Retreats

Meet the Team

Accommodation

Food

The Art of Unwinding
Meet the Team

Every person who joins The Art of Unwinding Retreats is placing real trust in the experience and Aoife takes that trust seriously. Over many years working at the heart of the retreat industry, she has come to understand that the quality of a retreat is only ever as good as the people who hold it. With this in mind, she has carefully and deliberately gathered a team of therapists, teachers, facilitators, and culinary creators who share not only her professional standards, but a genuine commitment to care.

Each member of the team has been chosen not just for their expertise, but for the quality of their attention. These are people who bring their whole selves to their work, and who understand that healing happens in the spaces between the sessions as much as within them, and who know how to hold space with both skill and warmth. Together, they create the conditions in which real unwinding can happen.

Movement & Fitness

Emma Stephenson is a Level 3 Qualified Personal Trainer from the UK with over 10 years of experience helping people discover that movement can be both effective and genuinely enjoyable.

Known for her warmth and infectious enthusiasm, Emma creates sessions that are uplifting and accessible. Her guests leave feeling stronger, more capable, and proud of themselves. Whether working with complete beginners or seasoned exercisers, Emma shapes each session around individual abilities, goals, and any physical considerations, ensuring nobody feels out of their depth.

A particular passion of Emma's is teaching correct form and technique, especially when it comes to working with weights, helping guests build strength safely and confidently. Her encouraging style means that even the most reluctant mover tends to leave with a smile.

Samantha Fife is a Level 3 qualified Personal Trainer with over 10 years of experience and a genuine passion for helping people discover just how strong, capable, and confident they can become.

What sets Samantha apart is the warmth and attentiveness she brings to the moments that matter most. When someone walks into a class feeling intimidated or unsure of themselves, she has a natural gift for putting them at ease and reassuring them that everyone starts somewhere, encouraging each person to work at their own pace, and building an environment where confidence and enjoyment grow alongside physical strength. For Samantha, the process is just as important as the results: she wants guests to enjoy the journey, not simply endure it.

Her expertise spans strength and conditioning, weight management, and muscle development, and she works with people at every level of fitness, tailoring sessions to individual goals, physical considerations, and personal starting points. The result is something that feels less like a workout and more like a turning point.

Kerry Herbert is a physiotherapist with over 22 years of specialist experience spanning musculoskeletal, orthopaedic, and sports physiotherapy. Originally qualifying through the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, she also holds a postgraduate qualification in Sports Physiotherapy and has continued building on her clinical knowledge throughout her career.

Kerry is also a qualified Clinical Pilates Instructor, trained through the Australian Physiotherapy and Pilates Institute (APPI). For the past nine years she has helped clients rebuild strength, restore mobility, improve posture, and move through the world with greater ease and confidence. She works to bridge the space between clinical rehabilitation and the kind of mindful, embodied movement that keeps people thriving long after treatment ends.

Her precision, warmth, and genuine investment in each person's progress make her an invaluable presence within the retreat team.

Breathwork & Sound

Originally from the Netherlands, Annika and Dennis now make their home in Central Portugal with their daughter, Ava-Lavie. Their path into breathwork came through lived experience — the profound shifts that conscious connected breathing brought to their own lives became the spark that inspired them to share this practice with others.

Through guided breathwork and supportive bodywork techniques, they help participants shed accumulated stress, tension, and stored emotion, creating space for genuine relaxation, self-discovery, and emotional release. Their sessions are held with great attentiveness and care — unhurried, responsive, and sensitive to wherever each person finds themselves in that moment.

With warmth, compassion, and hard-won experience, Annika and Dennis guide guests towards greater clarity, a quieter nervous system, and a renewed sense of aliveness through the simple, profound power of the breath.

Sabina Lovelight is a sound healing practitioner who trained with Sheila Whittaker at the College of Sound Healing in the UK, deepening her studies further with internationally respected teachers Tom Soltron and Don Conreaux.

Her experience spans the Channel Islands, Madeira, and now Central Portugal — each place adding another layer to her practice and her trust in the ancient medicine of sound. Through the resonant frequencies of the gong and other healing instruments, she guides participants into states of deep stillness, where the nervous system can truly let go and the body's own intelligence begins to restore itself.

Sabina's sessions are an invitation to be held by sound — to soften, to arrive, and to find one's way back to a place of inner harmony.

Sibylle Koelbl is a holistic wellness facilitator who creates spacious, nurturing environments where healing, connection, and personal transformation can unfold in their own time.

Sound is at the heart of her practice. Through gongs, singing bowls, and other vibrational instruments, she guides participants into states of deep rest and inner attentiveness, experiences that are both physically soothing and quietly profound. Alongside her sound work, Sibylle draws on ceremonial practice, yoga, and the quality of her own mindful presence to offer something truly layered and nourishing.

Her sessions are an open invitation: to arrive fully, set down what no longer serves, and rediscover the still, knowing place that lives beneath the noise of ordinary life.

Yoga

Natacha Rodrigues is a Yoga Alliance RYT 200 certified yoga teacher and founder of Nadi Yoga Studio in Ansião, Portugal.

Her journey into teaching began in an unexpected place, originally qualifying as an Environmental Engineer, it was her deepening personal practice that eventually drew her fully into the world of yoga. She completed her 200-hour teacher training in Birmingham, United Kingdom in 2020, and brings together a decade of personal practice, over five years of teaching experience, and a genuine love of yogic philosophy.

Natacha's classes weave together strength, flexibility, balance, and mindfulness, inviting students to develop a more attentive, nourishing relationship with themselves, both on the mat and in the textures of everyday life.

Therapies & Bodywork

Aoife has been a professional bodywork practitioner since 2001, training at the City College and Jing Institute of Advanced Massage Training in Brighton, UK, and holding qualifications in Advanced Clinical Massage with specialisation in myofascial release, advanced reflexology, Indian head massage, aromatherapy, anatomy, physiology and pathology, and Reiki. She holds a certificate of achievement in Thai massage from Wat Pho in Bangkok, and is registered with the Federation of Holistic Therapists in the UK. All her soft tissue training meets the most current UK professional standards and she continues to study and develop, understanding that working with the body is a lifelong practice.

All treatments are individually tailored to each person, drawing on her extensive range of techniques, her gifted intuition, and a deep belief in the power of informed, intentional touch. She works holistically, addressing mind, body, and spirit and also offers outcome-based clinical sessions for those dealing with chronic pain or limited mobility, with a focus on reducing musculoskeletal pain, increasing range of motion, and moving clients toward a more functional, pain-free body.

Kerry Herbert is a physiotherapist with over 22 years of specialist experience spanning musculoskeletal, orthopaedic, and sports physiotherapy. Originally qualifying through the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, she also holds a postgraduate qualification in Sports Physiotherapy and has continued building on her clinical knowledge throughout her career. She works to bridge the space between clinical rehabilitation and the kind of mindful, embodied movement that keeps people thriving long after treatment ends.

Her precision, warmth, and genuine investment in each person's progress make her an invaluable presence within the retreat team.

Andrea Mattivi is an Austrian-born alternative therapist who has made her home in Portugal since 2009, bringing with her a richly varied set of skills and a deep conviction that true healing begins from within.

Trained across a range of complementary disciplines, including multiple massage techniques, balanced ear acupuncture, osteobalance, and creative therapeutic training, Andrea takes a genuinely integrative approach, weaving modalities together in response to what each individual needs rather than following a fixed formula. No two sessions are quite the same.

Alongside her bodywork practice, Andrea holds a deep passion for medical herbalism and loves sharing her extensive knowledge of how plants can support the body's natural capacity to heal and rebalance. Her sessions are thoughtful, unhurried, and deeply attuned — offering guests not just physical relief, but a real invitation to slow down, listen inward, and trust in the body's own wisdom.

Annika Roos is a Dutch skincare specialist with more than 20 years of professional experience in facial treatments and advanced skincare therapy.

Passionate about nurturing skin health through attentive, personalised care, she works with Dr. Baumann products to deliver treatments that are both deeply restorative and genuinely results-driven. Each session is tailored to the individual — addressing specific skin concerns while offering an experience that feels as much like a sanctuary as a treatment.

Known for her calm and unhurried presence, Annika creates a space where guests can completely surrender to being looked after, emerging refreshed, hydrated, and restored from the outside in.