My Story
I'm Sara – and I'm the person who makes sure your retreat dream doesn't quietly become your biggest liability.
Travel Counsellor. Yoga and Pilates devotee. The one who shoulders the admin so you can hold the space.
The Moment it Clicked
A few years ago, my own yoga teacher – someone who'd been teaching for 25 years, trusted and loved by her whole community – asked me for help. She was putting together a retreat to India for her students, and it had got complicated fast. Flights, accommodation, logistics, all tangled together. So I got stuck in.
And that's when I found something that really shocked me.
Under the UK's Package Travel Regulations, the moment she took a deposit from a student, she could become personally, legally responsible for that entire trip – financially and legally – in much the same way a big travel company would be. And here's the bit that catches almost everyone out: that can be true even if she wasn't booking the flights, just the accommodation and activities bundled together. Nobody had told her. Nobody tells any of them. I work in travel, so I know how seriously we take this stuff – the fines for getting it wrong are enormous. And here was one of the most trusted, capable people I know, completely exposed, with absolutely no idea.
The Real Experience
Not long after, I was a guest on a hosted retreat trip to Sri Lanka. I watched our guide hold the whole thing together for two weeks – logistics, moods, expectations, the odd crisis – and by the end, she was running on empty. I remember thinking: nobody talks about this bit. Hosting a retreat isn't just an itinerary, it's an enormous act of emotional labour. You're giving your students or clients a transformation, and that takes everything you've got. Somebody should be carrying the practical weight so you don't have to carry all of it alone.
Then I started talking to more retreat hosts. And the stories kept coming: wellness professionals stranded abroad when conflict broke out in the Middle East, paying thousands out of their own pocket to get their guests home. Retreat centres collapsing, leaving hosts to personally refund guests because there was no financial protection in place. Good, caring people, blindsided by things nobody had warned them about.
I knew then this wasn't a one-off. It was a gap – a real one, and nobody was filling it.
This Isn’t Just Business To Me
I'm not coming at this as an outsider looking in. I love yoga, Pilates, meditation, the whole world of it – properly love it, not just professionally. In my mid-40s, post-kids, thoroughly perimenopausal and back on my own journey of reconnecting with myself, wellness isn't a market to me. It's mine too.
So when I say I want your retreat to be extraordinary and safe, I mean it in the most personal way possible.
I'm not a yoga teacher, a coach, or a Pilates instructor. I don't know how you create transformation in a room – that's entirely your gift, and it's not mine to claim.
What I do know, inside and out, is everything around it. I handle guest enquiries, accommodation, flights, itineraries, transfers, food, the on-the-ground experiences – all the background architecture that makes a retreat feel effortless for you and unforgettable for your guests. Think of it as a partnership: you hold the space and the transformation, I hold the logistics and the legal safety net underneath it. Backed by Travel Counsellors' regulatory and financial infrastructure, everything is done properly – client money protected, contracts sound, nothing left to chance.
What I Actually Do and What I Don’t
Where I Want This To Go
Here's my honest hope for The Earthed Retreat Co: a wellness community that isn't competitive or guarded, where hosts genuinely care about their guests' experience and about protecting the reputation of this whole industry – because right now, one bad story can damage trust for everyone. I want to be part of building something better than that. Steadier. Safer. Still completely magical for the people on the trip.
What happens when we work together?
I take the parts of running a retreat that nobody dreams about – the legal and financial admin, the dotting of every i and crossing of every t – and I carry that for you.
I work with trusted local offices all over the world to source retreat venues that fit your vision. Already got a venue in mind? Even better – I can onboard that specific centre and liaise with them to bring your vision to life.
On the guest side, I liaise directly with your clients so they don't have to think about flights, transfers, or logistics unless they want to. It's entirely optional – some guests love organising their own bits, others would rather hand it all to me.
Here's why that matters: when guests book the full package through me, they're properly protected under the regulations that govern trips like this. If flights get cancelled, a venue falls through, or anything else goes sideways, I'm the one sorting it – getting people home safely, without them footing an unexpected bill. That's not a nice extra. That's the whole point.
