Retreat in Sweden, seven days by lake Båven

You stay seven days and eight nights at Aspö kursgård, with meditation, silence, work in a group and a proper depth to what you look at in yourself. This is no spa weekend, but a week in which you do the work with yourself that everyday life never makes room for, and the course leaders who lead it have been doing so for a long time.

All the food is vegetarian and included. You hand in your phone for the week, and outside the course room it is quiet. The group is about twenty people. The course has been held in this form since 1985 and has been refined over all those years.

We call it a course, and yet the word retreat stands here on the page, because that is how people search and it is close enough. Perhaps that is the very word you typed in. The form is a retreat. You leave everyday life for a week, stay at a course centre in the countryside without a phone, eat together and share the silence. The content is a course, with a programme, with course leaders who have worked with this for a long time, and with things you can take home with you.

The difference from some other retreats is quite simply what you come for. You come here to work on yourself together with other people, and that is something other than a week of stillness on your own. There are three steps for anyone who wants to carry on, and many people take only Step 1 and take home what they need.

Whether you are looking for a meditation course, a silent retreat or a mindfulness week, with us it comes down to the same thing, meeting yourself.

And one more thing, for anyone who arrives here in a hard place. Being tired, on sick leave or close to burning out does not mean you should wait. It is a common way in, and the week is intensive but not set in stone: the leaders shape the work around how you are doing, and nothing is compulsory. If all you are looking for is rest, there is another kind of place for that. If you want to understand why the tiredness keeps coming back, this is the right one.

Step 1. The foundation, and the week everybody begins with. It suits you if you want to understand yourself better, if you want to get at a pattern that is not working, or if you have simply felt for a while that something needs to be different. You need no previous experience.

Step 2. A week in which you look at the family you grew up in and at how it still affects you as an adult, and in which you work with letting go and making peace.

Step 3. A week in two variants, where 3a is about adult relationships, closeness, boundaries and how the two of you talk to each other, and 3b about who you are beyond body, feelings and thoughts.

Aspö kursgård lies on the island of Aspö outside Stjärnhov, a nature reserve with forest around it and lake Båven outside. It is simple and quiet here, and close to nature.

You have your own room at the course centre, and we eat every meal together. The lake and the forest begin outside the door. Perhaps you are wondering how to get here, or what it is really like to stay a whole week on an island together with the rest of the group. Do ring us and ask.