http://www.tewhenuaretreat.co.nz/

Te Whenua Retreat, 2277 Gibbston Highway, Gibbston (2025)

07/08/2025

Having a post lunch cuppa, I thought I would share a little about one of my favourite teas - Honeybush.

We don’t see this widely enough in NZ sadly, but this South African red tea, not to be confused with Rooibos, is so worth seeking out. (I’ve just ordered some from the wonderful 💫)

Honeybush has a sweet, mild honey flavour but has a tang that is very unlike the more woody / earthy rooibos. It’s delicious on its own - I like it ‘black’ (or should I say red!) but it also lends itself beautifully to blends.

In winter I add spices like cinnamon, ginger, cardamom to a pot with a tbsp of honeybush…

And in summer it’s gorgeous with flavours like rose / rosehips, lemongrass and lavender.

One of my favourite spring brews - not long to go! - is honeybush, nettle, mint and cacao husk 🤩

Besides its deliciousness, honeybush tea has therapeutic benefits too. This mineral rich and caffeine free tea can help treat coughs (it has the same active ingredient that’s in many cough syrups), and can also ease constipation and water retention.

Most interestingly, it also contains phytoestrogens (plant oestrogens) which may help ease menopausal symptoms.

I’m a huge fan of tea as many of you know, and I’ve slowly built up my tea box of many different herbs over time, but Honeybush is a perennial favourite. If you’ve not tried it before, I can highly recommend ordering some online!

Any South Africans reading this that can enlighten me with other ways you enjoy it or use it as traditional medicine - I’d love to know more!

🫖🧡🫖

29/07/2025

Looking for ways to feel more grounded? Connected? Centred?

This Friday (1st Aug) we have our monthly Quiet Day of Meditation & Rest. Meditation isn’t only about sitting still and being mindful - there are so many ways to invite connection, awareness and restoration.

Join this day and feel free to explore the many branches of coming home to yourself! Move through the day as the energy moves in you…

We hold the day in peaceful silence, cook you a nourishing lunch and ply you with restorative teas.

Everybody welcome! 🧡🏡

Book via our website (link in bio and stories) or simply send me a DM.

20/07/2025

Winter Pear Tonic, aka a kind of ‘mulled pear’

Servings: 6 mugs

Ingredients:
1 litre pear (or apple) juice
500ml water
3 cinnamon sticks
½ tsp black peppercorns
1 tbsp grated ginger
3 tbsp applecider vinegar
1 tsp cloves
2 tbsp honey, raw & local if available

Directions:
Add all the ingredients except the honey) to a saucepan. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat to low and simmer for 10 mins.
Turn off the heat, stir in the honey, rest 5 mins then serve hot.
Keep leftovers (!!) in the fridge for 5 days.

Hope everyone’s doing well!

🏡🧡🌟🔥

11/07/2025

We have just finished a 3-night ‘Nourished Retreat’. I probably don’t promote these 3-night cooking retreats as much as I should, but truth is that they seem to book up with my needing to hustle.

I think they appeal to our need to come back to the simple things, beautiful things, to the things that truly nourish us. To connect us back to the seasons and to the earth - and that may start with the food but quickly opens a doorway to so much more.

On this retreat, like so many before, a couple have come to share the experience together. This has happened more times than I can count - couples, sisters, mums and daughters, close friends - and it doesn’t surprise me. Living together on retreat and cooking and sharing meals, deepens bonds, invites us to notice the ways we care for each other and ourselves, and reorientates us to what really matters in our lives.

On this retreat, the couple have come all the way from New York! It’s been wonderful to learn about each other’s lives, and also to realise how much we have in common. While we prepare our meals, conversation flows from recipes and techniques to our childhoods, our mothers and grandmothers, the foods we grew up with and the challenges and struggles we’ve (and our ancestors) have faced and overcome.

We cook up bread and cookies, a plethora of dishes for our shared meals (today was an Indian theme, with recipes of dishes they ate on a recent trip to India). In the afternoons we read, or nap, or take a walk, and reflect on the kind of future we want to create. In the evening we sit by the fire, chat, or rest, and integrate some of the insights that have arisen during the day.

These retreats are of course for everyone, but I’m reminded how much they support two or more people who are inspired to grow together in the most caring, supportive and truly nourishing ways. It’s been such a joy!

Our next Nourished Retreat is 8-11th Oct - who would you like to bring?

🏡🧡

05/07/2025

The thought has occurred to me, that so many of the problems in the world right now seem to involve, at a high level, just a handful of men - in the US, in Russia, in Israel for example. And for sure, others are also culpable / it’s not black and white / there’s problems closer to home too / it’s complicated, and so on…. But the harmful actions and fear-inducing threats of three men out of a global population of 8.2 billion, for sure hog the headlines.

Listening to the news, it’s easy to forget that on the other side of the headlines there are billions of us making real effort to make things better, tending our inner field so that we are aligned with the future we seek. And also, billions more just not making things more difficult!

My thought is not about the good vs evil, it’s about the media we consume and where we put our attention. How headlines worm their way into our consciousness, breeding fear, division, hopelessness and judgement. And so much anger and polarisation about the anger and the polarisation.

I feel a revolution is coming, some say it’s already here. It’s looking like boots on the ground. And, it’s looking like enough people turning away from the fear and hate, the truly harrowing and constant ‘breaking’ news, and spending moments each day calling in deep peace and inclusion. Actually making moment by moment intention to generate kindness, peace and non-judgement.

Because life is like a mirror - and not just a passive reflection, but a mirror that listens.

The world has always been a subtle partner in the unfolding. It’s known in quantum physics, in Jungian psychology and throughout indigenous and animist cultures; the world is listening. To our intentions, our presence, our readiness. It’s doesn’t require 8.2 billion enlightened saints - just enough of us who’ve stopped complaining and started building.

We don’t fight the old system. We create a new system so beautiful and aligned with life that it becomes irresistible and the old one becomes irrelevant.

The world isn’t ending. A world is ending. Our job is to midwife the next one.

🏡🧡

03/07/2025

You are warmly invited to dinner! Our 3rd Supper Club is on Tues July 15th, from 6.30am to 9pm.

Perhaps you haven’t been to Te Whenua before and are curious to come and visit.

Maybe you would like to meet others in the community.

Maybe you would like someone else to cook an inspiring dinner?!

💫 Book a place at our Supper Club!

In the much-loved tradition of supper clubs, this is an informal & intimate dinner with like-minded people, great food and inspiring conversations.

Our special guest this time is Chenin Madden (of ). Chenin is an inspirational wellbeing coach and author, and brings a wealth of knowledge - but it’s her warm presence and intuitive insights that make every meeting a joyful experience.

And yet - the real magic ingredient of the supper clubs is YOU!

Book your space at the table via our website (link in bio and today’s stories) or simply DM to find out more.

🏡☃️☀️

30/06/2025

✨10 things I wish I had done differently✨

Don’t we all wish we had these kinds of nuggets of hard-won wisdom up front.

This weekend, as I was thinking back about dark times in my life where I felt lost, confused, out of my depth, hurt and alone (and there are many to chose from) it became clear that life doesn’t work like that.

Even if back then someone had provided precise and detailed answers for me, and placed them into my hands (font size 200), it would have made no significant difference.

In those moments I didn’t need advice, strategies, personal re-brands or more podcasts.

I know now that what helps most is peace, rest and a safe space. I need to be patient and kind to myself, and if there are kind and patient people to offer me the same then I’m in exactly the right place. And it’s not a place of darkness or stagnation, not really, although it might feel like it.

Gifting ourselves a sacred pause to rest in the not-knowing, opening to grace, is such a crucial step. Because when the answers come from within our hearts - call it intuition, inner guidance, revelation or sixth sense - it illuminates the way forward in ways ideas and concepts from outside of us just can’t. So, the only thing I can tell my younger self is to not be so troubled by the dark, even though younger me perhaps wouldn’t believe it. Now I bless the darkness.

A disciple asks the rabbi: ‘Why does Torah tell us to “place these words upon your hearts”? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?’ The rabbi answers: ‘It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in.’

On Sunday I got up pre-dawn to prepare things for the day’s retreat. It was so dark! But also so beautiful, quiet, peaceful, a kind of soft, pre-dawn luminosity. It brought about this reflection, on how essential the dark is. And how moving softly and gently through it is so mystically empowering as I begin to see how to solve my own riddles.

I absolutely believe this is true for everyone 😊💫

19/06/2025

Solstice & Matariki greetings friends! I like to think of us all sitting around a fire today, exchanging stories, laughter, listening to each other’s dreams and aspirations for the year ahead. This solstice is a potent one - let’s dream big!

Here’s three wishes of mine, but perhaps they’re for all of us. Plus! the recipe for this winter solstice tea:

REST: inner depletion clouds our perceptions as well as diminishing our physical abilities. Life can be exhausting - it is literally impossible to keep up, we were given a fools errand. Our nervous system needs deep, peaceful, rest… we don’t heal by absorbing more ideas and concepts through yet more courses and podcasts. Simple, deep rest - disengage the polarised mind. Rest in the heart, a generator of harmony, coherence and clarity.

BELONGING: That feeling of being an outsider is something I am very familiar with. It’s been easy to blame my parents and the culture I was raised in, but it’s been my unconscious choice to keep that perception running in my system long after I left those environments. On a subtle level, there have also been parts of myself that I didn’t accept - how can I belong anywhere, with anyone, when there are parts of me that I’ve rejected and exiled? Radical inclusion brings us home. It starts inside. It can start today.

A PROJECT: ‘what?’ I hear you say?! Yep, the heart loves a project! It’s bringing curiosity, it’s bringing passion, it’s bringing energy and devotion… Throw yourself into pretty much anything wholeheartedly, and MUCH joy and MUCH adventure will follow.

Mind empty, heart on fire.

🤎💛🧡🔥🧡💛🤎

Here’s my brew of the season:

Winter Solstice Tea: earthy, green, fruity and a little spicy:

Warm your favourite tea pot, and add:
1 heaped tsp rooibos loose tea (or any tea leaf of your choice)
1 long sprig fresh rosemary
4 whole cloves
1 tsp dried rosehips
1/2 tsp reishi or chaga mushroom powder (optional)

Top with freshly boiled water and let steep for 5 mins. Sip in peace, perhaps as you reflect and journal over Matariki.

🧡✨

14/06/2025

I’m so glad the tide is turning against the last decade of austere wellbeing practises (some of which I went through phases of advocating too 🙈for a while!)

Forget the trackers, the allure of perfection, the 5am discipline, the fasting… dance, eat that sticky toffee pudding, and laugh with friends util you forget what you were even laughing at. It’s what these times are calling for. 💫💓

11/06/2025

This is stunning cookbook, ‘Plant To Plate’, and although I’m very late to the party (the book’s been out for 18 months) I’ve just got my own copy.

Wow, truly, this is such a gorgeous book. I feel quite emotional thumbing through it - seeing more than 50 of the recipes that I created for Aro Hā during my 3.5 years as Head Chef there, created, styled and beautifully photographed with such skill.

I haven’t revisited these recipes for nearly 5 years, so it’s like seeing old friends again. Thank you Aro Hā for creating a cookbook that has ended up way beyond what I envisaged it would be, and for including so many of my recipes and ideas (re-reading my own soup combination ideas and my five element salad concept today is like being inspired by my 2019 self).

I’m very grateful for my time working at Aro Hā, to the kitchen team, and to have this book as an exceptional remembrance of those years. A LOT of work clearly went into bringing this book to life - you’ve done a remarkable job 😊🙏💗

03/06/2025

I met a friend this morning for a cuppa, then we took our dogs for a walk. I asked her if she was working again, post surgery, and then she asked me how my work was going at Te Whenua. I spent yesterday gardening, I told her, and it didn’t much feel like work! 🌿

We started to explore what ‘work’ means, really.

In this short life, as humans on planet earth, what is our most important work?

I know there are countless people who feel the same, and I see you. Healing multi-generational trauma, rewilding our eco-systems, taking up sustainability practises with passion, forgiving ourselves and others.

I see you - saying mantras & prayers before your zoom calls, setting silent intentions before engaging with community disputes, carrying talismans in your bag, asking for divine guidance with your forehead to the earth, ending your day with reverence and gratitude rather than scrolling.

And still, when people ask us what we do, we say “I work in marketing”.

Here’s to everyone doing the real work, silently and beautifully and indispensably. I see you. Thank you. 🌟

Te Whenua Retreat

07/08/2025

29/07/2025

20/07/2025

11/07/2025

05/07/2025

03/07/2025

30/06/2025

19/06/2025

14/06/2025

11/06/2025

03/06/2025

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