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Your Itinerary
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Wednesday, March 17
5:00 PM flight · 6:00 PM local arrival
We'll meet you at the airport and travel together to Furnas, settling into our first home surrounded by São Miguel's volcanic landscape.
When you arrive, you'll receive your welcome bag, a collection of things designed to help you settle in, observe, and participate throughout the retreat.
There will be time to unpack, explore your room, and simply arrive.
That evening, dinner will be prepared by your private chef and delivered directly to your hotel room.
No group dinner. No introductions to remember. No schedule to keep.
Just food, rest, and space to land. Explore the botanical garden grounds and volcanic pools.
Then, sleep.
The retreat begins slowly.
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Thursday, March 18
Morning:
We'll begin the morning with a breakfast picnic and tea circle at Lagoa das Furnas, surrounded by the volcanic landscape.This will be our first opportunity to gather as a group and begin getting to know one another.
After breakfast, there's an optional morning hike around Furnas Lake for those who want to explore the landscape on foot.
Afternoon:
Lunch will be prepared by our private chef.
Body literacy session: Nourishing Your Cycle Health Throughout the Menstrual Life Cycle
We'll begin exploring the biology of the reproductive body as a complex physiological system we can learn to understand.
We'll look at nourishment and hormonal health throughout the menstrual life cycle, building a foundation for understanding how food, energy, hormones, and the changing reproductive body interact.
The afternoon then opens up.
Rest. Read. Swim. Explore Furnas. Spend time alone. Spend time together. You'll have the option of a private vaginal steam or castor oil pack, facilitated individually in your room.
Evening:
At 7pm, we'll gather for dinner in Furnas and experience one of the island's most distinctive foods: the traditional volcanic stew, cooked underground using geothermal heat.
After dinner, we'll have a magical evening in São Miguel's famous thermal pools. Hot volcanic water. Dark skies. A full moon. Steam rising around you. It’s a special experience!
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Friday, March 19
Morning:
Breakfast will be prepared by our private chef before we head out for the morning.
Excursion to Gorreana Tea Plantation: We'll visit Gorreana, Europe's oldest surviving tea plantation, exploring the landscape and the production of one of São Miguel's most distinctive crops.
Afternoon:
Lunch will then be provided by our private chef.
Private Sessions: You'll have the option of a a private 30-minute meeting with me, your host and menstrual health educator. This is a chance to talk individually about your own experiences, questions, observations, and interests. There is no one-size-fits-all prescription.
Following the retreat, you'll receive a personalized regimen based on your individual meeting, developed specifically for you and sent to you after the retreat.
The remainder of the afternoon is yours.
You can spend time in the hotel's spa pools and botanical garden, rest, talk, read, visit the microbial observatory of the Azores, or simply do nothing.
Somatic exploration through art
Later, we'll shift from learning about the body to experiencing it.
Through an opportunity for painting and art-making, we'll explore sensation, perception, movement, and the ways that bodily experiences can exist beyond language.
You don't need to be an artist, and there is no right way to make the work. The point is to see what happens when you give your body another language.
Evening:
Dinner will be prepared by our private chef.
Evening tea circle: We'll gather again for tea and explore one of the central practices of body literacy: learning to separate observation from interpretation.
What did you actually notice today?
Together, we'll practice becoming better observers of our own bodies, curious without immediately diagnosing, judging, or explaining.
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Saturday, March 20
This is our big island day.
Morning:
We'll pack up and travel across São Miguel island, stopping along the way at a lookout point for panoramic views and photographs.
We'll visit a volcanic coffee plantation, then stop for brunch at a local cafe.
Afternoon:
From there, we'll continue on to Sete Cidades, exploring one of the island's most extraordinary volcanic landscapes.
This day is deliberately less structured. And after several days of looking inward, we'll spend time looking outward: Landscape. Weather. Plants. Water. Food. Geography.
The body doesn't exist separately from the world around it.
In the afternoon we'll arrive at our final stay in downtown São Miguel.
You'll have the option to join a yoga event at a local studio, or simply take the afternoon to rest and explore.
Final Evening:
Exploring Downtown São Miguel
The evening is yours.
Dinner is not included this evening, giving you the freedom to explore São Miguel and choose where and what you'd like to eat from their great selection of gastronomic choices.
Later, we'll come together for our closing circle.
We'll reflect on what we've learned, what we've noticed, what surprised us, and what it means to leave with a different relationship to our bodies than the one we arrived with.
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Sunday, March 21
Morning:
A to-go breakfast prepared by our private chef will be waiting for you before your airport transfer.
We'll say goodbye and send you home with your retreat materials, your artwork, your observations, and your personalized follow-up regimen will be available shortly after. You’ll be back in Lisbon by mid-morning!
Hopefully you leave this retreat a little more grounded in the body you've been living in all along.
Additional Info
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All included meals prepared by our private chef will be balanced, whole-food-based meals designed with menstrual and general hormonal health in mind.
Food will be:
Whole-food focused
Nutrient-dense
Seasonal
Balanced for sustained energy
Designed with menstrual and hormonal health in mind
Adaptable to individual dietary needs
A way to showcase the local agriculture on the island by using freshly prepared ingredients
We'll explore nourishment as one of the many ways we can listen to and support the body.
There will be plenty of food, time to eat, and room to notice how different foods actually make you feel.
A questionnaire will become available before your journey to understand dietary needs, accessibility, and if desired, a menstrual phase focused menu. This means a slightly different menu for each person depending on their menstrual needs, which the chef will be acutely attuned to.
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Late March in São Miguel is very mild, lush, and wonderfully changeable, with temperatures generally in the mid-teens °C (upper 50s–low 60s °F). You may experience sunshine, mist, wind, and a passing shower all in the same day, especially around the volcanic lakes.
The key is layers. Bring a light waterproof jacket, comfortable walking shoes with good traction, a warm sweater or fleece, and easy layers you can add or remove throughout the day. Don't forget a dark colored (the minerals can stain your suit) swimsuit for the thermal pools and spa evenings, plus sunscreen and sunglasses for those beautiful sunny moments.
Think spring weather with a little island unpredictability, come prepared for rain, and we'll embrace whatever São Miguel brings.
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I wanted to avoid all the usual stuff…
This isn't a yoga retreat. It's not a detox. It's not a fertility bootcamp. It's not a "feminine energy" retreat. And it's not a medical conference.
It's a body-literacy retreat!
We bring together reproductive health education with embodied experience, art, nature, nourishment, and conversation.
Don’t get me wrong, I love science, but knowing the names of your hormones isn't necessarily the same thing as knowing your body.
And truly knowing your body isn't the same thing as constantly monitoring or optimizing it.
Body literacy is the ability to observe, understand, question, and communicate about your own body.
During our time together, we'll practice all four.
We'll make art.
We'll eat good food.
We'll swim in volcanic water.
We'll walk through tea fields and crater lakes.
We'll talk.
We'll laugh.
We'll have quiet time.
And we'll create a small community of people who are willing to approach the reproductive body with curiosity rather than shame, attention rather than fear, and knowledge rather than assumptions.
So will you join us?
Eight people. Four full days. One island. And a little more time to listen.
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We want this retreat to be as comfortable and accessible as possible. If you have mobility, dietary, sensory, or other accessibility needs, please let us know when you register so we can work with you to make appropriate arrangements.
Because our itinerary includes natural landscapes, walking trails, thermal pools, and excursions across the island, some activities may have physical or environmental limitations. We’ll always communicate what to expect in advance and provide alternatives where possible.
Please reach out with any questions or needs. We're happy to talk through the itinerary with you before you decide if the retreat is a good fit.
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We want everyone to feel comfortable knowing that we take respiratory illness seriously. We’ll provide rapid COVID tests and high-quality masks in your welcome bag, and masking will be optional but encouraged in indoor shared spaces, particularly when someone may have been recently exposed or is experiencing symptoms.
We ask everyone to be mindful of their health before and during the retreat and to communicate openly if they begin feeling unwell.
If someone tests positive for COVID or develops symptoms during the retreat, we’ll have a plan in place to support them while reducing the possibility of transmission to others. This may mean temporarily stepping back from group activities and spending more time in their private accommodation, while we continue to make sure they have meals, supplies, entertainment, and whatever support they need.
Being sick shouldn't mean being abandoned, or that your retreat suddenly becomes miserable. These things happen.
Our goal is to balance individual choice with collective care, creating an environment where people can make informed decisions about their own health while also respecting the health and comfort of everyone in the group.
Contact us for more information.
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4 Days Accomodation
Roundtrip Airfare from Lisbon to Azores
Group Car Transport
Excursion Costs
A Welcome Kit
Private [30] Minute Menstrual Health Consultation
One vaginal steam OR one castor oil application
4 breakfasts, 2 lunches, 2 dinners made by our private chef and delivered to you
Meals and drinks: One night out to dinner in Furnas, one morning out to brunch in Sete Cidades
Tea at our tea circles
Painting materials for art making
Your personal health regimen, to be delivered after the retreat