PHOTO RETREATS | portraits

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Private RAW Photoshoot Retreat in Hawai'i

A Retreat to Rediscover Your Wild, Uninhibited Self

Imagine seeing yourself as a living masterpiece—captured in a powerful, transformative photoshoot amidst the breathtaking landscapes of Hawai’i.

What if you could release self-doubt and step into the fullest expression of who you are?

This private, fully customizable retreat is designed to help you cultivate deep self-love and reconnect with the parts of yourself you’ve hidden to meet others’ expectations. Within the nurturing embrace of this island’s energy, you’ll embark on a journey of self-discovery, embodiment, and artistic expression.

Book a Free Consult

Is Hawai'i calling you?

Imagine stepping away from your daily responsibilities and immersing yourself in the raw, natural beauty of Hawai’i—where the land itself feels alive with healing energy.

Spend your days swimming with turtles, hiking to waterfalls, whale watching, and walking on an active volcano. Let the island hold you as you reconnect to your soul in ways you never imagined.

Hawai’i is known as the "Healing Island"—a place of deep transformation and renewal. Here, the elements of nature work in harmony to help you release what no longer serves you and come home to yourself.

You live a busy life. This is your time to slow down, to rest, to truly nourish your spirit.

Book a Free Consult

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Transform your self image, transform your life

Stepping in front of a camera can bring up old stories of unworthiness, self-judgment, and discomfort.

What if your photoshoot wasn’t about posing—but about truly seeing yourself?

This retreat is an opportunity to heal your self-image at its root. Through somatic healing, mindful embodiment, and mirror work, we’ll soften the layers of self-perception that keep you from fully expressing yourself.

When you free yourself from the fear of being seen, it doesn’t just change how you feel in front of a camera—it changes how you show up in your life, your relationships, and your purpose.

Book a Free Consult

What makes this retreat special:

Immersion in Hawai’i’s Magical Landscapes

From lush jungles to black lava fields, from misty ranchlands to the vast ocean—Hawai’i Island holds almost every microclimate on the planet. I’ll help you curate the perfect settings to reflect your journey.

A RAW Photoshoot Like No Other
This isn’t about posed perfection. It’s about capturing the essence of YOU—your strength, vulnerability, and radiance—so you can see yourself in a way you never have before.

Deeply Personalized & Fully Customizable
Your retreat is designed around your unique needs. You can add-on experiences such as equine therapy, water adventures, massage, craniosacral therapy, island tours, and more.

Cacao Ceremony & Somatic Healing
Begin your photoshoot day with a heart-opening cacao ceremony and somatic practices to ground, soften, and awaken your true essence before stepping in front of the camera.

Flexible Stay Options
A 2-night minimum is required, but you can stay as long as you’d like. Whether you prefer a jungle retreat, a beachfront sanctuary, or a mountain escape, I’ll help you find the perfect lodging to match your experience.

Book a Free Consult

Watch Katie's RAW Photoshoot in Hawai'i

Watch Jasmine's RAW Photoshoot in Hawai'i

Watch Michelle's RAW Photoshoot in Hawai'i

Custom add-ons to deepen your experience:

Equine Therapy & Photoshoot with Horses

Horses have an unparalleled ability to mirror our emotions, creating a powerful healing experience. Connect with these intuitive beings as part of your journey.

Massage & Craniosacral Therapy

Sink deeper into relaxation and embodiment with bodywork designed to release tension and restore balance.

Nourishing Farm-to-Table Meals

Upgrade your stay with Heartbeet Catering’s meal plan, featuring locally sourced, nourishing, and beautifully crafted dishes.

Island Excursions

Explore sacred sites, waterfalls, Volcanoes National Park, or paddleboard, snorkel with turtles, whale watch, or see dolphins.

Additional Somatic Healing Sessions

Deepen your transformation with one-on-one somatic therapy, tailored to support your emotional and energetic integration.

Book a Free Consult

Pre-Work: Intentions & Somatic Healing

We'll meet over Zoom before you arrive in Hawai'i to set intentions, do somatic healing around self image, and design your photoshoot
Embodiment & somatic practices to release self-doubt

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Day 1: Arrival & Grounding

When you arrive on the first day, you'll settle into your retreat space & unwind
Sunset beach walk or relaxation on your lanai
Optional meal add-on available

Day 2: RAW Photoshoot Experience

Heart-opening cacao ceremony to begin the day
Embodiment & somatic practices to release self-doubt
4-hour on-location photoshoot guided with full support
Integration time, relaxation, and sunset by the ocean

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Day 3: Photo Reveal

Guided meditation & photo reveal session
Closing reflection & departure (checkout by 11 AM)

About Jamie

Hi! My name is Jamie, and I know what it’s like to be stuck. Literally. In 2015, in the midst of my so-called picture-perfect life working at Google and living in San Francisco with my dog and boyfriend, my jaw locked up. For a full year. And no doctor could figure out why.

On my healing journey I discovered I was living a lie. I didn’t know who I was or what I actually wanted, I only knew what I’d been told. So I began the courageous journey of unwinding all the ideas of who I was supposed to be to move toward a life aligned with my heart and soul. That’s how I left my job at Google, how I started this work, moved across the Pacific Ocean to live on the magical Island of Hawai’i, started my love affair with the ocean, and how I continue to have the courage to face fear and doubt on a daily basis in order to live authentically.

My mission is to help you when you’re experiencing difficulty and feel alone in your pain to see the beauty and wisdom in your experience, and to know you’re not alone. I want you to see how incredibly magical and beautiful you are, underneath the ridiculous expectations society has placed upon you. I want to help you create a life that deeply honors you.

"The Art of Loving Your Self Image"
TEDxMonashUniversity

Watch TEDx Talk

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A sadness blankets my psyche today. Can I turn toward it, allow it to move me, let it be what it is without fighting or running? Can I be with what is without letting it shape an unknown future? Without letting it strip my identity and values?

May I hold strong to my values when my inner world get shaky. Let them guide me. May I allow the grief of the ‘āina, the ocean, the world, my past, my ancestors, my community, wash through and cleanse me, give way to inspiration and ideas for how I can help.

Can I use this sadness to wake people up, to bring us together for things that matter? Can I let it be felt in honor of living life fully, in honor of love, in honor of a rich and aligned life?

This is a journal entry from last month I just stumbled upon while flipping through my journal. This is the path of RAW. To turn toward and honor all aspects of the human experience, and use them as medicine to shape our future into something rich and beautiful and whole.

Grief is a wild thing.

One minute it’s the depths of despair and hopelessness, the next it’s a tender recognition of the simplest beauty.

It’s rage. It’s power. It’s gripping. It’s trembling. It’s vulnerable. It’s soft. It’s a river of tears. It’s numb. It’s beautiful. It’s RAW.

It’s wildly unpredictable and untamed.

In a culture that likes to pretend we’re always in control and never vulnerable, it’s threatening.

We live in a culture where it’s seen as strong and noble to be unfazed by pain, to simply move on, to let it go. We live in a world where we try to outsmart death and deny the reality of our aging bodies, our mortality. We live in a world that denies our interdependence, our utter reliance upon one another and nature to sustain life.

We’ve lost the tools for processing pain and grief, we’ve lost the ability to support each other in our pain, so it all gets shoved into our subconscious, showing up as the destructive habits we can’t seem to break, in the body as symptoms, in our culture of numbing and seeking dopamine, in our loneliness. It’s passed back and forth to each other through violent projections that distance us from the ones we love most, that create wars and destruction.

The only way I know how to make sense of the overwhelming power of grief is to let it transform me. To use that energy to create something new.

I cope by allowing the energy to move me, literally. It moves me to dance, to cry, to scream, to sing, to create, to reach for connection, to find beauty in unexpected places, to have the courage to speak up, to fight, to love more freely, to envision a more beautiful world. It fuels me to live a life true to myself even if that proves to be a challenging path.

I do not want to be the same person I was on the other side of pain. I want it to serve my devotion to justice, peace, and love. I want it to serve the evolution of my soul and the soul of the earth.

It’s been a year of a lot of pain and grief for me. A lot of sitting when I’d rather be moving. A lot of surrendering. Could really use some love right now🙏🏼In April I’ll have my 6th surgery in 9 months. Lots of healing this year, even more inspired to do this work❤️

As a portrait photographer it’s easy to create a beautiful photo. What’s hard is creating a photo where the *subject* can see their own beauty.

That’s the real work.

The psychology behind portraits runs deep, and I discovered this quickly on my photography journey. I was fascinated with how differently people saw themselves compared to how I saw them. Which is why I’ve dedicated my life to studying and understanding the human psyche, especially as it relates to self image.

I’m currently studying process oriented somatic therapy, where I’m learning the tools that help us drop out of the mind and into the body, into the unconscious conditioning that runs our lives, including the beliefs we have about ourselves.

What I’ve learned is that the way we see ourselves comes from the way we were witnessed during vulnerable times in our lives. We don’t like parts of ourselves because they were dismissed, criticized, violated, ignored, or misunderstood by important people.

The way we heal this is to be lovingly witnessed in all the ways we were once told to hide. To be adored in all the nooks and crannies of our shadow, our disavowed self. And from that place we discover our power. The power we didn’t have access to during those vulnerable moments.

It can be confronting to face the parts of ourselves we’ve tucked away. It can feel scary and threatening and overwhelming.

That’s where I come in.

The RAW process guides you through exercises to find safety through nature and your body when things get shaky. It takes you on a journey of self discovery and self expression using the very things that trouble you the most as an access point. And within your doubts and fears and pain is your most potent medicine.

It’s therapy and creativity and play all wrapped into one.

And the reward is accessing more freedom, joy, confidence, aliveness, playfulness, intimacy, peace. The reward is less numbing, less hiding, and more living a life true to yourself.

The reward is photos of yourself that you actually love, born from your most RAW intimate expression.

No makeup, no photoshop, just you.

There’s nothing you can say or do that will convince me that you’re not beautiful and photogenic.

Many clients come to their sessions with a list of reasons as to why they’re not photogenic. They try to convince me that while others may claim to be, they in fact are the deficient ones, and that I’ll soon understand once I get them in front of my camera.

They tell me of their flaws, of all the reasons they’re incapable of having amazing photos of themselves. They tell me of all the failed photoshoot attempts prior.

They look through my photos and assume those women came in fully confident ready to be on camera. They assume those women couldn’t possibly have felt the way they’re feeling now.

I listen and hold space. I know how vulnerable it is to be seen in this way. We work with this scared part, we let it be seen and known and loved for trying to keep them safe.

But I don’t believe it even for a second. I know with every fiber of my being that I will be able to capture the beauty I see when I look at them. That I will create photos that make them question everything they thought about their image.

I’ve spent years studying portraiture, lighting, posing, retouching and the psychology behind self image. In fact I know it so well that four years ago I decided to throw out the rulebook and prove to myself and all women that we don’t need these extraneous things to feel beautiful or to create beautiful images.

I am so utterly confident now, that I don’t need the perfect outfit, makeup, hairstyle, location. Hell, I don’t need any outfit at all. All I need is a piece of fabric! I can work in a tiny corner of your living room with only a black sheet as a backdrop. I can make “waterfalls” out of garden hoses (like this photo 😉), and do entire photoshoots remotely without even my physical presence.

The joy of a RAW photoshoot is that it’s about play, creativity, and expression. The beauty is in YOU and your authentic expression. And I believe it with all my heart and soul. And my gift is the ability to capture it in a way that you can see it too.

I don’t need anything you think you need for a perfect photoshoot.

All I need is you.

I’m not the cool girl.

I’m not the girl who will just go with the flow.

I’m not the girl who doesn’t have any needs or feelings.

I’m not the girl who will just let things slide.

I’m not the girl who will keep quiet to make others comfortable.

I’m not the girl who needs nothing from anyone else.

I’m not the girl who puts everyone above herself.

I’m not the girl so cool she barely even exists - except as a sidekick, mother, or therapist.

No, I’m the woman who feels deeply.

I’m the woman with big opinions and ideas.

I’m the woman who will hold you to your word, and never let shit slide.

I’m the woman who loves every creature deeply.

I’m the woman who will be by your side in your darkest moments, because I’ve faced my demons and survived.

I’m the woman unafraid to stand in her values, even if it means standing alone.

I’m the woman unafraid to start life over, to take crazy risks, to be the new one, the awkward one, the outcast.

I’m the woman who’s highly sensitive and intuitive, and also strong and badass.

I’m the woman who talks to the trees and the bugs.

I’m the woman with a zest for life that only comes from facing death square in the eye.

I’m the wild one, the free one, the weird one, the one who believes in magic.

I’m the intense and passionate woman who will wake up something beautiful deep inside of you.

I’m the artist, the engineer, the business woman, the water woman, the healer.

I’m the woman who’s wicked smart, financially independent, and boldly expressed.

No, I’m not the cool girl. I’m a million times more interesting than that.

Finally coming to terms with not being the “cool” girl. It’s only taken 35 years 😜

This is for all the sensitive badass women out there who don’t play by the rules society laid out for us 😘

Who would you be and how might you act if you didn’t believe there was anything wrong with you?

Nature simply is.

The rest of the animal kingdom is not plagued with shame and doubt the way us humans are. We get so wrapped up in our identities that we lose touch with our RAW magic and beauty.

We lose touch with what our bodies and environment might be needing from us. And in doing so we suffer unnecessarily. We get trapped in an identity too small to hold our magnificence.

Join me on an adventure in reconnecting to your RAW nature. Let mother nature hold you and show you the way ✨

I find God where the water and air meet.

Where the ocean and sky join hands in a delicate dance.

My body moves to the rhythm of the ocean and the soul of the earth, pushing beyond all perceived limitations.

With the help of the va’a, I momentarily become one with the ocean.

To dance with the ocean is to dance with God.

To move through these waters is to connect to the power that lives in all of us.

Paddling is what helps me remember who I am. A warrior, an explorer, a piece of the ocean, a piece of the land.

Paddling saved my life, and this is my love letter to it ❤️

I believe those who know how to live in communion with the ocean are the most powerful people on the planet.

The ocean demands you to be humble, aware, present, and connected to something larger than yourself. To commune with it requires sensitivity, attunement, and strength.

It’s the most ancient and primitive thing on the planet. It’s what connects an otherwise separated world.

Learning the intricacies of the ocean is the greatest joy of my life.

Infinitely grateful to get to live in this place where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the people of Hawai’i who learned from their kūpuna this beautiful culture and lifestyle 🌊🙏🏼

Swipe ➡️ to see ‘Ula‘ula in all her glory 😍

Thanks @anniejaycoaching for the pic ✨

Something I learned from years of chronic pain is that the source of the pain is rarely caused by the area experiencing it.

I’d have a pain in my knee and learn that it was caused by shallow breathing. I’d have back pain caused by the way my feet met the ground when I walked.

Usually pain is the symptom of a deeper issue - an imbalance somewhere else along the chain, or systemic inflammation.

I’ve found the same to be true with emotional pain. Rarely is the cause of it something we’re experiencing in the present moment. Most often it’s the scab of an old wound getting picked off.

This wounding isn’t necessarily remembered precisely by our minds, but it forever lives in our bodies. Usually at the time it happened, we had no choice but to be resilient and survive by whatever means necessary. We weren’t given a chance to process or understand what was happening, or see that our feelings about it were normal and valid. Most often we didn’t have the power to change our circumstances.

The path of healing is to gently get to know these areas of pain within us (that can often manifest as physical pain), and to change the narrative. To recognize the power we now have that we didn’t possess then, to provide a compassionate witness, and to understand the wisdom in the response that was withheld. Our response was typically shamed or misunderstood, which is why we tucked it away into our bodies to survive.

Now the very thing blocking us from the life we want to live can be healed by the medicine found within our body’s own wisdom.

The path of RAW is to get familiar with these places of pain and stuckness, to find the medicine within them, and to lovingly witness their beauty. We do this through a somatic (body-based) process, combined with the healing powers of photography.

Since our pain so often manifests as a hatred towards parts of ourselves, the act of being witnessed in our wholeness, and having our beauty reflected to us, can be incredibly healing. Especially if you usually hate photos of yourself 😉 (more on that in another post 😘)

Join me on the big island for a photographic healing journey ❤️

When did your spirit get squashed?

When did your childlike imagination get stripped?

When did you decide you had to fit yourself into a tiny box designed by people who don’t see your magnificence?

So much of our culture is fear masked as judgment and criticism and violence, passed down through generations, spewing from our societal expectations, projected onto each other until our spirit is so squished we don’t have room to breathe.

How often do you feel judged? Even when you’re by yourself, are you plagued by both real and imagined expectations?

How might you feel and behave if you didn’t believe there was anything wrong with you? What might you do differently?

Our self image is the way we feel we need to present ourselves to the world in order to be safe and loved.

Our image holds within it all the ideas of our shortcomings, what people like about us, what might make us less desirable to others, what’s expected from us in the world.

It’s the mask we’ve formed to protect ourselves from judgment, criticism, rejection, feeling irrelevant, unimportant, dismissed, violated.

It’s usually a reflection of the way we were treated by our caregivers and society at pivotal points in our lives.

And while it’s been necessary for our survival, at a certain point it gets in the way of what we deeply long for - unconditional love, inner peace, intimacy, freedom, and authenticity.

And the only way we can get what we’re truly after is to embody more of our wholeness.

To express ourselves more fully. To let our true selves be seen so we can be loved and embraced as we are. So we can live a life true to ourselves.

To do so we must be vulnerable, and open ourselves to the possibility of a pain that was once too painful to bear.

It’s a gentle process, like a bud blooming into a flower. It can’t be forced or shamed into existence.

It requires loving witnesses, processing old grief, presence, compassion, patience, and faith.

This is the path of true self acceptance and self love. This is the path of becoming RAW.

Join me on a journey of self exploration, expression, and healing where you rediscover your magnificence ✨ DM for more info and to book a call

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Get Your FREE copy of
"How To Love Yourself First: The Ultimate Guide To Healing"

GET THE GUIDE

Tel. 916-217-0692 | Hawai'i Island, HI | info@jamienease.com

Private RAW Photoshoot Retreat in Hawai'i

A Retreat to Rediscover Your Wild, Uninhibited Self

​

Is Hawai'i calling you?

Transform your self image, transform your life

What makes this retreat special:

Watch Katie's RAW Photoshoot in Hawai'i

Watch Jasmine's RAW Photoshoot in Hawai'i

Watch Michelle's RAW Photoshoot in Hawai'i

Custom add-ons to deepen your experience:

Equine Therapy & Photoshoot with Horses

Horses have an unparalleled ability to mirror our emotions, creating a powerful healing experience. Connect with these intuitive beings as part of your journey.

Massage & Craniosacral Therapy

Sink deeper into relaxation and embodiment with bodywork designed to release tension and restore balance.

Nourishing Farm-to-Table Meals

Upgrade your stay with Heartbeet Catering’s meal plan, featuring locally sourced, nourishing, and beautifully crafted dishes.

Island Excursions

Explore sacred sites, waterfalls, Volcanoes National Park, or paddleboard, snorkel with turtles, whale watch, or see dolphins.

Additional Somatic Healing Sessions

Deepen your transformation with one-on-one somatic therapy, tailored to support your emotional and energetic integration.

Pre-Work: Intentions & Somatic Healing

Day 1: Arrival & Grounding

Day 2: RAW Photoshoot Experience

Day 3: Photo Reveal

About Jamie

"The Art of Loving Your Self Image" TEDxMonashUniversity

​

Follow us on Instagram

Get Your FREE copy of "How To Love Yourself First: The Ultimate Guide To Healing"

​

Follow us on Instagram

"The Art of Loving Your Self Image"
TEDxMonashUniversity

Get Your FREE copy of
"How To Love Yourself First: The Ultimate Guide To Healing"