Intensive Residential Interventions

Retreats and interventions for healing, reducing stress and increasing resilience

Dates for our Intensive Residential Interventions:

2024

• Thursday 27th June - Monday 1st July

• Thursday 19th September - Monday 23rd September

• Thursday 7th November - Monday 11th November

2025

• Thursday 20th February - Monday24th February

• Thursday 24th April - Monday 28th April

• Thursday 19th june - Monday 23rd june

• Thursday 25th September - Monday 29th September

  
  

About our Intensive Residential Interventions

We offer five-day / four-night retreats to those who would like to explore ways to calm and heal their mind, strengthen their confidence, re-energise themselves and feel more able to manage stress. It suits those for whom ongoing therapy is not practical due to shift work and for those who prefer to have a clear separation between their routine environment and their therapy.

The retreats take place in the quiet comfort of Paradise Farmhouse, beautifully perched on a hill with magnificent views over the valley of Presteigne and distant valleys further afield. The setting itself is conducive to healing.

Our aim is to offer respite and healing from the everyday stresses of daily life. This will be an opportunity to explore new perspectives for breaking the stress cycle and practising healthy strategies.

Our interventions aim to process stress that may be having an ongoing negative impact in your life and to minimise the risks of future problems or the accumulation of untreated stresses. This is particularly important given the unprecedented stresses thrown at us over the last few years.

A safe, brief and effective therapeutic intervention encompassing psycho-education and group work:

Our retreat activities are underpinned by our commitment to safety.

The main aim is to facilitate healing from suffering and offer support as early as possible to minimise the risk of cumulative stress.

Our therapeutic intervention is an innovative low to medium intensive programme that is safe, comprehensive, brief and effective. We have designed it to anticipate and prevent the accumulation of trauma.

Our approach is structured in a way that allows you to keep any stressful information confidential. Since we do not share any distressing experiences in the group setting, you can work on your specific issues while following instructions given to all participants by the group leader.

We will offer psycho-education relevant to your needs, with up-to-date psycho-neurological information on potential concerns and anxieties:—grief, burnout, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, the risk of chronic stress leading to trauma or re-traumatisation, etc.

We offer two sessions of group work each day to help you build inner resources. These help you identify and work on an ongoing or established stress.

The approach is a highly structured hybrid programme combining group and individual work alongside each other. All along you are guided and supported by qualified therapists. One to one sessions will be offered where we judge them to be advisable in order to address barriers that may emerge during processing.

Although the content and focus of our retreats is clearly aimed at providing respite and building resources, our interventions are also effective at providing screening to identify other hidden potential problems, so that you have the choice of seeking further support as early as possible.

Apply here to express your interest in joining our intensive retreats. Please note that before confirming your place, we will need to carry out an assessment to ensure you are ready to safely take part in group work.

Building skills and resources to target “ongoing triggers” or worries about the future:

You will learn and practise specific self-stabilising and confidence-building techniques and strategies to help you personally.  We will provide guidance for you to continue building and consolidating your inner and outer resources once the intensive intervention is over. This will help you build more resilience to future ups and downs.

Before you leave we will check that you feel in a good place to go back to your normal everyday life. For those for whom we consider it necessary we will provide individual feedback and will advise on any recommendations for future support. We will also ask for your feedback on our services.

Being centred and re-energised through connection, movement, simple creative techniques and nature:

You will have the opportunity to use creative techniques such as music, drawing, movement, painting or arts and crafts as self-regulating strategies (with no need of previous experience in any of these).

The intensive will foster your curiosity about the healing impact of nature and integrate this in your process. We incorporate outdoor activities and walks to suit our groups, exploring nature and foraging. Sometimes, particularly with children, we conduct sessions while walking.