A Healing Retreat for Women
A small-group, trauma-informed therapeutic
retreat held in Umbria, Italy.
What This Retreat Is
This is a carefully held therapeutic retreat for women who feel ready to work with long-standing patterns shaped by trauma, loss, or prolonged nervous system strain.
The retreat is designed and led by British trauma psychotherapist Tess Hunneybell and is hosted at San Flaviano, her monastery home in the Umbrian hills of Italy.
The structure of the retreat has been shaped through many years of retreat practice and through supporting more than 1,200 women within this format. The work unfolds gradually, allowing understanding to deepen and encouraging change to settle at your natural pace.
Alongside individual therapeutic work, the week includes shared learning, movement, time outdoors, and the natural rhythm of daily life together. A small, experienced professional team supports the retreat, working within a consistent clinical framework held throughout the week.
The retreat offers time, continuity, and steady presence, creating the conditions for healing to unfold in a way that feels grounded, human, and real.
The days are held so you can lean out of effort and turn inward. Practical needs, including onsite therapeutic massage, are quietly taken care of.
Everything around you is taken care of, so you can focus on turning your attention inward.
The days allow room for focused work, rest, time outdoors, shared meals, and moments of ease and enjoyment.
Who This Retreat Is For
This retreat is open to women from around the world who feel drawn to deeper self-understanding, healing from past experience, or who are simply in need of meaningful rest and a chance to reset.
Women arrive at many different stages of life. Over the years, guests have ranged from young adulthood through to later life — including an 18-year-old who attended with her mother, and an 87-year-old who came on her own. What connects people here is not age or background, but a shared curiosity about themselves and a readiness to engage with the work.
Participants are asked to be able to share space with others, take responsibility for themselves, and respect both personal and shared boundaries. Within this setting, the work is held with care, discretion, and professional attention.
How the Retreat Is Held
The retreat is held within a clear, professionally grounded framework that allows the work to unfold with steadiness, care, and attention.
Days move with a natural rhythm rather than a fixed timetable, blending therapeutic work, time to rest, and engagement with the surrounding landscape. There is also space during the week to relax and enjoy time at the local thermal spa, allowing the body to soften and settle in a different way.
The small group size supports depth, privacy, and individual attention, so each person can stay connected to their own process. Choice and responsiveness guide how the week unfolds, with a clear, supportive structure in place that allows guests to relax into the experience and be fully held.
Why No Group Sharing
This retreat is designed to be discreet and private.
Personal work is held individually, with space for one-to-one therapeutic attention where experiences can be explored with care, attunement, and appropriate pacing. This allows each person’s process to unfold in a way that feels contained and respectful.
Within the group, there is no expectation to share personal history or speak about private experiences. Shared time is used for learning, orientation, reflection, and being together, without pressure to disclose or explain yourself.
By honouring privacy and individual boundaries, the retreat creates an environment where people can remain connected to themselves and to others, while allowing the work to stay focused, thoughtful, and well held throughout the week.
The Therapeutic Team
The team works in close collaboration throughout the week, supporting a steady rhythm and attentive care as the retreat unfolds.
“This is a place where you are supported with kindness and care, and free to focus on yourself.”
— Tess Hunneybell
Clinical Experience
This retreat is curated and held by Tess Hunneybell, a British psychotherapist known for her calm, attentive, and deeply humane way of working.
With over two decades of professional experience, her approach draws on contemporary psychological understanding and body-based practice, and is shaped by years of holding women in immersive retreat settings. The work is focused, relational, and precise — allowing significant shifts to take place within the week, without forcing or compressing the process.
The retreat is held with care, discretion, and depth, creating the conditions for real change to occur while guests are here.
For those who wish, optional online sessions are available before or after the retreat, offering space to prepare or continue integrating what has already taken place.
Booking Direct
Guests who book their retreat directly through this website receive a VIP Pass to Triponzo Thermal Spa as a gift.
Triponzo is a luxury thermal spa nestled in the Umbrian countryside, known for its natural sulphur pools, calm architecture, and restorative atmosphere. The pass allows for a 1/2 day of rest and soaking, during the retreat week.
This is offered as a simple gesture of appreciation for booking directly, and as an extension of the retreat’s emphasis on restoration and integration.
An Invitation
If something here feels like it’s speaking to you, you’re welcome to get in touch.
We can have a short, relaxed conversation — a chance to ask questions, hear a little more about the retreat, and sense whether it feels right for you. There’s no pressure to decide anything. Just a conversation, when the timing feels right.
With care,
Tess
Press & Recognition
Tess Hunneybell and the retreat’s approach have been featured in Condé Nast Traveller and other leading publications, in the context of trauma-informed, place-based healing for women.
The coverage reflects recognition of the work’s clinical grounding, small-group structure, and emphasis on safety, containment, and depth.
