Anna Pasternak discovers a retreat hidden in the grounds of Heckfield Place where privacy, soulful nourishment and cellular-level restoration combine.

Last autumn, I was in that sad, low place where exhaustion and overwhelm had bleached all the colour from my life. I was feeling heavy, depleted and stuck. I cancelled a trip to a Swiss detox spa because I didn’t feel capable of withstanding the punitive hunger. I realised that what I was craving was nurture, nourishment and not to have to get on a plane. I craved feminine support, oily intuitive massage, plus high vibrational healthy food. And, more crucially, profound rest in comfort. Essentially, I wanted to be somewhere that felt like going home – because where do you go as an adult when your beloved mother, once your wellspring of succour, is dead? Where could I collapse and then be lovingly coaxed back to life?

Was this even possible in the UK, I wondered, between frantic dives into Google. My prayers were answered when I discovered the Bespoke Paths retreat at The Bothy spa at Heckfield Place in Hampshire. This four-day, three-night experience, which runs once a month (with a break over the summer), is for one or two participants. After an initial telephone consultation with Heckfield’s well-being co-ordinator, Emmanuelle Soum, I was deemed eligible. This felt like passing a critical exam because they only allow guests whom they feel are aligned with their ethos to undergo this bespoke reset. I was to discover that at The Bothy, healing happens at an esoteric level. This is the Oxbridge of holistic retreating.

Before arrival, I had an online session with Amy Stedman, an ‘ecopsychologist’. Her spot-on appraisal of my inner emotional landscape and outer goals left me stunned. I wanted to feel vital and hopeful again, she intuited, instead of wading through the sludge of every day.

I checked into The Bothy on a damp, dark Sunday afternoon in November and felt instantly uplifted by the abundance of plants and seasonal flowers everywhere. The rooms are country modern in style. Bathrooms are stocked with their vividly scented Wildsmith products, fridges offer organic milk from Heckfield’s Guernsey cows, while cosy throws are artfully positioned for curling up in – or sobbing into.

My fellow retreat participant was a similarly worn-out mid-life female – a lawyer. We took one look at each other’s wan faces and said ‘let’s remain strangers’. Which was ingenious. Too tired to make small talk, we respected each other’s space. There was a reassuring solidarity in our silence. We would later smile knowingly at each other across the spa.

We began what turned out to be the most exquisitely curated process (each retreat varies according to a guest’s needs, so she had a different schedule to mine) with a joint fireside tea ceremony in the woods. As gentle rain fell, we sat on sheepskin-covered chairs and absorbed the elemental nature of this opening event: the burning wood, the sound of a fountain in the nearby lake, the pine-covered ground. The Bothy team harnesses the landscape at Heckfield Place – 438 stunning acres – to support the healing they facilitate. You feel that the land can absorb whatever toxicity you need to shed.

The Bothy is unique in today’s over-noisy, overstimulated world. Phones are banned (a rule that’s actually upheld – not always the case in most establishments) and we were discouraged from wearing a watch. ‘Let go and let us lead you’ is the gentle and beguiling invitation. You do not know what your next treatment will be, so you cannot build expectation or over-ruminate. This experience is unlike anything I’ve encountered in 40 years of visiting spas. You surrender on a profound level because you feel safe enough to give up control. The relief of literally being led from treatment to treatment, being told what restaurant you are booked into at what time (the main restaurant, Marle; or Hearth, where all the food is cooked on a wood fire) allowed me to move from my habitual mental agitation to a state of acquiescence.

The food is medicine alone. Much of it comes from Heckfield’s biodynamic farm, so it is field-to-fork of the very highest calibre. Everything is homemade, from the hazelnut butter at breakfast to the goat’s curd and sauerkraut at lunch. It’s healthy foodie heaven; not least in the Sun Room, where the light-lunch menu is dedicated to gut health: seeded crackers, or a Japanese rice salad with pickled vegetables. I wanted to weep the whole time because everything felt so attuned to my needs. Slow-paced; the combination of gentle exercise – whether a guided meditative woodland walk or a skilled yin yoga session – became the perfect antidote to my harassed life.

I realised that, when stressed, I leave my body in brace-position to go into my head. Big mistake. Part of me feels abandoned.

At The Bothy, they cracked me open, then held me tightly. I began to access an inner softness, which helped my taut being slowly to unfurl. After 48 hours, I was freefalling with relief. Their sublime roster of master practitioners constantly confer, guiding you towards maximum restoration and regeneration. A naturopath, Jennifer Harper-Deacon, kick-started my flagging life-force using homotoxicology remedies. These are complex homeopathic remedies that she administers through bio-puncture, injecting them into acupuncture points. As well as reiki, which completely knocked me out, Jennifer seems on speaking terms with your internal organs, explaining that my liver was agitated (all that impotent rage I had been stuffing back inside me) and said my yang (masculine) energy was completely spent. No wonder I had no get-up-and-go.

Jennifer handed me over to Morag McDowall, whose cranio-sacral therapy was the best I
have ever experienced. Like an alchemical surgeon, she performs a psychic biopsy by hovering her hands over your body, then offers an apposite word or phrase as her diagnosis. (Trigger warning: this can – and did – result in acute and lengthy howling.)

Amy Steadman was no less effective. She had created a bespoke journal for me to keep each day, its pages scattered with pincer-like prompts for me to address: a process which yielded gem-like insights. You can also have a nature therapy session with her, walking and talking around The Bothy’s grounds. On ours, we stopped by the lake and I shouted ‘YES!’ Yes to life, yes to letting go.

I felt like my whole system and psyche had been cleansed and re-tuned in three days. In giving myself the gift of this retreat, I had created space in my body and soul. I felt freer, looser and calmer.

I ended my stay with another joint session with my fellow retreat participant: a shamanic sauna experience of hot and cold, fire and water, smoky incense and throaty chanting. It felt like we reclaimed our feminine power. We were told that eating dried apple slices dipped in potent Linden tincture (made on the estate) would open us up intuitively. I was sceptical about the psychic element. Silly me. Afterwards, lying outside on a lounger, wrapped in a blanket as the snow fell, I saw and heard my mother as if she were in front of me. She spoke to me with such clarity, reassuring me as only a mother can. Weeping again, this time with happiness at the unexpected gift, I realised she had guided me here. If I can’t hold you, she inferred, The Bothy can. Bespoke Paths retreat from £7,320 (bothy.heckfieldplace.com).