts with a city working on me. I arrive somewhere, I let it land, I let it work on me. And if it keeps coming back to me weeks later, I know something is there. There is a city I visited a while ago that has been doing exactly that. Warsaw. The food scene, the architecture, the specific kind of creative energy that belongs entirely to itself. Nothing is confirmed yet. But I am watching it. And when the right space meets the right moment, you will hear about it.
That is what happens when you move through the world with this standard running through you. You notice things. You file them away. And eventually, you build something worthy of the place.
This November, there are two FLEX&FLOW® retreats:
The first is at Hotel Schwarzschmied in Lana, South Tyrol, November 8th to 12th. Five days, eight curated sessions, full access to the Susanne Kaufmann Spa, daily breakfast at La Fucina. This April, I returned for the second FLEX&FLOW® Special Week there, a few days of immersive sessions before the full retreat later in the year. The landscape in early November is golden and warm, the kind of beauty that makes you wonder why you ever stayed home. You can find all the details and secure your spot here: The FLEX&FLOW® Retreat x Schwarzschmied
The second is at Parkhotel Mondschein in Bolzano, November 19th to 22nd. Four days, six sessions, three-course dinners at Luna Restaurant, the pool, the park, the fireplace. This one holds a particular place for me. November will be my third time bringing FLEX&FLOW® to Mondschein. Beyond the retreats, I also teach open classes there for the hotel’s locals and members. It has become a real home. The connection is genuine, and you feel it the moment you walk in. A soft landing into the season, in a place I love. Details and booking here: The FLEX&FLOW® Retreat x Parkhotel Mondschein
Both retreats are intentionally small. Intimate by design, as everything FLEX&FLOW® is.
You can feel the standard before you can name it. And once you feel it, you expect it everywhere.
That is the point.
About Jessica Klimach
Jessica Klimach is a Berlin-based movement coach, 500-hour certified yoga teacher, and founder of FLEX&FLOW®, a functional training method that trains strength and mobility simultaneously through neural conditioning.
She teaches at Adidas Sports Base Berlin, leads retreats across Europe, and runs online programs for movers who want depth over distraction.
Find her at jessicaklimachyoga.com and on Instagram at @jessicaklimachyoga.
