Bloom Retreat

YOU KNOW THERE IS MORE

Bloom is a six-day medicinal mushroom retreat in the Cederberg, offering two guided mushroom sessions alongside supportive practices throughout the week.

It is designed for people whose lives are already functioning well, yet who feel a quiet pull toward something deeper: questions about consciousness, experience, and the mind itself. As we become skilled at navigating life, our attention can narrow around what feels predictable, and less of the world gets through. Bloom opens that field again, allowing you to meet your own life with fewer filters and notice what had begun to disappear from view.

This is for you if

• You have built a life that works, yet the days can still feel familiar before they even begin.
• You have done therapy, read widely, maintained a practice, and now want a different kind of opening rather than more of the same.
• You are drawn to seeing your life with the usual filter lifted, and to discovering what a wider perspective makes possible.
• You want a setting that feels steady enough for meaningful work, held by people trained to sit with it well.

THE FLOW

Preparation and integration

The retreat experience is not the whole story. The sessions may open a great deal in a single week, but what lasts depends on what surrounds them. States can become traits, or they can simply pass.

pre-retreat

Preparation

The process begins before arrival. Once your application is accepted, you take part in a preparation call and begin the slower work of setting an intention. By the time you reach the valley, the groundwork is already in place, so the week can focus on the experience itself rather than on getting ready for it.

post-retreat

Integration

After you leave, you receive an integration guide and three somatic sessions over the following weeks. The neuroplasticity window remains open for a period of time, helping the opening become something lived rather than just remembered. What moved during the retreat continues to be supported as it settles into daily life.

THE APPROACH

How a guided retreat works

Four elements, held with care.

1. Medicine
   Two guided sessions with medicinal mushrooms. Most of the time, the brain operates through prediction, with one central network narrating the familiar story of who you are. The medicine interrupts that network for a few hours. Patterns that usually feel fixed soften enough to work with, and a great deal can shift while they do.
2. Soma
   Somatic experiencing, breathwork, and movement are woven through the week. Insight alone does not travel far on its own. These patterns live in the body too: the held shoulders, the breathing you did not realize you were controlling. Loosen the mind without including the body, and little truly changes.
3. Integration
   Integration is present across all six days through journaling, one-to-one support, and group time. There is a reason for this. After the sessions, the brain remains especially open to change for two to four weeks, and integration is how that window is used before it closes. Without it, you are left with a vivid memory and little else.
4. Nature
   1,350 hectares of private land in the Cederberg. Setting matters here more than many people expect. After about twenty minutes in a landscape like this, cortisol begins to drop and the looping, worried parts of the brain quiet down. People tend to leave feeling more connected, and that is often what stays.

WHAT A DAY LOOKS LIKE

Presence and connection

We could share a timetable, but the desire to know the day in advance is part of what you are here to release. The rhythm changes with the season, and ceremony days follow a different flow. What follows is the shape of the day rather than a fixed schedule.

MORNING
Cacao Ceremony
Medicine Walk
Morning Flow
Brunch

MIDDAY
Breathwork
Rest
Guided Hike

AFTERNOON
Afternoon snack
Time in Nature
1:1 Sessions
Rest

EVENING
Dinner
Stargazing
Fireside Chat

AT A GLANCE

Meals are vegetarian/vegan, with most produce coming from the gardens or local farmers. Food is served at the communal table. Coffee and alcohol are not served, largely to support sleep. Mornings begin with cacao and rooibos infusions.

Dietary requirements can be accommodated. Please share them when booking.

DURATION
6 days
Tuesday to Sunday

LOCATION
Cederberg
Western Cape

FOOD
Plant-based
No Coffee · No alcohol

YOUR GUIDES

Daria & Heine Rasmussen
SITTERS · GUIDES · FOUNDERS

"This is a tool for radical change. What it asks for is a container honest and safe enough to hold what it opens. That is the work we are interested in."

Daria and Heine have spent years preparing the land, the property, and themselves for the work that takes place at Bloom.

Daria brings formal training in Somatic Experiencing, mindfulness with Martin Aylward, breathwork with Dan Brulé, and the Synthesis Institute Foundations course. Both Daria and Heine have completed sitter training as well. Together, this forms a foundation that aligns closely with what is needed in a ceremony container: trauma-informed, body-attuned, contemplatively grounded, and non-directive.

Heine sits the ceremonies alongside her and offers the kind of presence the work requires: steady and unobtrusive.

Together, they hold the room for what unfolds, rather than steering it toward what should. They do not guide you somewhere else. They create enough safety for you to arrive where you already are.

WHAT GUESTS SAY

"During the retreat someone described taking mushrooms like shaking a snow globe and shifting perspective, mixing up the pieces a bit, and that feels very accurate. I'm enjoying the ongoing microdosing experience. I feel it's making me particularly aware and thoughtful, which I am appreciating. I think of the experience every day."
Anna

what does it cost

Accommodation options

All prices include accommodation, all meals, all practices, and guided stargazing. There are no hidden charges. The retreat never hosts more than eight guests, and often fewer.

CANVAS AND TIMBER

Tented Chalets
Made from canvas and timber, allowing the valley to come through the walls. Wind, water, first light. The simplest option, and the closest you can sleep to the land.

5 NIGHTS
Solo: R28,000
Double: R39,200

Includes: Accommodation, all meals, practices and activities

WOOD AND GLASS

Chalets
Built from wood and glass and set among the rocks. Floor-to-ceiling windows bring the valley into the room. This is the one most people picture when they imagine the place.

5 NIGHTS
Solo: R36,000
Double: R49,000

Includes: Accommodation, all meals, practices and activities

CEDERBERG ROCK

Villa
Built from Cederberg rock and set closest to the river. It includes a separate bedroom, its own lounge, and a large private outdoor space. This is the most secluded option.

5 NIGHTS
Solo: R39,500
Double: R54,000

Includes: Accommodation, all meals, practices and activities

application form

Apply in minutes

Bloom is application-only. The process takes ten minutes, and a reply is sent within three working days.

Please note that these retreats are not medical or clinical treatments; the screening is for safety purposes only.