SENSE – A Retreat for Sensitive Souls

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By Sarah Yearsley, Somatic Coach

There is a kind of magic in beginning a journey from Platform Zero at King’s Cross.

Tucked away around the corner from the mundane world of Numbers 1 to 10, I felt a bit

like Harry Potter finding himself on Platform 9¾. Particularly fitting in fact for the start of

my journey to the SENSE retreat at Broughton Sanctuary in Yorkshire.

This four-night retreat had been introduced to me as a sanctuary for those who

experience the world with heightened sensitivity, the deep-feelers and thinkers, the

curious, the intuitive ones who sense life with vivid clarity. As the train pulled away from

London and the city dissolved into fields, something in me relaxed. Platform Zero had

already nudged me across an invisible boundary, and I sensed I was moving into a

place where sensitivity becomes a compass rather than a burden.

By the time I arrived, I realised that I had already begun my journey of moving between

different worlds. On the physical level, I had arrived at Broughton Sanctuary, a

beautifully restored and modernised country house and estate on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales that has been owned by the Tempest family for six hundred years; on the psychological

level, I felt open to whatever might unfold.

In my work as a Somatic Coach, much of my attention is taken up tuning into what it is to be found beneath someone’s words. Many of the people I support identify with being both highly sensitive and neurodiverse, moving through the world with a depth and intensity others might easily overlook. Sensitivity, in my experience, isn’t a weakness, it’s a deeper way of perceiving the world, a capacity to sense more, feel more, and understand what others might overlook. Yet even those of us who offer therapy for others need somewhere to return to within ourselves. I came to SENSE for exactly that reason: to recalibrate, to reconnect with the quiet inner compass that guides my work.

Broughton is an estate shaped by a landscape in quiet transformation - sweeping moorland hills, pockets of young woodland taking root, stretches of restored wetland, and open pasture slowly returning to a wilder, more natural ecology. Stone walls, weathered by centuries of wind and rain, guide you gently toward the heart of the estate. Stepping into the grand entrance hall, with its high ceilings and quiet sense of heritage, I half-expected the formal stiffness often found in houses of this scale. Instead, the gentle crackle of the fireplace and the glow of its warmth softened the grandeur. Even within its impressive architecture, Broughton holds a sense of welcome, as though the place itself is offering quiet permission to simply be.

Kirsty Lucinda Allan, creator of SENSE, greeted us with the calm reassurance of someone who has spent years tending the inner landscapes of highly sensitive people. A psychologist, researcher, and consciousness explorer, she understands sensitivity not as an inconvenience but as a gift. In our earlier conversation she told me, “Highly sensitive people aren’t fragile they’re finely tuned. They’re the visionaries, the healers, the shamans, the ones already feeling the future.” And in her presence, those words don’t feel like flattery; they feel like recognition. SENSE was born from her belief that those who feel life acutely need a sanctuary where their receptivity can be honoured rather than managed - a place where their inner qualities can be discovered and deepened, rather than diminished or dismissed.

That first evening, as darkness settled, we gathered in the Avalon Centre, a space designed for deep rest and restoration at the heart of Broughton, for a sound bath led by Paris Tempest, co-founder of Broughton Sanctuary and wife of Roger Tempest, whose generosity of spirit infuses much of the estate. Wrapped in wool blankets with our eye masks resting gently against our faces, we were invited into an hour that felt suspended between waking and dreaming. Paris moved through the space with the quiet assurance of someone fluent in the unseen. The resonance of bowls and chimes drifted through our bodies in soft waves.

I felt myself slipping into an altered state, not quite sleep, but something just beside it. Images rose and fell behind my closed eyes, ungraspable yet soothing. Afterwards, some participants described vivid visions; for me, it was the physical release that lingered, a deep unwinding that seemed to signal the beginning of our journey. It was the perfect threshold experience: a gentle loosening of the outer world and a turning toward the inner one.

The days unfolded with a softness that felt like a balm to the system. Mornings often began in the Avalon pool suite, warm water holding tired muscles in a cradle of quiet. Throughout the day, a series of workshops invited us into different dimensions of sensing: a Lucid Living meditation with Mexican curandera Dulce Ruby, a meditation guide and dreamwork facilitator whose presence feels part celestial, part earthly; intuitive drawing in the Green Drawing Room with visionary artist and musician Edward Foster, whose Renaissance lute playing guided us to draw not what we saw, but what we felt;  a workshop with Kelly Fletcher (also known as Immodesty Blaize), a former global burlesque star turned trauma-informed practitioner who showed us a deeper, more truthful way of seeing and being seen by inviting us to engage in a gentle eye-gazing session with a partner. 

Kelly offered a practical and helpful Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) demonstration with one of the participants who was experiencing some long-standing pain. Watching the process gave us tools for softening our own emotional charge, reminding us that we can use this powerful technique whenever we need. With our awareness already turned inward, best-selling author on emotion, spirituality and sensitivity, Mike Jawer then invited us to cross a subtler threshold, guiding a gentle yet profound exploration of boundary thinness and what it means to live as a fluid, liminal being.

There were deeper thresholds too, ones that felt almost ancestral. Paul Stevens, PhD, an astrophysicist, parapsychologist, hypnotherapist and shamanic practitioner who combines cosmology with Northern traditions, guided us into one such threshold. During his Hypno Shamanic journey, something in me shifted sideways into an older part of myself. As a boy growing up in the Shetland islands which is also where he lives now, Paul told me how he had carved his first runes from elder wood, pieces he has kept ever since. That evening, he handed me those childhood runes and invited me to cast them. The symbols that emerged felt like whispers from an older world - guidance around intuition, resilience, and stepping onto one’s true path. In Paul’s steady presence, something in me clarified, not a repair, but a recognition of a strength that had always been there, simply waiting for me to notice.

Another session with Jessica Bockler, PhD, explored the embodied experience of moving through different emotional states. She opened with the gentle, hypnotic hum of her shruti box, inviting our voices into a simple toning practice before guiding us into movement, first curling inward to form a chrysalis, held in stillness and containment, and then unfolding into the openness and freedom of the emerging butterfly. The shift from that enclosed state into expansion was simple yet profound. During the reflection that followed, Kirsty’s words landed deeply: “What a shame it would be if butterflies didn’t fully open their wings and take up space.” Many of us realised how often we had kept our own wings folded. In that moment, we’d been given permission to unfurl, quietly, naturally, without apology.

Afternoons often carried their own subtle magic. During a Monroe Sound Science session, the room seemed to shift into something otherworldly. The frequencies didn’t merely soothe, they reorganised, guiding awareness into that liminal terrain between waking and dreaming. I began to see why some compare Monroe Sound Science to a psychedelic experience - the same expanded awareness achieved without needing to go on a psychedelic retreat.

One evening brought an experience unlike anything I’d encountered before. Kirsty placed a Peace Lily at the centre of our circle and connected it to a piece of biofeedback technology designed to translate its electrical signalling into sound. As Jessica opened the shruti box and Edward began to play the Renaissance lute, the Peace Lily seemed to respond to their music - its tones brightening, softening, and rising in gentle waves, as though entering into dialogue with their sound. We sat in absolute silence and awe, witnessing something that felt profoundly moving. Whether interpreted as sensitivity, resonance, or simply the poetry of interconnected systems, the moment felt like entering a conversation with the living world.

There were moments of gentle intrigue too - experiences that invited us to lean into intuition with a sense of openness and play. During a remote-viewing session with Kirsty, Tim, one of Broughton’s two beloved butlers, was asked to choose a location on the estate, known only to him, while we sketched our intuitive impressions of where he might be. My first sketch, a large round form, proved accurate, as Tim was sitting at a desk beside a large carved wooden globe of the earth; my later attempts, shaped by doubt, proved otherwise. It was a gentle lesson in intuition: trust the first signal, not the mind’s commentary.

One of the most memorable workshop experiences took place on our final afternoon in the Avalon Centre. It began with Kirsty guiding us through a powerful psychosynthesis meditation - an invitation to meet both the inner critic and the inner champion personalities within us. With Kirsty’s steadiness, she led us into an imagined garden, a place where these inner figures could reveal themselves safely and without fear. My critic appeared first: familiar, insistent, shaped by old stories. Then came my champion personality, younger, more energised, and undeniably present. Something shifted in the group during this session; a collective recognition that these inner personalities, with their voices, were not enemies but messengers. It set the perfect foundation for the creative exploration that then followed with Sylvia Hunt, a movement artist and puppetry facilitator.

Sylvia invited us to use puppetry as a way to embody these parts of ourselves. She showed us how to craft simple paper puppets from two large sheets of brown paper - abstract enough to feel safe, yet expressive enough to hold our projections. We first embodied the critic through breath, movement and voice, allowing its patterns to surface. Without facial features, the puppets became neutral mirrors, offering a surprising sense of psychological safety. Then came the moment of transformation: reshaping the critic-puppet into our champion. Around the room, postures shifted; scrunched-up edges were unravelled, torn pieces fell away, and new shapes began to form. My own puppet grew wings, not to fly away, but to reveal what had always been there. A quiet reminder that I already possessed what I needed.

That evening, as darkness settled, we gathered inside the Fire Temple. The space glowed with ember light, warm and ancient feeling, as we took our places in a circle. Drums rested in our laps, and together we began to play - a steady, heartbeat rhythm that seemed to rise from the stone floor itself. One by one, we offered our critic puppets to the flames. The act felt simple and sincere, a communal release witnessed by fire and sound. Whether the relief came from the ritual’s symbolic power or the shared rhythm of the group, I left the Fire Temple feeling distinctly lighter.

On the final morning, Edward played his lyre as we sketched visions of our futures and the future of sensitivity itself. I found myself drawing a landscape of trees with interwoven roots - a symbol of how sensitivity connects rather than isolates. I was leaving not just with insight, but with kinship.

As I reluctantly packed my bag and prepared to return to King’s Cross, I realised I had come full circle - back to the platform, back to the threshold, back to the zero point. Not empty, but full of potential. The place where everything begins - where perception becomes luminous and where I can step back into my life knowing that sensitivity is not what holds me back, but what lights the way.

Ends