I’m writing this post from a beautiful room at Iscoyd Park… as a Retreat guest not a Retreat host.
Looking for Retreat venues is a bit of a love hate game for me. I get so excited to find somewhere new and wonderful for you – appreciating that so many of you return and I want the best for you. At the same time it gets pretty overwhelming because you can just keep going and going, being constantly blown away by what might just be a shiny social media / website!
However Iscoyd really stood out this summer and when I saw they were hosting their own retreat, I thought great… two child free nights (and as a bonus ball I can really suss it out).
So here I am, tucked among the other guests, listening to them talk about what they love and what they don’t, feeling the treatments, testing the beds, watching the schedule breathe. It’s the best kind of research, and honestly, it’s reminded me why I fell in love with this work in the first place.
How my own Retreats started
My teaching career began in hotels, which meant I was fortunate enough to meet people who were already seeking out wellness holidays – long before I had any thought of hosting my own. Over several years I watched the impact those healthy holidays had on people, the sheer benefit of moving your body while you’re away from your normal life. I came home one day and thought, quite simply: I could probably give this ago myself.
A friend who owned a beautiful estate in Wales offered up her home, and that was it. My first retreat was born. I did everything. The cooking, the teaching, the massages, the fitness classes – a real jack of all trades jobby. I charged around £200 a head and I was taking any sale I could get. I even convinced my now-husband to come along, arm in a sling and all.
That was the beginning. Since then, things have grown and grown. I now work with people who are far better trained than me at cooking and treatments, and I’ve hosted retreats all over the world and close to home – ski retreats, beach retreats, weekend getaways, midweek escapes. Many returning guests, and just as many gorgeous new faces. We’re over 40 retreats in now, and I think that has to count for something?
The standout lessons from Retreating at Iscoyd this week
Being a guest rather than a host has a way of sharpening everything you already knew but hadn’t quite put into words. A few things stood out to me:
- Less is more. In my early days I tried to pack in as much as possible, convinced that value meant volume. It doesn’t. Guests feel value in other, quieter ways. Every part of our Retreats are optional, it is your time and there is no gold star for powering your way through every class if your body needs more rest.
- Space matters. Space to wander, to chat over meals and beyond them, to simply be. Space between treatments, meals and classes so that all can be enjoyed without any worry of rushing. Three nights has always been my magic number for short UK Retreats and this trip confirmed that for me.
- Timekeeping is a form of care. Guests want to feel relaxed, but they also want to know what’s happening and when, so they’re not sat there half-listening, worrying a class might overrun and they’ll be rushing to their treatment.
- Everyone is carrying something. You never know what a guest is dealing with and I want anyone reading this who is a potential guest going through some real sh** that whilst our Retreats are not about deep diving into problems in any kind of professional way, you are very welcome and its a really safe space.
- You have to take yourself away to really switch off. Real headspace, deep sleep — you don’t know how much you needed it until you actually do it. It was actually on my drive to Iscoyd I realised just how much the 5am alarms had taken their toll and that first night I slept a SOLID 9 hours 15 minutes!!
My love for Retreats and a promise to keep them coming
My path here started in some of the world’s most respected wellness spaces. From AMAN to Necker Island, Soneva to Six Senses… that background gave me a headstart most yoga teachers simply haven’t had. Add to that my training as an osteopath, and my classes come from a place of real anatomical understanding, not just instinct. People are in safe hands with me, and I think that’s part of why they keep coming back.
But none of that would mean much if I didn’t understand, in my bones, what it feels like to be the guest. I love retreats myself, which means I know exactly what it means to hand over your precious holiday time to someone else, especially now, as a mum to a wonderfully energetic two-year-old boy. That time away is not something anyone gives up lightly.
Trips like this one to Iscoyd matter. Sitting quietly among someone else’s guests, taking notes, feeling it all from the other side — the schedule, the space, the small moments of care – is exactly how I (hopefully) keep getting better at giving that time back to you. Because at the end of the day, that’s what a retreat really is: someone else holding the space, so you don’t have to.
I have two UK Retreats this winter that I would love to share with you. Leave me a comment on here or pop me an email if you are in need of a few days to unplug and slow down…
Thanks for reading, Jess x
