This Connecting To Your Wilder Self 1-Day Retreat for women is dedicated to connecting you with the restorative powers of nature. 
 
As a small group of like-minded women, we will spend the day together on Sunday 18th May 2025 to celebrate the month the oak tree bursts into life and the time when things really begin to warm up both underfoot as well as high above ground on the edge of a beautiful wild-flower meadow within the 3,500-acre re-wilding project on the Knepp Estate. This day will be a welcome antidote to the relentless stress of modern day, technology-fuelled living. It’s an opportunity to unplug, unwind, recharge and open up your senses to the natural world that surrounds you in all directions here. This is a day of healing magic, where we focus on positive lifestyle changes and equipping you with tools to help you live a healthier, freer, more connected, and happier life.
 
You’ll experience the transformative power of Conscious Connected Breathwork and understand how breathing is a forgotten tool for healing and optimising your physical and mental health. You’ll also experience the gentle, calming power and wonder of Shinrin-yoku (Forest Bathing), the Japanese-inspired practice of Shinrin-yoku and how being in the forest soothes our nervous systems and boosts our immunity. For those who would like to, you’ll also find out why everyone is going wild for Wild Bathing. It’s a magical experience and hugely rewarding experience, so now is your chance! We’ll finish off by gathering, as we did long ago, with a Campfire session and learn why fire has been used throughout human history as an aid for transformation.
 
Community is at the heart of a Wonderbreath experience, where you arrive as strangers and leave as friends. This will be a magical journey in nature, beautifully designed to bring out your inner power, reconnect to the wild, nurture & nourish your entire body, and uplift your soul. This is an intimate, small group retreat of 8 women only, to allow for individual attention.  
 
More detailed information about the sessions that take place during the day
 
1. The transformative power of Conscious Connected Breathwork
 
Breathing is a forgotten tool for healing and optimising your physical and mental health. This morning session of Conscious Connected Breathwork is a powerful and safe way to infuse the body with oxygen and energy and recharge your system to its maximum healing capacity. It can lead you to optimum health, mental and emotional clarity and experience an ever-deepening relationship with yourself.  This session is a gentle, simple technique that will help open up the full potential of your breathing system for better physical and emotional wellbeing.  The many benefits, include increased energy, better immune response and increased ability to deal with stress in a healthy way.
 
2. The healing powers of Shinrin-yoku (Forest Bathing)
 
After lunch we’ll head out into the nearby woods where you’ll experience the Japanese-inspired practice of Shinrin-yoku, translated as Forest Bathing. You’ll feel incredible, just hanging out in the forest together in this beautiful month of bluebells and Beltane, but we’ll do so much more than that. You’ll learn techniques to open up your five senses and experience how being in the forest soothes our nervous system, balances our blood pressure, helps us to sleep better and enhances our NK (Natural Killer) cell activity, which boosts our immune systems. It’s a deeply calming, reconnecting and balancing experience.
 
3. The sensory wonders of Wild Bathing
 
Have you ever had the experience of feeling utterly revived by bathing in wild water? It’s a magical experience and now is your chance. This session is based on the principles from the book Blue Mind by marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols - written about the remarkable effects of water on our health and wellbeing, along the myriad of evidence that cold water immersions improves our energy levels, calms our nervous system, boosts our endorphins  for a feel-good factor that’s hard to beat, and improves circulation. Cold showers are all the rage, but they’re a second-rate substitute to wild bathing where you really feel part of the natural world as you bob about!  This is a supported, gentle way to experience how being in wild water helps you deeply connect to your body. You’ll be delighted by the flow of positive feelings and find yourself coming firmly into the present, letting go of life’s frustrations and gaining a greater sense of clarity.
 
4. Releasing and connecting Campfire session
 
Fire has been used throughout human history as an aid for transformation. Fire ceremonies allow us to honour our life lessons and let go of old stories, dramas and belief structures by placing them in the fire and emerge feeling renewed and reborn. In a world that propels us into wanting more and more and that faster is better, a fire ceremony is the perfect medicine to step into timelessness. It’s an invitation to connect back to a tradition of hundreds of thousands of years of ancestors, who sat around a fire to share stories, keep warm, to cook food and to dance.
 
To learn more about the beautiful Knepp Estate, you might like to watch the movie about this incredible rewilding project. For more details go to: https://www.wildingmovie.com/