Hello beautiful people supporting beautiful things.

Our names are Catarina (left) and Shelea (right), and firstly we would like to say thank you for clicking on our project!

We are 2 passionate women, who in the last 8 months have invested ourselves whole-heartedly into our dream of creating a wellness retreat within the rainforest in the Byron Bay Hinterlands.

Myself as a Naturopath and Catarina as a psychologist believe that optimal health of the body and mind is absolutely essential in order to thrive in life, and we want to do what we can, and provide what we can, to support people with this.

The word Nahele itself means forest. The land here is truly sacred, our guests feel safe and held by he encompassing mountains, which holds space against the worlds intensity. They feel cleansed, clear and a deep sense of peace with the fresh running creek waters that wrap around the property.

The land itself is deeply healing, but within it we have also invited some of the best healers we know, who like the land help guide our guests back to into a state of alignment, so that they can carry forward feeling balanced, peaceful and powerful.

At the beginning of this year Catarina and I (Shelea) began our journey of creating this space.

We saw an incredible villa in the heart of the rainforest advertised for rent and we jumped and made the call.

The next day we found ourselves drinking organic wine with the owner talking about our dreams of converting the villa into a healing retreat, and to our delight the owner told us that was always his dream for the house and the land but after their 3rd child they simply didn’t have the time.

We were thrilled when the following morning after this conversation he agreed to our proposal of halving the rent for 6 months whilst we created magic.

So we hit the ground running, sprinting in fact, we had 6 months to get the Villa to feel like a retreat.

Our wonderful eccentric owner had rooms painted purple, pink, bright orange and blue. One room was entirely black, including the roof as it was a cinema room. We had to remove everything and paint the entire house. My father who is a painter came to help.

We came from a 2 bedroom house and had not nearly enough furniture to create a retreat and our finances where limited so we became very resourceful.

I cant tell you the amount of time’s that we hired a van and drove around from 7am until 9pm collecting second hand furniture from all around. We collected ornaments, bed bases, decorations, rugs, art and so forth. I was so exhausted at one point I tipped an entire van into a gully not looking properly where I was going and had a farmer pull me out with a crane (quite a funny story in the end).

We really have put all ours hearts energy and emptied our pockets in the endeavour of creating a space that is warm, inviting, comfortable and that people feel drawn to, so that we can enable them to heal and empower themselves.

This is the result.

We knew when we saw the incredible mountain view, that  we wanted to create and outdoor bathing experience.

Since our launch date 2 months ago, we have run around 30 baths and every single guest is so deeply pleasured by the experience, it has been so joyous to watch people transform in a hour of being cleansed amongst the mountains, surrounded by nature’s healing gifts the wild flowers and the medicinal plants we immerse them in.

We wanted Sound Healing’s, Group meditation, Yoga and Qi Gong to become a part of our guests experience, and we needed a space to facilitate this. So in the 6 months of turning the villa into a retreat, we simultaneously converted the shed into a workshop space, and on top of that created a dream of ours, which was to have a treatment room with an indoor garden.

We learnt how to use drop saws, nail guns, we measured, framed, sheeted, roofed and even concreted. By far the most intense part of the journey was this build! Luckily my uncle is a builder and although he has a bad back he was there guiding us every step of the way, he is one very patient man.

This space stands as a symbol to us of what can be created if you have the heart and determination as well as the support.

So this is our creation, and this is our dream.

We are such passionate women with huge hearts, and we want to serve the people of the world who need it. Remind them again what it feels like to be connected to earth and to themselves.

2 months ago we launched our retreat and our website www.naheleretreat.com.au as well as some local promos. We started to gain momentum, the local promo was booked out and retreat bookings were coming.

Then COVID hit, naturally bookings where cancelled and this was ok, we would find a way to survive, BUT on top of that Catarina who was the bread winner as well as my support in creating this,  has very sadly due to COVID lost her job yesterday.

We have enough savings to see us through with rent for potentially 2 months (if we can budget tight), and then we will have to face the harsh reality, which is, we can’t afford to pay the rent with no income and no bookings with lockdown, and the little government support we are getting is not enough for our survival.

We are keeping our faith alive, and hoping if there is anyone out there with enough to share, and feels called to support us with providing love and care to the world, that we can reach them here.

Thank you for reading our story, if you would like to know more, and follow our journey we have nahele_retreat on Instagram and we have a Facebook profile under Nahele Retreat, we have the most beautiful testimonials from our guests sharing their experiences on these platforms.

We would love to know who you are, and connect with you also.

Lots of love,

Shelea and Catarina