When we were designing The Shift, we had a choice about where to locate it. There were more convenient options — venues closer to cities, easier to reach, with better parking. We chose the Lakes instead, and we'd make that choice again every time.
The research on nature and the nervous system is now substantial. Time in natural environments reduces cortisol, lowers blood pressure, decreases activity in the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain associated with rumination), and increases activity in areas associated with positive emotion. This isn't alternative medicine. It's published neuroscience.
"The lake doesn't try to be still. It just is. That's the most important teaching on the programme."
But beyond the measurable effects, there's something harder to quantify that we've observed consistently: nature changes the quality of attention people bring to the work. In a city venue, people arrive carrying the city with them — the pace, the noise, the ambient stress of urban life. It takes time to shed that. At the Lakes, the transition happens almost immediately. The drive in, the first sight of the water, the sound of nothing in particular — something releases before anyone has said a word.
We think of the lake as a co-facilitator. It models something we spend a lot of time trying to teach: the possibility of being fully present without effort. Water doesn't try to reflect. Trees don't try to be still. The landscape just is — and being around that quality of presence is itself a kind of instruction.
This is why we've committed to keeping all our retreats at the same venue. Not for convenience, but because the relationship between the work and the place is part of what makes the work work. The setting isn't incidental. It's integral.
