The covered terrace of the retreat house looking across the lawn to the turquoise water of Port Stephens

The Big Exhale

A retreat on the waterfront for anyone running on empty. Arrive exhausted, leave rested, lighter, and clear about what happens next.

Stay or join for a day Corlette, Port Stephens April 2 to 5, 2027

One of the Port Stephens beaches a few minutes from the house

Open plan living room with the glass wall folded back to the bay

Covered terrace with the long table looking over the bay

Lawn running down to the beach with a gum tree and moored yachts

Welcome

Deep rest and gentle body work in a private house by the water, for people who have been holding everything together for a very long time.

You unplug completely. You sleep, you swim in water so clear you can see your feet, you eat beautifully. Twice a day we work gently with your body to release what it has been holding, so the exhaustion actually lifts instead of following you home.

There is nothing wrong with you, and nothing here to fix. You are tired and you have been carrying something heavy. This is where you set it down. Stay with us for the whole retreat, or come for a single day.

What you leave with

You sleep

Properly, for the first time in a while, and your shoulders come down and stay down.

The weight lifts

Something you have carried for years finally gets set down.

You trust yourself

That gut feeling you keep ignoring and pushing away. You start listening to it again.

You know your next step

Not a list of seventeen things. One clear step, plus tools and techniques you can use at home.

What people say

It is rare to find someone as knowledgeable, skilled and genuinely caring as Anna. She creates a compassionate, emotionally safe environment, and her warm, trauma informed approach brings authenticity, expertise and deep passion to her work.

Cymbeline Smith, MA, LMFT · Align and Amplify

I came in carrying weeks of tension in my back and neck, and left feeling balanced and whole. Anna is the perfect combination of relaxed, warm and encouraging, while being incredibly focused and knowledgeable. We went deep, but we also laughed.

Zara · Houseboat Reset

I arrived frazzled and exhausted, needing space to do something for my own wellbeing for a change. By the end I felt calm, focused and more like myself again. Just do it. You will not regret it, and you can take it at your own pace.

Sam · Houseboat Retreat

The lawn and beach in front of the house with yachts on the bay

My story

I know the way back because I had to find it

Ten years ago my marriage ended and I walked out of something that had quietly rewritten what I believed about myself. Coercive control works like that. It leaves no marks. It leaves a nervous system on permanent alert and a person who cannot quite hear their own voice any more.

What I understand now is that none of it was ever the truth about me. It was a programme, learned young and reinforced hard, running below every decision I made.

So I went and found my way back. Nervous system regulation, breathwork, somatic release, subconscious clearing, and the older intuitive work that sits beneath all of it. Not one method. All of them, tested on my own body first, over ten years.

Then came everything I built. Three children. A jewellery brand that sold in Harrods, Selfridges and Liberty. A houseboat on the Thames that I now run retreats from. And a practice that exists so that nobody else has to take ten years to find the door.

I am a trauma informed nervous system coach and somatic release practitioner, with ten years of lived experience behind the training. I know the inside of this from both sides.

Still Sparkling, Anna Lou x

The work

There is nothing wrong with you

Most of what runs your day was learned a long time ago, before you had any say in it. Saying yes when you mean no. Bracing for the mood in the room. Making yourself smaller. Going blank the moment you have to ask for something.

Then it repeats. The same argument in a different relationship. The same knot in your stomach in a different job. The same feeling turning up in a different room.

That repetition is not bad luck and it is not your personality. It is a pathway, worn deep by use. Your body learned a route that once kept you safe, and it has been taking it automatically ever since.

Which is the good news. A pathway that was learned can be changed. Not by understanding it, because you have understood it for years and it is still there. It changes by giving your body a different experience of it, often enough that the old route stops being the automatic one.

That is what this retreat is. We find the pattern, move it through the body, and lay something new down in its place.

Nothing here gets fixed. It gets alchemised.

How the pattern actually changes

See it. Move it. Rewire it.

See it

We find the loop you keep running and where your body has been storing it. Most people have never once been shown the thread that connects then to now.

Move it

Breath, sound, tremor and stillness. The charge that has been sitting in your system for years finally discharges, which is something no amount of talking has ever managed.

Rewire it

Then we practise the new state, over and over. Repetition is how your nervous system lays down a new pathway and makes calm the default rather than the exception.

Take it home

You leave with the practices that keep the new route open, and a call with me four weeks later to make sure it held.

Are you feeling

Any of this?

Tired in a way sleep does not fix

Wired at night, flat by mid afternoon. Running on adrenaline and calling it energy.

Clear in the quiet, lost in the noise

You know exactly what you want on a Sunday. By Wednesday it has gone muddy again.

Holding everyone

You are the strong one, the capable one, the one who copes. Nobody asks who is holding you.

Still carrying something old

A relationship, a loss, a season that changed you. You have done the therapy. Your body did not get the memo.

If you are craving guilt free time to slow down, be in nature, be properly taken care of, and remember who you are when nobody needs anything from you

This is your invitation

What you will experience

Held from start to finish

Every session is guided in the moment and nothing assumes any experience. Here is exactly what happens, and what each one actually is.

Friday

Arrive and land

Arrival and settlingTea on the terrace, the water in front of you, nothing asked of you for the first hour.
Opening circle at sunsetIntentions, and the agreement that makes the room safe. Nothing is forced and nobody has to tell their story.
Dinner at the long tableSlow food, doors open, the light going pink over the bay.
Nervous system resetLying down under a blanket with an eye mask, while music moves gently from ear to ear and you tap slowly, left and right. It teaches an overloaded system how to come down. Most people sleep better that night than they have in months.

Saturday

Move what is stuck

Morning restorative yogaWe start every day here. Very slow, supported poses using bolsters and blankets. No standing, no strength, nothing to get right. You are simply held in each shape while your body wakes up gently.
BreathworkA guided breathing practice, seated or lying down. Your breath is the fastest way into your own nervous system, and this is the most practical thing you will take home.
Pendulum and subconscious clearingUsing the pendulum we locate the emotion your body has been holding, find where it is stored, and release it. Then we follow the thread from back then into how it has been shaping your days ever since.
Long lunch and swimmingEat on the terrace, then the bay. Nothing facilitated, on purpose.
Music clarity immersionYou lie down while layered music builds around you. Sound gets underneath the thinking mind, so feelings that have been stuck for years can move without you having to explain a single thing.
Somatic releaseThe natural shaking your body does after a shock, which most of us learned to stop. We let it happen, gently, and it discharges tension that talking never reaches. You set the size of it and can stop at any moment.
Evening: guided journeyCandlelight, music, and a guided journey inward to the part of you that already knows. Then dinner, and the terrace, and no rush at all.

Sunday

Fill back up

Morning restorative yogaThe same slow start, on the lawn if the weather is kind.
Headland walk, dolphins and mantraAn easy walk around the Corlette headland with water on both sides. Around two hundred bottlenose dolphins live in this bay and they come in close to the shore, so we stop, sit, and watch for them. Then we tone a simple mantra out loud together. Sound vibrates through the chest and throat, settles the system, and calls light and energy back into the body. Most people are surprised by how lit up they feel walking back.
Long lunch back at the houseThen swim, sleep, or do nothing at all.
Connected breathworkThe bigger breath session of the weekend, and the one that surprises people most. Yesterday made the room. Today we fill it.
Time to let it landAn open afternoon on the terrace and in the water. Journalling prompts if you want them, a hammock and silence if you do not.
Evening: the Light Activation, under the starsThe last night, and the biggest thing we do. Candles and fire on the lawn, music, mantra, and a guided activation to call light back into the body. Then blankets, and an Australian sky with no city light in it. You name the one thing you are calling in, out loud, to the circle and to the sky. People describe leaving this one buzzing.

Monday morning: a slow breakfast, a short closing circle, and one clear next step to take home.

The pendulum

I do not use my pendulum to ask questions. I use it to heal.

Your body holds more information than your mind will ever consciously reach. The subconscious, the part of you running quietly underneath, stores all of it. Old stress. Inherited patterns. Emotions that never found a way out.

The pendulum is simply how I read that, and how we shift it. Over one session we work with:

The emotion that has been waiting to be seen, named at last
Where your body has been holding it, and for how long
Patterns handed down to you that were never yours to carry
Energy that has been stuck around your heart, your throat, your gut
The thread running from something old straight into your life now
Releasing what is ready to go, at the pace your body sets

You do not need to believe in anything for this to work. Your body supplies the answers. I hold the questions and the pacing.

The main room where the sessions are held, open to the bay

Where you will be

A private home on the water

Ours alone for three nights. Glass walls that fold right back, polished concrete, four bathrooms, a lawn that runs down to the sand, and bedrooms that open onto the bay. Thirty minutes from Newcastle Airport, two and a half hours from Sydney, and a world away from your ordinary week. Port Stephens is home to around two hundred resident bottlenose dolphins, and they come in close to the headland we walk.

Living room and dining area open to the water

Chef's kitchen with a large island and polished concrete floors

Outdoor dining table under the gum tree looking over the water

Terrace with soft seating facing the bay

Balcony above the lawn with glass balustrade

The front of the house from the driveway

The food

Nourishing, local, made with care

Every meal is built to hold a body doing deep work. Wholefood, seasonal, largely plant forward, sourced from local growers and cooked on site.

Long breakfasts. Slow lunches on the terrace. Dinners that last as long as the conversation does. Herbal teas through the day, ceremonial cacao at night.

Every dietary need is asked for at booking and properly catered for.

Long outdoor dining table set under cover with the bay beyond

Covered terrace with soft seating looking over the bay

Rest

Rest is part of the work

The pace here is deliberate. Deep work needs room around it, and your body lays down the new pathway while you are resting, not while you are in the session. So the day is built with real space in it.

Swim off the lawn whenever you like. Sleep in the afternoon. Walk the white sand at Shoal Bay, ten minutes up the road. Read on the terrace. Sit with somebody and talk about nothing at all.

There are journalling prompts after each session, in your workbook. Use them if they help. Nobody reads them and nobody is checking.

And when something has moved and you want to talk it through, I am here. That is what one facilitator and a small group buys you.

Included

What every place includes

Three nights in a private waterfront home
All meals, teas, cacao and snacks
Every session above, held by me
The headland walk, dolphin watching and mantra
A pendulum and subconscious clearing session
Morning restorative yoga every day
A one to one call with me before you arrive
Your printed workbook of journalling prompts
A take home gift and practices that last
A follow up call four weeks later
Transfers from Newcastle Airport

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Small, intimate and personal. It is only ever me, so you are never handed off to somebody you have not met.

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Trauma informed from the first minute to the last. Nothing is forced, and you set the pace of everything.

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A whole house by the water, ours alone, in the best month of the Australian autumn.

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Have a room to yourself, or share with a friend or partner. Whatever suits you.

Return home with

A nervous system that has learned how to settle
A pattern seen clearly, and moved
Breath and body practices that work in a real week
A workbook of prompts, and one clear next step
Your energy back, and the drive to actually use it

In their own words

What happens in the room

I arrived panicked and worried, needing to release everything I had been feeling. By the end my mind was quieter and my anxiety had settled. The whole experience was amazing, calm and completely without judgement. If you are wondering whether to come, you would love it.

Lauren · Align and Amplify

The body tremors were intense but amazingly freeing, and I could feel them unlock things I had been holding. It galvanised my resolve to put myself at the heart of what I do. Welcoming, transformative and safe.

Zara · Houseboat Reset

During the bilateral work I felt real release and calm, and images surfaced that genuinely surprised me. Stuck, nervous energy tied to old limiting beliefs about myself began to shift, and I reconnected with a calmer, more confident part of myself.

Cymbeline Smith, MA, LMFT

I came curious and open, and lying down and imagining what is possible was very, very powerful. By the end I felt deeply loved, almost as if I could feel my cells settling. Please go. You will not regret it.

Hazel · Strawberry Moon

I am not usually a people person, but I loved the connection with the others, and I found the trauma release deeply healing. I left calmer, grounded and released, as if I was in a gentle bubble for days afterwards. You do not have to perform, just be and receive, and slowly return to yourself.

Anonymous · Strawberry Moon Retreat

A joyful, reflective and calm reset of my whole system. There was nothing to perform. It was a lovely reminder to be softer with myself and to meet my triggers calmly and kindly. Find the courage to go. You will be pleased that you did.

Sarah · Strawberry Moon

Book your place

Choose your room

All rates are per person and every place is booked individually, so what you see below is what is still available. Coming with a friend or partner? Choose double share and book two places.

Master bedroom with king bed and doors onto the balcony over the water

The master ensuite with a freestanding bath

Per person

Master suite

King bed, a lounge area, walk in wardrobe, and a large ensuite with a freestanding bath and double vanity. Opens onto the balcony with the best view in the house.

A$2,950 Book, room to yourself A$1,950 each Book, double share

Or pay a A$500 deposit

Bay bedroom with queen bed opening onto the balcony

Per person

Bay room

Queen bed with its own luxe ensuite, water views, and doors opening onto the same balcony. Quiet, private and calm.

A$2,450 Book, room to yourself A$1,750 each Book, double share

Or pay a A$500 deposit

Four places · shared room

The bunk room

Two sets of quality bunks in a bright room with its own bathroom. Where the friendships tend to happen, and the best value place in the house. Under half the price of a private room, and less than four day tickets, for the whole retreat. Each bed is booked separately, so come alone or bring a friend.

A A$500 deposit holds any place, with the balance due six weeks before we begin. Payment plans are available and I would far rather you took one than talked yourself out of coming. Email me and I will set one up.

Not everyone can disappear for the whole retreat

Day tickets

For anyone local to Port Stephens who wants the depth of the retreat without staying over. Breathwork, the subconscious clearing session, the long lunch with the group, and the afternoon work. You head home before the evening ceremony, which is held for residential guests.

A$395 each, all inclusive. Limited places on each day.

Saturday 3 April Sunday 4 April

Come for all of it, or come for a day. Either way, you go home lighter.

See the rooms and book