My Experience attending an Intensive Therapy Retreat.

At the beginning of this year I attended an Intensive Therapy Retreat in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire.

I’d ended 2025 feeling very optimistic. Twelve months earlier I had finally had a root cause diagnosis that explained almost 25 years of health issues. I started treatment in January, and by the end of the year I felt I was finally getting my life back and was excited about the next chapter – a move back to the south coast, a restructure of my core sales course, and a vision for rebuilding a full, rich life.

I wasn’t feeling Myself

But when I came back to work at the start of the year, I just wasn’t feeling “myself” and I was aware of a lot of resistance to actually making those plans happen. It wasn’t so much that I was experiencing stress and anxiety, it was more the opposite.

I felt flat, listless, and wasn’t feeling excited about the year ahead like I normally am in January.
A particular red flag was that I felt reluctant to do marketing and visibility activity in my business, which of course is the lifeblood of any business.  I was also feeling overwhelmed by all the moving parts that go into running a complex business with a course, membership and private clients – not to mention managing my health protocol and home life.

But I’d juggled all of this perfectly well for the past 14 years (with varying levels of ease and success!).
So the fact that is suddenly all felt too much told me that something was “off”.

It dawned on me, that in slowing down for three weeks over Christmas, all of the many knocks and setbacks of the past 5 years – many of them health related, but also some other traumatic events and chronic stressors – had finally snuck up and hijacked me.

I made a decision to start therapy to explore what was getting in the way and start to shift it.

So when Lorraine offered me the chance to experience her one-to-one therapy retreat in exchange for writing an honest review, it felt like the right moment to finally stop putting it off, and I jumped the chance.

One-to-One Therapy in Hebden Bridge

I already knew Lorraine McReight, an experienced hypnotherapist and founder of the London Hypnotherapy Academy. I had met her many years before when I spoke at a business event, and she had been a client and member of my business membership since it launched 8 years ago. Over those years I had witnessed her retire from running her successful hypnotherapy school and rebuild her practice in West Yorkshire. I’d then followed her progress after she decided to turn her old home in Hebden Bridge into a space dedicated to running immersive solo retreats as a practical and effective solution for busy working mums, solopreneurs, and professionals whose life is too hectic or they’re too frazzled for weekly therapy.

I’d also done some work with her around her marketing of the retreats. Like me, Lorraine doesn’t enjoy using social media, so we spent time brainstorming creative ways to reach her ideal clients of time-poor professionals, people suffering from stress and anxiety, overwhelm and executive burnout, imposter syndrome, public speaking nerves, or other issues that might be holding them back from the life, career or business they really want.

I was inspired by what she was doing with her new retreats and interested in experiencing it. But it also appealed for other reasons:

I’d had therapy at various points in the previous few years, but I often found that because the therapy was taking place from my laptop on zoom, which is also where I run my entire business, it was too easy to sandwich therapy into a full busy day, without allowing time for reflection and processing.

I liked the idea of getting away completely for a few days to focus purely on myself and the therapy, away from the chores and responsibilities at home, and where it would be easier to benefit from quiet time in between therapy sessions.

As a naturally practical and results focused person I was drawn to Lorraine’s no-nonsense and results focused approach.  Another thing that appealed was having time to work on things over a more intensive time frame, rather than slower progress over a series of one-off sessions spread over several weeks.

The Intensive Therapy Retreat

The retreat location is a small but perfectly formed cottage in a very quiet part of Hebden Bridge and with views of nature out of every window. The property is decorated to a high quality, with a bath in the lovely bathroom a particular treat. It’s the perfect place for one person to retreat quietly and reflect.

The therapy itself was made up of an initial assessment session on the first day, followed by three therapy sessions of 2 hours each across two days, with space in between for quiet time, reflection and walks in nature.

Lorraine has over 30 years experience as a therapist, and is a non-judgemental listener who didn’t try to interpret or label my experiences through her own reality, which I’ve found is common with other therapists, and not always helpful.

Hypnotherapy & other Therapies

She mainly uses hypnotherapy plus blends in other therapeutic modalities, and we did some valuable parts work where we explored an internal conflict I had around moving house. While one part of me had made a decision to move, another part of me had something to say about that! It was helpful to explore these two viewpoints and understand that both parts wanted the best for me and they could work together instead of against each other.

Some people come to the retreat with one specific issue to focus on, which Lorraine is able to resolve in just one weekend. For others like me it can be a great intensive way to kick-start a process of ongoing therapy to explore deeper issues.

The time spent at the retreat has given me a clearer understanding of how the challenges of the past few years have impacted me, the things that are not working in my life, and of the changes that I need to address.

I would recommend an intensive therapy retreat to anyone with a specific issue that is holding them back from achieving what they want, or from living a full life. This might be stress and anxiety, imposter syndrome, fear of public speaking, phobias, or perhaps like me just feeling that something is “off” or that something needs to change and you want the space to look at it more deeply.

More about Therapy Retreats in Hebden Bridge

Find out more about Lorraine McReight and her Intensive Therapy Retreats in Hebden Bridge here:
https://lorrainemcreight.co.uk/retreats