I’m a tough crowd when it comes to retreats. I’ve been on ayurvedic detoxes in the Himalayas, passed a week in silence at an ashram and spent time in a Buddhist monastery in Taiwan. In a commercial age obsessed with longevity, I am pretty sceptical when it comes to western versions. The worst seem to fall into two camps: the first, cultish — as single-minded and self-serious as a TikTok reel selling the one-and-only plant-based panacea for life extension. The second, charlatans — hotels that bill themselves as wellness retreats just by adding a “life coach” and the odd yoga class into the mix.
So my eyebrows are raised when my world-weary body is sent to Ibiza to experience Elevate, a five-day retreat set up by the 35-year-old former-barrister and tech founder Natalie Connor. It claims “to nourish both body and mind through a combination of transformational practices facilitated by some of the world’s leading experts”.
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As it turns out, Natalie and her team share my reservations about both retreats and the wellness industry in general. In fact, it is from their shared bugbears that Elevate was born in 2023. They now hold two flagship retreats a year in northern Ibiza at a five-bedroom whitewashed finca with private casita, buffered by sea pines and soothingly decorated with textile wall hangings and tactile mohair blankets. My ten fellow female guests in their thirties, forties and early fifties include tech founders, a yoga teacher, a divorce lawyer and a former crime scene investigator.
Five are returning guests, two are retreat virgins. Some have reached an impasse in their lives (although they don’t all know it yet). Others are simply looking for a reset. All are expecting more than just yoga and pool time. “This isn’t a week to escape your life. Nor is it a boot camp,” stresses Natalie, a formidable, straight-talking sandy blonde with a nose ring, who still consults for a tech company and co-curates TED x Ibiza. “It’s inner work.”
The Retreat is held in a five-bedroom whitewashed finca with private casitaSofia Gomez Fonzo
Communal meals at the long outdoor table are an integral part of the energy buildingSofia Gomez Fonzo
It’s clear that Natalie relates to her guests. (It’s hard to doubt her sincerity. She runs Elevate on a not-for-profit basis.) A serial sufferer from burnout and autoimmune-related illness, in her early thirties she embarked on one retreat after another as part of her own wellness journey, but was profoundly disillusioned. “The toxicity of the wellness industry is that we are told that one way of being is the right way,” she tells me. “I was forced to eat the same plant-based diet. Offered either only yoga or a boot camp where bodies were hammered. There was no tailoring to the individual. Overall there was a real lack of quality practitioners.”
And so, being “a type Alpha”, she put together her own crack wellness team of specialists in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and the lymphatic system (both of which she trained in), functional medicine, breathwork and functional movement. “It took me years to find them and they all genuinely changed my life,” she says. With them, she launched her tried-and-tested, somewhat less prescriptive wellness blueprint: a holistic retreat at the intersection of science, wellness and spirituality, tailored to the individual, with “hacks” offered to take back to daily lives. “The magic is in the breadth of experience,” she says.
Scott Berry giving a one-on-one training sessionYentl Van Doorn
Leo Oppenheim leading a yoga workshopYentl Van Doorn
There is magic in the air: most obviously in the form of Leo Oppenheim, the former head of yoga and wellness at London’s Blok studios, a charismatic and knowledgeable breathwork, yoga and sound practitioner who trained under Sri Dharma Mittra in New York. Despite sporting beads and a man bun, he does everything to playfully subvert his own image and any notion of himself as a po-faced “guru”. With his Mancunian banter, self-confessed “labrador energy” and a tutu-wearing female alter ego who comes out for fancy-dress aqua aerobics, he’s certainly a far cry from the stereotype. But his ideas — “I strongly believe that no one needs fixing” — and his sessions are serious and powerful.
On our first evening — with us wearing pyjamas, rolled up in blankets — he conducts a sweeping, orchestral sound mediation downregulating our nervous systems with box breathing (“adopted by Navy Seals to come off fight or flight”), a semicircle of esoteric instruments (Ukrainian harp, shamanic drum), and excerpts from classical compositions and soundtracks. Chimes seem to fly like tinker bells around the room. We float in some altered state into bed. Leo will be a constant, benevolent, sprite-like presence throughout the week, talking about everything from Chitta Vritti (our mind’s monkey-like chatter) to somatics: bodywork that treats trauma.
The finca is soothingly decorated, with views over the pinesSofia Gomez Fonzo
Scott Berry, 42, a no-nonsense functional movement specialist with a penchant for Ibiza club tracks, is the yang to Leo’s yin. A former master trainer at Virgin Active, he was headhunted by the manager Emma Hayes to train the Chelsea Women’s football team where he stayed until 2024. Skilled in female biomechanics, he trained players according to their menstrual cycles, and diagnosed and prevented injuries. At Elevate, in addition to group activities, Berry gives one-on-one sessions. He assesses me via a series of assisted stretches and lunges, identifying a weak gluteus medius, a lack of extension of my thoracic spine, and a propensity for kyphotic posture (standing with a hunch). He prescribes a 20-minute daily workout and tells me I will notice a difference in a month (I do). “We need to futureproof our bodies,” he stresses.
Also in the science camp is the Ibiza-based Naomi Teal, a former jewellery designer and model, who retrained as a nutritionist after she was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. She now travels as a longevity coach with wealthy clients. She leads a workshop full of hacks: on preventing blood sugar level spikes (eating fibre before protein, then carbs); combating age-related muscle loss; eating for the menstrual cycle. In addition, Natalie shares more hacks on the lymphatic system, the immune system’s highway, teaching us a patting sequence that stimulates lymph nodes.
All this coexists with a series of more existential “shifts” that happen to us all over the next few days, after sessions with Leo and Polly Alexandre, a British Ibiza-based healer, master coach and mentor to creatives and entrepreneurs. Alexandre uses “a blend of intuitive energy work, coaching and subconscious rewiring to release deep-rooted patterns and activate transformation”. She leads us in guided meditations using theta healing — theta brainwaves, which are conjured during deep relaxation, light sleep, daydreaming and meditative states, and are said to act as a bridge between the conscious and subconscious. Sessions using visualisation focus on calling more abundance into our lives and honing intuitive feminine energy to foster creativity. A one-on-one with her, designed to identify and change my limiting core beliefs, is so accurate it leaves me in tears. Meanwhile, Leo challenges more limitations by leading me into my first ice bath (I have a cat-like fear of cold water). He prepares us with a session of Conscious Connected Breathwork (CCB), a continuous breathing technique, after which I walk into iced water without hesitation.
By the end of the retreat all of the guests have experienced an epiphany of some kindSofia Gomez Fonzo
Retreat guests become emotionally invested in each other’s journeysYentl Van Doorn
These “shifts” are given time and space to develop during guided hikes along the wild northern coast and clifftop yin yoga as the sun cracks its yolk on the horizon. Our bodies are nourished by bountiful meals cooked by the private chef David Beynon of Feasting Balearics, who delivers restaurant-standard Mexican breakfasts, and Middle Eastern and Thai dinners packed with seasonal superfoods (and fish and meat for those who want it). Meals at a long outdoor table ground us, creating a sense of abundance. They become the most important sessions of the day. “Everything happens in the moments in between,” Leo confides. As we all bond, discussing everything from the perimenopause to impostor syndrome, a strong collective energy burgeons between us.
By the end of the week, each of us has had an epiphany. Like popcorn in a warm pan, we all go off at different times. Our realisations range from: “It’s OK to be vulnerable” and “I need space” to “I don’t need to quit my job, I can just do two minutes of breathwork a day”. Witnesses to each other’s progress, we become emotionally invested in one another. No more so than at the final “heart-opening” cacao ceremony conducted by Leo in which we all sit in a circle. It leaves me with dreams of astral flying and a profound euphoria. Whether it’s the theobromine in the cacao or the collective energy, it lasts for days. The benefits of the retreat are still ongoing.
The next Elevate retreats are from May 9-14 and October 3-8, 2026. From £3,250pp for a single room, howeelevate.com
