http://www.tewhenuaretreat.co.nz/

Te Whenua Retreat, 2277 Gibbston Highway, Gibbston (2025)

16/12/2025

Ready for deep, genuine rest? This is not just about ‘doing nothing’, collapsing & zoning out.

Genuine rest is profoundly healing. It engages our creative and intuitive qualities, it amplifies our clarity, perceptions (inner and outer) and reveals where and why we get stuck in unhelpful habit patterns. It brings our nervous system into balance It empowers us to live more fully, radiantly and joyfully. Rest is a superpower, and we can support you in reclaiming rest as your birthright.

💛 TESTIMONIAL 💛

“One of the things that is most magical is how time seems to expand into what feels like weeks, even after you’ve only been at Te Whenua for a few hours. It’s a melting pot of the peaceful landscape, nourishing food, Pema’s [🐶] sweet nature, and most especially Jenny’s intuitive way of understanding what you need.
This retreat was the perfect recipe for deep, genuine rest. I’’m so grateful for the last few days and feel comforted by the idea of coming back.”

Our Return To Centre Retreats are 3-night, all inclusive, guided retreats. Our next one is in Feb. Book online via our website - all welcome 🏡🧡

09/12/2025

SPOTLIGHT on our 3-night ‘Return To Centre’ all-inclusive retreats:

We’ve created this 3-night retreat with a gentle yet profound focus on rebalancing your nervous system and bringing back your calm confidence.

At times in our life, we all absolutely need to press pause on the busyness, hyper connectivity, and the relentless forward motion of modern life, and come back to centre. We need to stop the current conversation, in order to have a different, more fulfilling one.

These fully catered, all-inclusive retreats are offered throughout the year, and include daily yoga nidra (non sleep deep rest) to rebalance the nervous system & foster deep rest; restorative yoga to ease muscle tension and support healing; nourishing & delicous plant-based meals; guidance & companionship in exploring our unique life journey; tea ceremony; and plenty of free time to spend in our peaceful gardens, reading, taking a local walk, or soaking under the stars in our cedar hot tub.

Simply being in nature is a true healer.

Conversation, connection, as well as peaceful solitude, are always available as supports for your physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. You are welcome just as you are.

Please check our website for dates and availability.

All welcome - please don’t hesitate to get in touch with questions / queries.

🏡🧡

29/11/2025

SPOTLIGHT on our ‘Quiet Day Of Meditation & Rest’

We’ve been offering these regular one-day retreats for more than 5 years, on the 1st of every month (except New Year’s Day.) 💫

The inspiration came from my own past experience of craving somewhere quiet, relaxing & safe to spend an occasional day. This was during a time in my life when my home situation was challenging, and on my days off from work I would go out for the day rather than spend it at home - but where to go? There’s only so much time you can spend in a cafe, or library or park.

If only there was somewhere I could go to rest my mind and heart… Spending the days with friends is an option, but the social expectation to chit chat, though wonderful at times, doesn’t provide the same inner rest as being quietly and gently with our own hearts.

So our Quiet Days are here to provide a safe and nourishing hang-out. No need to tell your story… come and spend the day however you choose.

Even when home life is wonderful, the benefits of spending a day in a space other than your own home, are many. You are away from the distractions of housework, tasks and interruptions. Being in a different space actually helps you see things from a different perspective. We see OURSELVES from a new perspective. We let someone else support us for a day.

Our Quiet Days are perhaps the simplest - and cheapest - of all our retreats and we feel very committed to keeping hosting them. They’ve been perennially popular.

They cost $120 and run from 10am to 5pm, whichever day of the week the 1st falls on.

Next one is tomorrow 😌

Maybe you know someone who may be seeking a day off to rest and refocus? Please let them know about these Quiet Days! 🙏🥰

As always , full details and bookings on our website, link in bio. Or simply drop me a message.

🏡🧡

24/11/2025

Retreats are an invaluable pause in the flow of life. Here’s why:

At any age, and regardless of our roles in life, it’s all to easy to get caught up in the fast stream of day-to-day living, and one of the first things we loose touch with when busy & stressed is the heart, or truth of who we are. This disconnection, a lack of inner coherence, will start to show up as physical and / or psychological symptoms.

Not only has this been well understood by indigenous & spiritual cultures for centuries, it’s also now understood by quantum biologists and doctors in the field of psychoneuroimmunology and other disciplines.

Our all-inclusive 3 and 4 night retreats are designed to support you in re-connecting to your own heart / soul / centre, in a highly supportive and restorative environment. We use time-honoured simple practises, side stepping fads, trends and expensive tech, equipping you well to continue your journey post retreat. We offer all-inclusive retreats every single month.

We believe that each of us have all the wisdom we need inside of us, we sometimes just need to be orientated back to what may have got hidden as we journey through life.

Upcoming retreats:

Dec 1st: Quiet Day Of Meditation & Rest
Dec 7th, Sunday: Harvest & Horizons, setting intentions for 2026
Dec 29th - Jan 2nd: Re-Connection Retreat, 4 nights all-inclusive.

All welcome! 🏡🧡

15/11/2025

Dream big with us for 2026!

Our Harvest & Horizons one-day retreat is where we set our compass for the life we truly and deeply want - feel free to forget ‘realistic’ and plan for magic 💫

SUN. 7th Dec

9.30am to 5pm

Grounding, calming, opening, reflecting, sharing, dreaming, aligning… 🌟

$175 inclusive of lunch & refreshments

All welcome!

Book via our website (link also in todays stories) or DM me 😊

11/11/2025

I have a little issue with the word ‘worst’ in the quote, I would prefer the word ‘real’, or ‘whole’.
There is no ‘better’ or ‘worst’
There is just All We Are.

It’s the project of a life time.
It’s also the deepest truth, the only way to heal.

We are so obsessed with being the ‘best’, we’ve buried the truth of us way way down.
So far down to be truly exiled, buried in our unconscious.

Including everything is a project, an adventure, a choice point on our journey.

But down, down there is where all the remaining light is 💛

06/11/2025

Most of us already feel the potency that the end of the calendar year offers for reflection and realignment. But December and January are also notoriously busy. Before we know it we are well in to the New Year without having truly processed and integrated all that 2025 brought, or set our compass for the year ahead.

Reflecting on our lived experiences is a profoundly important aspect of our expansion (and with growth comes joy!). Whether our year has been mostly inspiring & uplifting, or perhaps scattered with more challenges & roadblocks than we’d have wished, 2025 was both a gift and a guide for all of us - and it’s hugely important to recognise it as such. This retreat offers an opportunity to reflect and integrate our experiences so that we may grow in wisdom, compassion and peace.

This will be a relaxed, spacious day to allow your own insights to arise. We will support you in setting your 2026 compass by offering:

🧘🏼Guided meditation to deeply rest and ground
📔reflections for journalling; harvesting the key take-aways from 2025, the joys and the challenges
💕opportunities for sharing our insights and hearing one another’s stories
🌮delicious plant-based lunch
🧭setting our compass for 2026; what brings us joy, where do we need to set boundaries
💫exercises for tapping into our intuition / higher self

Let’s end the year with heart-led intentions, and not just the wishful clinking of champagne glasses!

Investment: $175 inclusive of lunch and refreshments

Book on our website or DM me with questions etc!

25/10/2025

Some may reflect on the truth that this path of healing, expansion, human-potential is endless. Some may find this discouraging - the horizon forever just out of reach… there is so much terrain to cross, the journey may feel daunting.

I however, find this truth exciting and uplifting. There is literally no upper limit to how happy you could feel. How joyful, how loving you can be. How free of your past conditioning, and how much you can heal. Your potential is infinite, immeasurable.

How exciting, how compelling is that?

🧡🏡

14/10/2025

Two reasons why you’re going to love this one-day cooking retreat on Sunday 16th Nov 🧡⤵️🎄

1. I’ve long understood that it’s the little extras that elevate a meal - the crunchy spiced nuts, the balsamic glaze, the magic sauce, the sprinkle of dukka, and that perfect chutney. And who can forget the home-made Italian amaretti to go with an after-dinner coffee, or a bespoke blend of delicious & nurturing herbal tea…. On this retreat, this is where our focus is!

2. Whether you decide to keep these gems to yourself, or wrap a ribbon on them and offer them to a loved one this Christmas, it’s a win-win situation!

This one-day retreat will give you lots of inspiration & confidence across a wide selection of recipes, all designed to be wonderful Christmas gifts.

Who doesn’t love receiving a hand-made gift, full of the givers unique flair and love?!

The day runs from 10am to 4.30pm, cost is $220.

Three spaces left - please message me to enquire, or book yourself in via our website (link in stories).

🏡🧡

11/10/2025

Let’s not conflate intelligence with just the intellect. Our heart intelligence is more wise, creative, generative, inclusive and compassionate than our minds, which are simply data processors.

Over the last decade this has been, without doubt, the most profound shift for me. We are drowning in information and ’ten steps to…’ but have lost the connection to our greatest source of wisdom. 💗

The gift of retreats is often a simple remembering.

🏡🧡

04/10/2025

💛SundayBook Review 💛

Matthew McConaughey is a fascinating human. Since ditching the leading man / rom-com roles, he’s become one of the more interesting Hollywood stars. I loved him as an actor for the first time after watching True Detective, and he pulls my attention when I see him IRL - on podcasts, or giving talks or speeches here and there. To promote this book he was recently on the Ten Percent Happier podcast, and that interview compelled me to buy the book.

He has buckets of charisma for sure, but he is also a complex, no bu****it, life-loving human who refuses to play by conventional rules. He comes across as a deep thinker, a man of faith, and also one who has thought long and hard about his values.

McConaughey’s poetry is undemanding. He re-tells experiences in simple terms, not heavy on metaphors, and most of it in rhyming couplets. Some of his poems were written when he was a teenager, through to dealing with a first taste of fame and wealth, later becoming a husband and father, and navigating faith and doubts on his religious path.

Whilst I can’t honestly say any of the poems touch my heart in the way a David Whyte or Walt Whitman poem does, I love this book for the way it offers us an invitation (or challenge?) - you don’t have to be Mary Oliver in order to write poetry that helps and heals. You don’t need to have the devotion of Thomas Merton or even Tara Brach to allow prayer, invocation or deep gratitude to be expressed to the universe. The introductions to each chapter (Time, Love Stories, F**kups, Grace…) are themselves sincere and meaningful reflections, calling us to ponder our own poetry and prayers in response.

In a world where celebrity books are commonly ghost written, or even created in the blink of an eye by an AI, it’s a treasure to read words that are unquestionably written from the heart of a human being, and I remain a big fan.

08/09/2025

🫖🥀🌱

1 part nettle
1 part raspberry leaf
1 part mint
1 part fennel seeds
1 part fresh ginger
0.5 part rose petals

Pour over boiling water and let steep for 5-10 minutes.
An uplifting and nourishing cuppa for spring strength!

The addition of ginger makes this a warming tea, perfect for these days when there is still a nip in the air.

This tea is a wonderful, nutritive, daily tonic - great for muscles and bones, improves mood and strengthens digestion.

Tea rituals are such an important part of the day here at Te Whenua Retreat. When you slow down and take time to brew a cuppa that truly nourishes your body, it lifts the mood and connects you back to your inner strength and confidence 🌱🙌

Te Whenua Retreat

16/12/2025

09/12/2025

29/11/2025

24/11/2025

15/11/2025

11/11/2025

06/11/2025

25/10/2025

14/10/2025

11/10/2025

04/10/2025

08/09/2025

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