Going deep on an online healing retreat with The Therapy Haven team
Louisa Carter reviews a powerful and intensive one-to-one virtual emotional healing retreat that changes her self-awareness in dramatic ways
It’s four days after my 43rd birthday, three months into a scary, lingering, possibly Covid-related illness, and one year into the pandemic that I find myself wrapped in a blanket in my kitchen, laptop open, and preparing to click on the now all-too-familiar Zoom link. This time it’s not for a meeting or appointment, but my first virtual retreat, and what I hope will be the beginning of a much-needed healing journey. Or to be more accurate, I have pinned all my hopes of ever feeling better on this so my expectations are high.
Run by husband and wife team, Robin and Desri Goodwin, The Therapy Haven’s residential healing retreats have been running at various locations in France for over 15 years. But about a year before the pandemic hit, they offered their first online retreat to someone who wasn’t able to travel. It was so successful that they have been running them regularly ever since. They are tailored to the individual, usually for a minimum of two days, and we’d agreed my retreat would run for four hours a day over three consecutive days. Complex childcare scenarios had ensued and I’d managed to carve out three entire afternoons of privacy and solitude.
Whilst I’ve joined a handful of meditation sittings during lockdown, and done a couple of online therapy sessions, this was my first attempt to replicate the benefits of a retreat in the digital realm and I was curious and hopeful to see how close it could come to the real thing. Having hit rock bottom after getting ill at Christmas this retreat offered me something to cling to and I ‘arrived’ open and vulnerable.
“He questioned why it was I couldn’t just ‘be ill’ and why I felt I had to control it. Good question, and one I see now led me to a lot more suffering than the illness alone had brought”
It was a relief to be welcomed by the warm, relaxed presence of Desri, a strategic intervention coach, raw food chef and clinical nutritionist, sitting on her large sofa in the chateau’s blue-panelled living room. Having lived through her own health scares, and subsequently managed to heal herself through lifestyle changes, I felt I could trust her to understand where I was coming from. Down-to-earth and gently direct, she quickly made me feel at ease. She was interested in my diet but also in my emotional well-being. The focus was on the mystery illness - maybe Covid, maybe not - that had stuck around for months. After numerous doctors appointments, and having banned myself from Googling my symptoms, it was a huge relief to have someone to discuss ways I could support myself and my body.
After going through my email questionnaire Desri suggested that many of my symptoms - feeling run-down, aching chest, skin flare-ups, an exhaustion that couldn't be slept-off, brain fog - could be due to burnout and resultant allergies. She recommended some additional supplements to those I already took and encouraged me not to worry about any 'imperfect' food I was eating but to put the emphasis on adding more of the good stuff. To my relief she sanctioned my two very weak coffees I clung to each day. ‘Coffee questionable, made with oat milk good,’ she laughed.
We also chatted about the importance of keeping the joy and pleasure around eating and to have realistic expectations of what changes I could implement alongside the realities of still feeling unwell and having two young children to care for.
She recommended qigong as a gentle reintroduction to exercise and also to help boost my immunity. I confessed that I’m far more comfortable in the emotional terrain than I am in getting out of my head and exercising. Something I’ve learnt on my retreating journey is that we all have our comfort zones and preferences and mustn’t beat ourselves up if we can’t be as enthusiastic as our hosts. Whilst my love for silent retreats made Desri shudder, her enthusiasm for yoga and detoxing caused a few bristles of resistance for me. But she never judged and always listened carefully, adapting her advice to be realistic for me. She also emphasised how important it was to take my time to rest and recover and that it could take several months to see the changes. Whilst she touched on the emotional, asking ‘what’s missing for me that the rest of my family receive?’, she mostly focused on diet and lifestyle.
I took a short break, making sure to move from my chair and stretch, before returning to their now familiar sitting room to meet Robin. A master neurolinguistic programming (NLP) practitioner, energy healer and hypnotherapist, Robin combines these methods to offer what he calls a ‘faster and kinder’ alternative to traditional psychoanalysis. Any awkwardness on my part quickly vanished as Robin dived straight in and I soon felt surprisingly comfortable. In a two-hour, power therapy session we covered my childhood, the death of my mother, the arrival of my children and my continued quest to please others and be liked all leading me to this place of burnout. Having done more than a decade of therapy and various other healing modalities I always think I must have covered all the ground, but his blend of direct questioning and intuitive connections, wise prompts and careful listening presented my life story in, if not necessarily a new light, then certainly lit from a different angHe questioned why it was I couldn't just 'be ill' and why I felt I had to control it. Good question, and one I see now led me to a lot more suffering than the illness alone had brought. He ended the session with a powerful visualisation exercise, similar to hypnotherapy, around forgiveness. Sensing my hesitation when asked to picture a place I felt safe (I always get lost in indecision at such moments), he gently offered to describe one for me. This left me free to experience the emotional journey and I was able to work through, and make peace with, something I hadn't even realised I'd been carrying around with me for many years.
Day two began with a brief catch up with Desri before launching into a marathon three-hour emotional healing session with Robin - a brilliant blend of techniques to use in the real world and an intense ‘trance’ journey using visualisation and the body’s wisdom to tap into feelings, rather than analysing from the head. Some surprising stuff came up that I hadn’t predicted, as well as some familiar emotional challenges I knew only too well.
Desri welcomed me on my third and final day and her words made me feel supported and deeply understood. Having shared notes with Robin (with my permission), she said that all the detoxing and body brushing in the world won't help until major emotional blocks are worked through so they had decided the rest of the session should be spent with Robin. I settled in for another intense and inspiring three-hour session. He ended the retreat with a compassionate combination of a sincere pep talk and the sort of wise words we often hope for but don't always get in life. I felt moved and shifted in a profound way.
I kept the retreat feeling going at home with some of Desri’s tips, a careful diet, lots of water and herbal tea, permission to rest and leaving off American TV dramas for a few nights. I resumed journaling too which I’d neglected for ages and worked through some of the exercises Robin had suggested.
I felt much of my illness and exhaustion lift in the days immediately afterwards and was able to take action in some important areas of my life. I'm not suggesting it was a miracle cure, and there is still a way to go, but the relief was noticeable and measurable. The work with Robin had gone deep and I genuinely felt able to sit and simply 'be' for the first time in a long time.
A week later Desri and I had a catch-up over Zoom. We talked about how although there was no dramatic change in my symptoms yet, that my mood was better and my internal story had gone from one of despair to hopefulness. Whilst not dismissing the very real illness I’d experienced, it was impossible to ignore how my emotional and physical symptoms were all manifesting in the same area of my body and I now had the tools, both physical and emotional, to help me on my healing journey.
Despite the intensity of the work I ended the experience feeling energised and well resourced. I loved how, unlike the traditional 50-minute therapy hour, these mammoth sessions allowed me to stay with feelings and pursue trains of thought until they were well and truly exhausted. It has changed my perception and self-awareness in dramatic ways, which is pretty powerful stuff for three days on Zoom.
