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RETREATS / Bloom: Mushroom and Microdosing Retreat

Bloom: Mushroom and Microdosing Retreat

For lives that work,
and days that arrive already known.
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DATES

  • 20 - 25 OCT 2026
  • 16 - 21 MAR 2027
  • 30 MAR - 4 APR 2027
  • 18 - 23 MAY 2027

THE INVITATION

A six-day mushroom retreat in South Africa

Bloom is a six-day mushroom retreat in the Cederberg, 4.5 hours north of Cape Town. It works with the mushrooms in two ways: two guided medicinal mushrooms sessions, and microdosing. Eight guests at most.

It is for people whose lives already work, who have started to wonder what sits outside the part they can predict. A mind that gets good at things narrows toward what it expects, and slowly less gets through. Bloom widens the view back out.

This is for you if

  • — You have built a life that works, and still find the days arriving already known.
  • — You have done the therapy, read the books, kept a practice, and you are after a different kind of opening rather than more of the same.
  • — You are drawn to seeing your own life with the usual filter lifted, and to finding what a wider view makes possible.
  • — You want a setting solid enough for real work, with people trained to sit it well.
Chalet bedroom with floor-to-ceiling Cederberg views at Bliss and Stars Bloom retreat, Western Cape, South Africa

THE FLOW

Preparation and integration

The experience itself is not the product. The sessions can show you a great deal in a week; whether any of it lasts depends on what surrounds them. States can become traits, or they fade.

Guest at sunrise on a Cederberg ridge during Bloom ceremony retreat at Bliss and Stars, Western Cape, South Africa

pre-retreat

Preparation

It begins before you arrive. Once your application is accepted, you move through a preparation call, and the slower work of setting an intention for the experience. By the time you reach the valley, the groundwork is laid, and the week itself can go to the experience rather than to getting ready for it.

Woman sitting barefoot on wooden deck writing in journal, ochre Cederberg sandstone rocks behind, Unmade women's retreat

post-retreat

Integration

An integration guide and three somatic sessions in the weeks after you leave. The neuroplasticity window stays open for a while, and this is what keeps the opening from fading into a good memory. What moved during the week stays supported while it settles into how you live.

THE APPROACH

How a guided retreat works

Four things. Done well.

1

Medicine

Two ‌sessions with the mushrooms, and microdosing. In the sessions, rigid patterns go fluid enough to work with. The microdoses are more subtle: they keep a sliver of that workability open in regular hours, at the trail, at the table (where most of life happens, really).

2

Soma

Somatic experiencing, breathwork and movement run right through the week. A realisation in the head doesn’t travel far on its own. These patterns are physical too, the braced shoulders, the breathing you didn’t know you were controlling. Loosen the mind and leave the body out of it, and not much actually changes.

3

Integration

Integration runs across all six days: journaling, one-to-ones, time in the group. There’s a reason for that. After the sessions your brain stays unusually open to change for two to four weeks, and integration is how you use that window before it closes. Skip it and you are left with a vivid memory and not much else.

4

Nature

1,350 hectares of private land in the Cederberg. Set and setting matter here, more than most people expect. Twenty minutes in a landscape like this and your cortisol starts to drop, and the parts of the brain that loop and worry go quieter. People leave feeling more connected to things, and that’s the one that tends to stay.

WHAT A DAY LOOKS LIKE

Presence and connection

We could give you the timetable. The wake-up, the sitting hours, the gap after brunch. The need to know the shape of the day before you arrive is part of what you came here to set down, and the rhythm shifts with the season regardless. What follows is the shape of it, not a fixed schedule. Ceremony days run differently.
  • Cacao Ceremony
  • Medicine Walk
  • Morning Flow
  • Brunch
  • Breathwork
  • Rest
  • Guided Hike
  • Afternoon snack
  • Time in Nature
  • 1:1 Sessions
  • Rest
  • Dinner
  • Stargazing
  • Fireside Chat

MORNING

  • Cacao Ceremony
  • Medicine Walk
  • Morning Flow
  • Brunch

midday

  • Breathwork
  • Rest
  • Guided Hike

AFTERNOON

  • Afternoon snack
  • Time in Nature
  • 1:1 Sessions
  • Rest

EVENING

  • Dinner
  • Stargazing
  • Fireside Chat

AT A GLANCE

We serve vegetarian / vegan food. Most of our produce comes from our gardens or from local farmers. The meals are served at the communal table. We do not serve coffee or alcohol, which is mostly about sleep. Mornings offer cacao and rooibos infusions.

Dietary requirements are accommodated. Tell us when you book.

DURATION

6 days

Tuesday to Sunday

LOCATION

Cederberg

Western Cape

FOOD

Plant-based

No Coffee · No alcohol

Daria and Heine Rasmussen, owners of Bliss and Stars Retreat

YOUR GUIDES

Daria & Heine Rasmussen

SITTERS · GUIDES · FOUNDERS

“This is a tool for radical change. What it asks for is a container honest and safe enough to hold what it opens. That is the work we are interested in.”

Daria and Heine have spent years preparing the land, the property, and themselves for the work that happens at Bloom.

 

Daria carries the formal training: Somatic Experiencing, mindfulness under Martin Aylward, breathwork with Dan Brulé, and the Synthesis Institute Foundations course. Both Daria and Heine have also completed sitter training. This is a foundation that maps almost exactly onto what is needed in a ceremony container: trauma-informed, body-attuned, contemplatively grounded, non-directive.

 

Heine sits the ceremonies alongside her and brings the kind of attention that the work asks for: steady, unintrusive.

 

Between them, the room is held for what unfolds, not directed toward what should. They do not guide you anywhere. They make the place safe enough that you can arrive where you already are.

READ MORE ABOUT DARIA & HEINE —

WHAT GUESTS SAY

"During the retreat someone described taking mushrooms like shaking a snow globe and shifting perspective, mixing up the pieces a bit, and that feels very accurate. I'm enjoying the ongoing microdosing experience. I feel it's making me particularly aware and thoughtful, which I am appreciating. I think of the experience every day."
Anna

what does it cost

Accommodation options

All prices include accommodation, all meals, all practices, and guided stargazing. No hidden charges. Never more than eight guests, often fewer.

tented chalet interior at bliss and stars

CANVAS AND TIMBER

Tented Chalets

Built from canvas and timber, which means the valley comes through the walls. Wind, water, first light. The simplest of the three, and the closest you can sleep to the land.

5 NIGHTS

Solo

R28,000

Double

R39,200

Includes: Accommodation, all meals, practices and activities
view of chalets at bliss and stars, cederberg

WOOD AND GLASS

Chalets

Built from wood and glass, set between the rocks. Floor-to-ceiling windows put the valley in the room with you. The one most people picture when they imagine the place.

5 NIGHTS

Solo

R36,000

Double

R49,000

Includes: Accommodation, all meals, practices and activities
Aerial view of Weaver's Nest villa built from Cederberg rock at Bliss and Stars off-grid retreat

CEDERBERG ROCK

Villa

Built from Cederberg rock, set closest to the river. A separate bedroom, its own lounge, and a large outdoor space that is yours alone. The most private of the three.

5 NIGHTS

Solo

R39,500

Double

R54,000

Includes: Accommodation, all meals, practices and activities

application form

Apply in minutes

Bloom is by application, only. It takes ten minutes. We reply within three working days.

Please note, our retreats are not medical or clinical treatments; this screening is purely for safety.