Group Retreat or Private Retreat — Which Is Right for You?

This is one of the questions I get most often — sometimes via email before someone has even decided to come, sometimes whispered to me on the last evening of a group retreat by someone wondering if they should have come alone. The answer is always: it depends. But it depends on very specific things, and once you see those things clearly, the choice tends to become obvious.

I've been running both group retreats and private 1:1 retreats for years. Each format offers something the other genuinely cannot. Neither is better. But one of them is almost certainly more suited to where you are right now.

What a group retreat actually gives you

There's a particular kind of magic that only happens in a group — and it's not the kind you can manufacture or shortcut. It comes from being witnessed. From sitting across from someone on the third evening and seeing something in their face that reflects something in yours. From realising, during an inner cartography session, that the question you were most afraid to say aloud is actually the question everyone in the room is carrying.

Groups create a field. Something about the shared intention, the shared container, the fact that everyone arrived from different lives but with a similar quality of longing — it amplifies the individual work. You go further than you would alone, not because the group pushes you, but because it holds you.

I keep Retirarsi group retreats small — maximum 12 people — precisely to protect this quality. Larger groups become something else: an audience, a crowd. What I'm looking for is something closer to a circle.

What a private retreat gives you

A private 1:1 retreat is an entirely different experience — not better or worse, but different in kind. The pace, the content, the direction — everything adapts to you. If you need to spend three hours on one question, we spend three hours on it. If something unexpected surfaces in the morning and the afternoon needs to change because of it, it changes.

There's no scheduling, no adjusting to a group rhythm, no holding back because you're aware of the room. The work goes where you need it to go, and only you decide how deep.

Private retreats also allow for greater confidentiality. Some people carry things they're not ready to share with strangers, however kind those strangers might be. For them, a 1:1 container is the only container in which the real work can happen.

Both retreat formats take place in the same landscape. What changes is the container around you.

The question of introversion

I want to gently challenge something I hear a lot: "I'm an introvert, so I should probably do a private retreat." Not necessarily. Some of the most introverted people I've worked with have found group retreats transformative precisely because the group gave them something to orient around — a structure that took the decision-making out of their hands and let them simply show up.

The question isn't really about introversion or extraversion. It's about what you're carrying, and whether you're ready to carry it in front of others or only in private.

Can you do both?

Yes — and some people do. Someone might start with a group retreat to get a sense of the practice, the place, the approach, and come back for a private retreat when they're ready to go deeper into something specific. Or the reverse: someone does an intensive 1:1 retreat during a crisis, and returns to a group retreat a year later when they want the reconnection that only a group can offer.

At Retirarsi, both formats happen in the same landscape — the Arrábida Natural Park, 45 minutes from Lisbon. The practices are similar: Pilates, herbalism, inner cartography. What changes is the container. And the container changes everything.

If you're still not sure

Write to me. I mean this literally — not as a sales pitch, but as a genuine offer. I'm happy to have a short conversation about where you are and what might serve you best. Sometimes ten minutes of honest dialogue is all it takes to know.