Join us for a weekend retreat this winter 30th June 2023. Winter is a time for turning inward and exploring ourselves. Self-reflection, releasing stress, and reconnecting with our deepest truths are a few of the intentions that winter invites us to focus on. Winter is abundant with Yin energy, and as humans, we can learn to embody the season’s lessons in our own lives. Just as summertime provides warm sunlight and long days for us to play outside, the winter months offer an equally expansive opportunity within ourselves to be indoors and rest.
The Water element is alive and vibrant in Winter. In the world around us, rain and snow fall from the sky and blanket the earth with its magical beauty. Constantly moving and transforming, the Water element can teach us the lesson of flow. The Water element represent being in the flow and moving towards changes you may desire.
Your body and mind mirror natures natural rhythms, if you don’t take time to rest and replenish your energy the ability to grow and thrive in the cycles of the coming year is compromised. Resting and restoring during Winter, prepares you for the grow and opportunities of the Spring and Summer seasons to follow.
On our Winter retreat we will create a haven to encourage you to surrender to stillness and set the scene for deep Winter rest. You will experience and explore the aspects of your Water element and learn how nourish and nurture yourself during Winter and bring balance to your water element. A balanced Water element brings cleansing energy to purify the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual levels of the body and is an invitation for transformation. In experiencing a balanced Water element, you may feel a sense of calm, determination and creativity around your endeavours while also having a gentle, soft approach to life.
The Water element organs are the kidneys, adrenals and bladder, as well as the bones, bone marrow, reproductive organs, body fluids and ears. It is important to pay extra attention to these organs during winter. During the retreat you will learn about and experience through stillness and movement, herbs, oils, tonics and seasonal foods how to nourish you water element organs.
Why Retreat with us?
Retreating is an opportunity for you to take time away from your everyday living, to slow down and give yourself some space and time to come home to you. We all need time out for reflection, to immerse ourselves in a space that is all about you. For the vast majority of us, we are constantly exposed to external beliefs and influences that can pull us away from our true selves. Opinions, judgments, and societal standards can all create false ideas about what we “should” do or who we “should” be. Retreating is an opportunity for returning to our core and can allow us, if we give ourselves permission, to let go of unhealthy influences and remember what is real. Winter is a wonderful opportunity to learn from nature and embody its wisdom—the same wisdom that already exists within us.
Our retreats provide a safe space in which to be beheld and nurtured while exploring within yourself what needs to be released and shed, that no longer serves you physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Wherever you are at in your life right now you are most welcome at our retreat, no need to wait for a right moment or think you should be a certain way before attending. For us there is no “right way” to be before attending our retreat, just embrace your courageous heart and show up for yourself. We will acknowledge any vulnerability or uncertainty you may be feeling and provide a caring compassionate haven in which you can be as you need to be.
You will be nourished by fresh, seasonal, lovingly prepared mostly vegetarian food. We will provide you with recipes and ideas that you can easily cook at home to provide continued nourishment and support after the retreat.
We encourage and support you to engage in opening up to new ways of being and thinking. To try something new, be it food, yoga, mediation, Qi Gong, aromatherapy or drinking herbal tea. We acknowledge that there can often be resistance to trying something new, however we will gently and respectfully guide you to allow yourself to move through any resistance and create a new beautiful space in which change can take place.
Wonderful things can naturally occur when you take time away from your everyday living, to make space to truly listen to your body, mind heart and soul, to connect with your inner landscape. To identify where you are currently at and how you would like to feel in the future. Along with the experiences, information and insights you received when on retreat can come a fresh sense of clarity all of which sets the scene for cultivating the changes you intend to make in your life. Our seasonal wellness retreat offerings are based on the simple principle of living a life in harmony and flow with nature which in turn creates harmony and flow within yourself.
Our seasonal wellness retreat offerings are based on the simple principle of living a life in harmony and flow with nature which in turn creates harmony and flow within yourself. Embody wellbeing as a way of life.
What can I expect? What is The Longhouse?
Sometimes you just need a break in a beautiful place … enter The Longhouse. Nothing soothes the soul like a walk on the beach, getting on your “Blue Mind”, sleeping restfully at night under a star studded sky, detaching from the busyness. Our casa is your casa when you arrive. Keep your shoes at the door as this is a Barefoot Lux Accommodation. A perfect seaside coastal atmosphere with an epic mix of new and vintage, with authenticity and history at it's heart.
This extensive historic property has been sensitively renovated throughout ensuring modern comforts are luxurious and biophilic by design. Fresh white interiors ensure the space is light-filled and modern joinery & glazing provides for jaw dropping views whilst maintaining period features throughout such as battened high ceilings, heart rimu flooring and tongue & groove panelling.
Just 30 minutes north of Dunedin -- We are a home away from home where you can explore, connect & reset. For more information
Our Event Programme
Investment
Bring your bestie or come solo and treat yourself to a luxurious reset for the Mind, Body & Spirit.
Cost on a shared basis: $1150 per person
Own room/ single occupancy basis $1299 per person
Early Bird Booking by 1st June : $999pp on a shared basis
20% payment due on confirmation. Balance of payment due 10 days prior to retreat.
Optional Extras
Infra Red Sauna: $40 for up to 2 people for 1 hour
Aromatherapy Massage: $90 for a 1 hour session
Please book these prior to retreat for scheduling purposes.
Food
You will be nourished by fresh lovingly-prepared whole organic food. We will provide you with recipe ideas that you can easily cook at home to provide continued nourishment and support after the retreat. Pricing includes all meals - breakfast, lunch & dinner. Afternoon tea & snacks included. Seasonal fruit platter available all day.
Retreat Hosts
Sharyn Crawford is a qualified Aromatherapist and has been offering Aromatherapy services for the past 25 years. She has studied many aspects of Aromatherapy as well as wide variety of other complimentary teachings including Ayurveda, TCM, Alchemy of Menopause, Qi Gong.
She considers herself very fortunate to have received these teachings from such amazing teachers worldwide. Her greatest teachings of all has been her own life experiences and her greatest learning was to take care of herself and make her own wellness top priority.
She has had the privilege to have been alongside thousands of people on their life journeys offering support, guidance, encouragement, a friendly listening ear and alongside aromatherapy treatments and consultations.
Ilse Erasmus has qualifications in finance and accounting and a post grad in viticulture & oenology. It was during her years working in the wine industry that she developed a real interest and passion for organic food production and started asking questions about conventional chemical agriculture and human health. More recently her own health journey instigated a rotation into more holistic integrative health & lifestyle practices which have prompted further study as a qualified integrative nutrition health coach and certified yoga teacher.
Our own life experiences are certainly our greatest teachers - without our health we have nothing. My own journey taught me that to fully heal we need to be the proactive protagonist in our healing. Vibrant wellness addresses all aspects of our lives; nurtures the mind, body & soul so that we can embody wellness as a way of life.
She is grateful every day for the opportunity to share, love , learn and journey beside her fellow humans. As the owner of The Longhouse she is passionate about creating a retreat that allows you to reconnect with nature (te Taio); reconnect with your inner consciousness and reconnect and celebrate each other.
Jac Wilson
Tertiary study (BPhEd, Dip Contemporary Dance) and years of teaching yoga classes, private sessions, and retreats have illuminated in neon the physical stresses we carry as a result of acute and chronic life events that we accept as normal. Some cannot be avoided and that’s the nature of living, but I do believe we need to press pause as a more integral part of our daily lives, so we can improve the quality of our health and wellbeing.
It’s not a cure-all but with nu I hope to, at least in-part, rewrite the script and offer people the time, space, and knowledge to reset their nervous systems.
My approach to general yoga classes starts with simplicity. Bred from the breath and rooted in physicality, my classes are a hybrid of the subtle and the gross. A biomechanically-based approach requiring attention to detail while incrementally building physical effort, everything is geared towards optimising balance between strength and mobility, and in so doing, maximising ease.