The Retreat
High performance is not the same as high functioning. The two are easy to confuse — until the body or the mind calls time on the difference. Kilkenny is built for that moment.
Seven days in one of Ireland’s most historically rich and quietly beautiful cities. The programme is structured, purposeful, and unhurried — designed for people who have spent years being excellent at managing everything except themselves. The work here is not soft. It asks hard questions. It requires honest answers. And it produces something most Kilkenny participants describe the same way: clarity.
Whether you arrive in recovery, in burnout, or in the aftermath of something that changed the shape of your life, the programme meets you at the point you are actually at — not the point you think you should be at.
Who This Retreat Is For
Kilkenny is the natural home for executives and professionals who are functioning at a high level and running on borrowed energy — and who know the bill is coming. It is equally suited to adults in recovery who want a programme that matches their pace, their intelligence, and the specific complexity of their life.
It is also the programme we recommend to individuals in the aftermath of something significant: bereavement, breakdown, a relationship ending, a career collapsing. Kilkenny is well suited to HR and occupational health referral pathways, and to organisations looking to support high-performing individuals before crisis becomes collapse.
The Pelagus Method
Performance and
Wellbeing
Structured physical activity — yoga, strength sessions, cold water immersion, and walking — calibrated to each participant’s current state rather than an aspirational ideal. Movement is used as a regulatory tool, not a performance metric. Rest is modelled and practised deliberately throughout the programme.
Performance and
Wellbeing
Therapeutic Depth
Evidence-based individual and group therapeutic work facilitated by senior clinicians who understand high-functioning individuals — and the particular way that high achievers avoid the things they most need to address. CBT and ACT approaches run alongside an evening lecture series on the science of recovery, resilience, and sustainable performance.
Therapeutic Depth
Life Redesign Mapping
The Kilkenny programme produces a Strategic Life Map: part recovery plan, part performance architecture, part personal manifesto. It is built across the seven days through a series of structured workshops covering current reality assessment, pattern identification, relationship and support mapping, and a concrete 90-day plan. The group witnesses and holds each other’s commitments before departure.
Life Redesign Mapping
Sample Guest Itinerary
Final scheduling and activity sequencing confirmed prior to your arrival.
Day 1: Arrival and Grounding
INDIVIDUAL INTAKE
We start where you actually are. Not where you think you should be.
GUIDED WALK — KILKENNY CITY
The first shared hour. The tone is set.
OPENING CIRCLE
Group agreements. Personal intentions. The container is built.
Day 2: Awareness
MORNING YOGA AND BREATHWORK
Regulate before the real work begins
THERAPEUTIC SESSION
Name the cost of high performance. Honestly.
STRATEGIC LIFE MAPPING — SESSION 1
Where are you, really? Across every domain.
Day 3: Patterns
MORNING WALK
Unscheduled thinking time. Many haven't had this in years.
SOMATIC THERAPY
What's driving you. What's useful. What's become destructive.
LIFE REDESIGN — SESSION 1
The science of recovery, resilience, and sustainable performance.
Day 4: Desire
Equine Therapy
Explore relational patterns and boundaries.
Attachment Workshop
Healing interpersonal wounds.
Solo Reflection Hike
Journaling on relationships and identity.
Evening Fire Circle
Symbolic release and storytelling.
Day 5: Release
COLD WATER IMMERSION
Work with your stress response. Not against it.
THERAPEUTIC SESSION
Grief and the things that don't get processed at speed.
STRATEGIC LIFE MAPPING — SESSION 3
Who holds you accountable. What conversations need to happen.
Day 6: Integration
MORNING YOGA AND JOURNALLING
Synthesise the week. Through the body and on the page.
STRATEGIC LIFE MAPPING — SESSION 4
Your 90-day plan. Specific. Time-bound. Real.
FINAL COMMUNAL DINNER
You share your plan. The group witnesses it.
Day 7: Voice
SILENT BREAKFAST & CLOSING YOGA
Unhurried. The transition back deserves its own moment.
CLOSING CEREMONY
Your Strategic Life Map shared. Your journey acknowledged.
DEPARTURE
The clarity you found here is yours to keep.
Every Pelagus retreat begins with a conversation.
We take the time to understand where you are and what you need, and to be honest with you about whether this programme is the right fit right now. The first step costs nothing except a willingness to reach out.
Upon Booking, Guests Receive
- A Pelagus welcome pack- journal, compass pendant, herbal teas, and a personalised programme outline structured around the seven days and the specific work ahead.
- A pre-arrival call with their assigned therapist and recovery coach — a substantive conversation about where they are starting from, what they want to resolve, and how the programme will be calibrated to them.
- Access to the Pelagus Compass App for pre-retreat reflections and preparation.
- Kilkenny participants are also provided with pre-reading on the therapeutic frameworks used across the week, for those who want to arrive informed.
Where You Will Stay
Deerstone’s accommodation sits within the retreat grounds- intimate, warm, and set apart from the pace of ordinary life. Private and shared room options are available and allocated with care. The communal kitchen and dining space are woven into the daily rhythm: meals are shared, unhurried, and nourishing. Woodland paths, gardens, and quiet outdoor seating areas are accessible throughout the ten days. Groups are capped at 10 women. The size of the cohort is not a limitation- it is the point.
Apply Now
Places at Deerstone are limited to 10 women per cohort. Applications are reviewed individually. If something on this page has spoken to you, that is worth paying attention to.
Want to talk it through first? Book a call with Colin.
GUEST EXPERIENCE