Home

Come, get more done

& enjoy the process.

CREATIVITY & WELL-BEING RETREATS

BASED ON THE LATEST RESEARCH

So, what do you do?

noesun makes it easy to do hard things.

We organize retreats for people and organizations to get closer to their vision.

It sounds fluffy or even empty until you actually think about it in your own life. So let's look at what it would mean for you, personally:

Imagine we give you seven days to invest in what is most important to you at this moment.
What would it be? What specific goals would you want to set for yourself? (examples)
What kind of space would you benefit from? What practices? What support from the organizers would you need? From the rest of the group?

Meeting your needs is what we do. It manifests into retreats and spaces, that we design based on the latest research (neuroscience, psychology, physiology, etc.).

Technology has freed us from time & location to produce, play & connect. At every moment of every day, we're presented with infinite choices. Each choice can bring us closer to our dreams or move us further away. The way to our dream may not be tempting, easy, or instantly gratifying, and willpower is a finite resource. So we are stretching it thin. Until one day, we can see clearly what really matters to us. Because we are clear, we commit, we retreat in action. Action manifests our dream and ultimately, we realize: we are becoming who we are through what we do

Past examples from our guests

Individuals: Write a chapter of their book, Product Research, Business Planning, Self-Care, Play the Piano, Make a big life decision, Finish a Research Paper, etc.
Parents: Similar to individuals in terms of projects but the core of the retreat is on the harmonious integration of the couple's projects, the couple's relationship, and the child(ren).
Organizations: Based on each organization's context and strategic goals, it involves three levels: I (what needs to happen at the level of each employee), We (cultural & group dynamics), and it (specific business deliverables).

Research-based

Scientists have identified the conditions that boost energy, focus, and creativity. Are you leveraging the latest research? Our retreats are. Below are the top levers we help you use. We share resources from our research on this dedicated research page.

The mind can be a fertile ground

State Hacking

Modulate your energetic and tense arousal as well as your hedonic tone. (1) Focus on aspects of your experience that generate the state you want, (2) Tell yourself the right story (watch your language), and (3) Use your body: parasympathetic & sympathetic.
Joy & play promote divergent (creative) thinking and low spirits favor your convergent (analytical) mind.

Flow

Flow is the key to the ‘more’ you seek. Time flies, we forget ourselves, and performance is maximized, yet effortless. Whether we watch a movie, a concert, or a football game, we're actually paying to observe people in a flow state. Engage in activities that support you at each of the 4 stages of the cycle of Flow: Struggle > Release > Flow > Recover.

Identity Design

Our identity is the patchwork we weave with our beliefs and storytelling threads. We wear our identity as glasses, filtering reality, and shaping our actions. We do not do what we can, we live what we believe we are. Identity opens up experiences, and prevents others. Are you living your life in service of your identity? Or is your identity in service of your life?

Habits & Micro-Rituals

Biased towards dramatic heroic stories, we overestimate the importance of once-in-a-lifetime transformations. Success is actually the product of daily practices, like compound interests. Habits also structure your day. Design your own rituals to embed your values and intentions into your day. Random, intermittent and short rests & rewards are powerful.

Intrinsic Drivers

We can use our needs to motivate ourselves to start and sustain our efforts. Although terminology varies, Kotler, Pink, and Robbins agree on these three:

Autonomy: the desire to direct your own life,
Mastery: the desire to learn, explore, be creative,
Purpose: the desire to matter, to contribute to the world.

The Unconscious

The unconscious is often associated with trauma and cognitive & emotional biases we compensate for. The Unconscious is also the source of magic you tap into when you're in the zone. Break your thinking patterns with practices like breathwork, and connect with the Unconscious (yours and the collective) for breakthrough creativity.

Empowered by the Body, and its wisdom

Human Cycles

Humans are subject to various cycles. The 2017 Nobel prize recognized the Circadian rhythm and its impact on health. Bodily functions — nourishment, growth, maintenance, waste management — are best performed at specific hours. The same applies to your ability to be creative, analytical, and empathetic. Leverage these cycles or push against them.

Chronotypes

Lions rise up before the sun but run low on energy by late afternoon whereas wolves would be the life of the party, and can dance until early morning.
The Circadian rhythm describes the general concept. Your chronotype helps you figure out the perfect schedule for you: when to sleep, do your taxes, exercise, be social, etc. Know your clock, and sync.

Breaking Patterns

Beyond the health benefits of the Sauna and the Ice Bath (heard of Heat/Cold Shock Proteins?), a potent psychoactive effect gets you out of your head and back into the body.
The single best way to break patterns is to use the body whether it is through temperature modulation, exercise, or breathwork.

Toxin Free

Enjoy your body and use it as a stepping stone for higher purpose. Or use it to process toxins. Dioxin, glyphosate, PFAs are agreed upon toxins but more substances are considered toxic based on the dose, your body and the expert you talk to. The key is to remove all the agreed upon toxins you can and reduce what is not helpful to the minimum.

Nutrition

Cognitive enhancing (Nootropics) & psychoactive (yes, talking about nutrition, not plant medicine) effects can be found in food. Diet can alter blood and brain concentrations of neurotransmitter precursors, with implications for the synthesis and release of brain neurotransmitters. Carbohydrates are in the psychoactive category.

Fasting

It takes energy to pass a meal through the GI tract, process what is useful, and eliminate waste: 10-15% of your total energy expenditure. It is concentrated after your meals, imposing daily ups and downs. Fasting has profound effects on our emotional state and cognitive capabilities: it stabilizes us and offers access to altered states of consciousness.

People are distracting empowering.

Body Double

We body double when we go to the café to work alongside strangers or work out in the gym instead of alone at home. The underlying mechanism is not clear yet but people struggling with executive functioning skills, like starting & staying on task, report benefits from the practice.

The Observer Effect

The presence of an observer causes short-term improvements in performance, especially (1) when goals and values are made clear, (2) there is novelty involved: the observer stays top of mind, (3) feedback is offered. Made famous by the Hawthorne study whose results were actually overstated.

Peer Support

Participation in services with a hierarchical structure can engender passivity. Conversely, accountability partnership and peer coaching empower through self-determination and the helper-therapy effect, without reducing the benefit of social support. Peers combining information get benchmarks, see the core and ultimately resolution & role models emerge.

Promote "no"

From birth, most are trained to say "yes" and comply with Authority, more than to say "no". To belong, we tend to perpetuate this bias to yes. It can cost us our dreams: our ability to manifest what we truly want. Focus by saying no and make space with fewer & slower yeses. Learn to go where no one will ask you.

Psychological Safety

Identified as #1 characteristic of successful high-performing teams at Google, it is the confidence that the group will not embarrass, reject, or punish one for being oneself. It stems from mutual respect & trust among members. Comfortable to show yourself without fear of negative consequences, safe to take interpersonal risk and challenge each other, lovingly.

Sensemaking

Together, we learn to recognize the signal within the noise. This requires a certain attunement and generosity towards the other, especially those who think differently than we do. Engage in a different game and work with each other in good faith. Each of us hold pieces of truth, our unique perspective.

What we design designs us back

Biophilia

Being immersed in nature, seeing it through the window or incorporating natural elements and life in our spaces help us heal better, improve our mood and overall health, refresh our attention and psyche overall. It even boosts our creativity. Biophilic design regenerate nature, our spaces and rehumanize us.

Beauty in Patterns

Our 5 senses and our minds are trained for pattern recognition. They are used to a certain richness in our experience: patterns layered at different scales, specific ratios between scales, and symmetries. While sensory deprivation can be helpful for some practices, our well-being depends on this richness.

Ergonomy

Being sedentary negatively affects mood, stress, and sleep. Our posture and our movements also affect our cognitive process, including creativity. Choose spaces and furniture that enable the level of movement and the posture right for your health, emotional and cognitive intentions.

Worlds Colliding

Creativity often comes from juxtaposing old ideas in original ways. People we perceive as creative are intellectual middlemen, they transfer knowledge between disciplines. Opinion and behavior are more homogeneous within than between groups, so get connected outside your area, and open up.

Separate

One space, one use. Because each space supports a specific type of activity. The office of tomorrow is a form of Eudaimonia Machine, not the open-plan office. When you start mixing activities and spaces , performance goes down. Worse, habits are mixed too, and the easier ones tend to win out.

The Passage

Our process of becoming depends on the devices we use, and particularly the spaces we live in. Our overall journey is guided by the lobbies and rooms we enter. What processes - separation, liminality, and incorporation - do we engage in when we choose the spaces we live in?

Come with your intention,

We provide the support.

noesun is about being extraordinary. No need to wait for some distant milestone to be your best self, do your best work. You choose, at each moment.

As you can see above, our experiences are based on psychology, physiology, social sciences, especially how you can use your body, your mind and your environment to ride the cycle of "Flow". We hold the space to make it easy for you.

To level up holistically, we offer retreats for individuals, families, and organizations:

Creative & Well-Being Retreats Parents & Children Retreats Offsites

“

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Marianne Williamson, Author of Return to Love

The Latest