A Restorative Retreat in France for Women in Healthcare

Women in healthcare often carry a distinct blend of systemic, cultural, and personal pressures that remain largely unspoken.

This retreat is designed for women physicians and healthcare professionals who may:

• feel stretched thin and unsure how long they can continue sustaining the pace

• experience guilt about not being or doing “enough,” at work or at home

• notice a loss of joy or meaning in their work and wonder whether it can be reclaimed

• feel isolated or misunderstood within male-dominated or hierarchical environments

• hold leadership or administrative responsibility alongside direct patient care

• sense their identity narrowing around their professional role

• experience perfectionism or imposter syndrome despite high achievement

These experiences are not personal failures. They are predictable responses to systems that ask too much while offering too little space for rest, recovery, or integration.

This retreat offers a place to name these realities and respond to them with clarity, self-compassion, and psychologically grounded support. Through reflection, embodied practices, and connection with others who understand the demands of healthcare work, participants are invited to relate differently to pressure and to themselves.

This mindfulness retreat for healthcare workers follows a carefully designed yet flexible rhythm that supports reflection without overwhelm. The days are structured enough to feel held, and spacious enough to allow you to move at your own pace.

Across seven days in the French mountains, the experience is intentionally slowed and simplified so your nervous system has time to settle and your attention can turn inward.

You can expect:

• ACT-based workshops focused on values, meaning, and psychological flexibility in healthcare work

• guided reflection sessions to support insight, clarity, and self-understanding

• mindfulness practices and guided meditation, including guided meditation for anxiety, designed to support nervous system regulation

• embodied practices including gentle movement, breathwork, nature walks, and restorative somatic work

• time outdoors for grounding, perspective, and spaciousness in the natural landscape

• optional restorative experiences such as sauna, massage, or quiet rest

• meaningful conversation with peers who understand the realities of medicine

• unstructured time for rest, journaling, or solitude

• frequent pauses and spacious breaks to support integration rather than depletion

The content is not standardized or formulaic. It is shaped by who is in the room, what participants share ahead of time, and what the group needs as the retreat unfolds.

Rather than pushing for insight or productivity, the structure supports listening, presence, and embodied restoration.

This retreat does not promise a dramatic transformation. Instead, it offers something quieter, steadier, and more sustainable.

By the end of the week in France, you can expect to leave with:

• restored energy and a calmer internal rhythm

• greater nervous system steadiness after prolonged demand

• practical stress management and stress reduction techniques that translate into daily healthcare work

• increased psychological flexibility and self-compassion

• renewed clarity about what matters to you now

• insight into how you want to relate to your work moving forward

• a more embodied sense of presence and internal grounding

• meaningful connection with other women who understand the realities of healthcare

• a grounded sense of personal growth and personal development that feels sustainable rather than forced

The retreat supports long-term emotional wellbeing and a more sustainable relationship to work, rest, and work life balance. The impact of the retreat is not about changing who you are.It is about reconnecting with yourself in ways that support sustainability, clarity, and care over time.

The retreat is held at La Taillede, an ancient Catalan farmhouse set high in the mountains of southern France, just outside the village of Corsavy. The setting is known for its quiet, wide views, and deep sense of stillness. The surrounding landscape creates a natural feeling of spaciousness that supports reflection and steady internal work.

You will have access to:

• peaceful communal areas for reading, journaling, or quiet conversation

• mountain trails, forest paths, and open outdoor spaces for walking and grounding

• sauna, pool, and simple restorative facilities

• comfortable rooms designed to support deep rest

• quiet indoor and outdoor spaces for reflection and integration

Everything about the environment is chosen to encourage clarity, calm, and reconnection. It is the kind of place where the body can settle, the pace can soften, and your thoughts have room to slow and land.

This retreat is for women who feel stretched thin, even if they are still functioning well on the surface. You may be navigating burnout in healthcare, questioning long term sustainability, or noticing feelings often associated with imposter syndrome in roles that require constant responsibility, decision making, and emotional steadiness.

You may be highly capable and deeply committed, yet privately feeling depleted, uncertain, or aware that something needs to change in order for this work to remain sustainable.

You do not need to be in crisis. You only need to feel the pull to pause, listen inward, and reconnect with what matters now.

Time in nature creates a kind of clarity that is difficult to access in the middle of everyday healthcare work. The mountain landscape of southern France offers space, quiet, and perspective, helping you step back from familiar patterns and hear yourself more clearly.

The surroundings support the reflective work of the retreat in a gentle, grounding way. Walking a quiet trail, sitting with views across the Pyrenees, or pausing beside water and open sky can help you connect with what you are feeling and understand what is shifting within you. Nature becomes a steady companion in the process, offering calm, honesty, and a sense of possibility.

Set high in the mountains near Corsavy, the landscape holds a unique blend of stillness and openness. It supports women in healthcare who are carrying sustained responsibility to feel more spacious, grounded, and reconnected, both internally and in relation to their work and lives.