About The Aerie
Our Mission
The Aerie Retreat Center is a place to find respite, healing, transformation, connection, and revitalization. Our mission and greatest hope is to heal the world, one person at a time.
All are welcome — all faiths, all races, all humans — as all are deserving of healing, love, and belonging.
A Registered Non-Profit
The Aerie Retreat Center is a registered non-profit organization. Our work is sustained by guests, facilitators, and generous donors who believe in the healing power of sacred land and intentional community.
Honoring the Land
We honor and acknowledge the people of the Klamath Modoc Tribes who were the original stewards of this land. We recognize the unique, enduring, and challenging relationship that exists between Indigenous people and their traditional territories.
Let this acknowledgement serve as a reminder of our ongoing efforts to recognize, honor, reconcile, and partner with the Modoc people whose lands and waters we benefit from today. This calls us to become even better stewards of this land we inhabit.
The healing on this land predates any structure built upon it. We are grateful to walk in its footsteps.
How The Aerie Came to Be
In 1995, Sharon Melnick and Robert Chinook built the retreat house and the sacred spaces that define The Aerie today — the labyrinth, the medicine wheel, the fire circle, the sweat lodge. They poured decades of intention into this land, creating a container for healing long before Glen and Natalie arrived.
For Glen, this place was a thirty-year dream. When he and Natalie purchased the property in 2021, they inherited not just the land but the lineage — and a responsibility to continue what had been so carefully begun.
Today The Aerie is a living, growing place of healing. New spaces are being built. New offerings are taking shape. The mission remains exactly what it has always been: to heal the world, one person at a time.
Glen Nielsen
Co-Founder & Steward
Glen Nielsen is a somatic therapy practitioner trained in Hakomi and Somatic Experiencing, a trained medicine guide, and the co-founder and steward of The Aerie Retreat Center. His work is body-centered, trauma-informed, and deeply rooted in the wisdom of the land and indigenous practices.
Glen's approach creates breakthroughs that traditional talk therapy rarely reaches — working with the body, not just the mind, to access what words alone can't touch. He works with individuals and couples seeking healing, transformation, and a deeper relationship with themselves and the people they love.
Glen hosts the monthly Men's Group at The Aerie and facilitates private retreats, somatic counseling sessions, and ceremonial experiences on the land.
Credentials
— Trained in Hakomi Method
— Trained in Somatic Experiencing
— Trained medicine guide and ceremonial facilitator
— Co-founder, The Aerie Retreat Center
— Co-creator, Wake Up or Break Up relationship philosophy
Natalie Vartanian
Co-Founder & Steward
Natalie Vartanian is a certified life coach, intimacy and relationship coach, intuitive guide, workshop facilitator, and soon-to-be-published author. With more than 15 years of experience and over 4,000 coaching hours, she has guided hundreds of individuals and couples toward lives of greater clarity, connection, and joy.
Her sessions weave together life coaching, intimacy coaching, intuitive guidance, and tarot as a reflective tool — meeting each person exactly where they are. She works with individuals ready to create meaningful change and couples seeking to deepen their connection or navigate challenges together.
Natalie hosts the monthly Women's Circle at The Aerie and is the author of the forthcoming book Taboo to Turn On: A Self-Help Erotica Manifesto — an exploration of conscious relationship and intimacy design.
Credentials
— Certified life coach, CPCC, PCC
— Intimacy and relationship coach — 15+ years experience, 4,000+ coaching hours
— Workshop facilitator
— Forthcoming author: Taboo to Turn On: A Self-Help Erotica Manifesto
— Co-founder, The Aerie Retreat Center
— Co-creator, Wake Up or Break Up relationship philosophy
Their Story Together
Photo: @armijodesigns
Glen Nielsen and Natalie Vartanian are not just business partners — they are a married couple who have walked the path they now guide others through. Their radical transparency about their own relationship challenges and conflicts is one of the things that sets their work apart. They normalize what couples experience and offer a path through it that works because they have lived it themselves.
Together they are the co-founders of The Aerie Retreat Center and the co-creators of the Wake Up or Break Up relationship philosophy — a body of work born from their own relationship, refined through thousands of hours with couples, and guided by the belief that the honeymoon doesn't have to end.
Their work meets couples wherever they are — rekindling connection, navigating crisis, or seeking deeper intimacy. Learn more at wakeuporbreakup.com.
Support Our Mission
The Aerie Retreat Center is a registered non-profit organization. We believe that healing should be accessible to all — and your support helps us keep it that way. Whether you've stayed with us, attended a circle, or simply believe in the power of sacred land and intentional community, we are grateful for your generosity.
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