What a Difference a Day Makes

Yesterday, honouring International Self-Care Day, I spent a full day at Enwild Retreat doing something I almost never do: nothing for anyone else. No painting to finish, no bills to pay for Mum, no shopping list, no garden waste tip run to book a week ahead so my brother can do it while he's staying with her. Just one day, away from every normal pull on my attention. I came home a little battered and went to bed early. I woke up this morning feeling like a different person. That gap, between how I felt getting into the car yesterday and how I feel writing this now, is what I want to try to explain.

How I Won a Retreat Day 

I found my way to Enwild Retreat through my friend Imogen Hammond, who hosts it. I photographed her wedding, and then I photographed her first Enwild trial retreat this time last year. 

We both give our time to the comms team raising funds for a community village shop we're building where we live. Imogen leads the effort, and my part has been photographing the build as it progresses, week by week. At a recent comedy night to raise money for the shop, Imogen generously donated a one-day self-care retreat as a raffle prize, and I won it.

I only mention this because it matters to what came next. I am, by nature, a carer and a feeder. I look after my mum, (she has a fantastic live-in carer), I run her household, pay her bills, order her shopping. I say yes before I've worked out what saying yes will cost me. Winning a day where the only thing on the agenda was me was, if I'm honest, a slightly strange feeling before it was a good one.

A Slow Beginning: Tea, Cacao and the Group Tent

The day opened gently. The five of us on the one-day retreat joined the three-day guests for tea and a protein snack before everyone gathered in the group tent for a Born Intuitive Cacao Ceremony with Tara Paonessa. There is something in a cacao ceremony that mirrors exactly the process I use in my studio: slow, repetitive, unhurried, no rush to get to an end point. I build my sculptural pieces the same way, one small deliberate action at a time. Sitting in that tent, warming a cup between my hands, I recognised the rhythm before I recognised the ceremony.

Fascial Flow, and Learning to Notice My Own Texture

After a break, we moved into Fascial Flow with Monica Franke. My whole practice as an artist is built on noticing texture: the grain of a surface, the way light catches a raised edge, the difference between a smooth passage and a rough one. What I had never really done was turn that same attention on my own body. Monica's session asked me to notice tension the way I notice texture in a piece of work, as information rather than background noise. It is such an obvious idea once someone says it out loud, and I had somehow missed it for years.

Famida prepared a delicious plant-based lunch in the break that followed, and after a rest, a group of us went wild swimming.

Wild Swimming: The Water I Grew Up Reading

Sensory & Slow began, in a way, on the water. I grew up on the South Coast, and my dad taught me to read the water the way some people read a room: the texture of it, the light on it, what it was about to do. Wild swimming yesterday brought all of that straight back. It was invigorating going in and deeply relaxing coming out, and it is exactly the kind of sensory reset that ended up shaping collections like Quiet Coral, Beachcomber and Fluid Undercurrents. I didn't plan for the swim to feel like research. It just did.

The Session That Changed My Day, and Maybe More

The part of the day I got the most from was the afternoon Life, Wellbeing and Self Care Workshop with Rebecca Lisi, MA MBACP, a psychotherapist with over ten years' clinical experience. Rebecca helped us understand what actually happens in the nervous system when you're stuck in fight or flight without knowing how to self-soothe or release the cortisol that builds up, and how that plays out in our relationships and our minds.

I already knew I was a people pleaser who has had to learn, on purpose, to say no. What I hadn't put together is what that costs. When you're the one already doing everything, the people around you start expecting it, and it becomes quicker for everyone else to leave it to you than to learn how to do it themselves. So it grows.

My real realisation was quieter than that, and more useful. I know my creative process is a form of therapy. I have always known that. What I hadn't understood is that it isn't enough of a therapy when I take it to Mum's house, or even into my own studio at home. The pulls are still there in the background: what's for lunch, what needs organising next. Being properly away yesterday, not being reachable, gave me headspace I don't think I've had in a long time. The making itself wasn't the missing ingredient. The distance was.

Restored by Touch: Shiatsu with Tania Noble

The day closed with a whole-body Shiatsu massage from Tania Noble Oxfordshire Wellness. I felt properly beaten up after it as Tania completely re-aligned my hips! So I came home, showered, and went to bed early. This morning I feel amazing. There is something quietly fitting about ending a self-care day with a practice built entirely on touch and pressure, on working slowly through layers to release what's held underneath. It is not so different from what I do in my studio: building something up, layer by layer, until what was tense or flat has some depth and ease to it again.

What a Difference a Day Makes

Imogen closes her booking page for the retreat with this line: "What a difference a day makes. Give yourself one day, and feel the shift. Leave feeling lighter, clearer, more grounded, and more connected to yourself and the natural world." I read that before I went, and I believed it in the way you believe most marketing copy, politely. I believe it properly now.

The thing I'm taking forward isn't really about the individual sessions, good as every one of them was. It's the reminder that Sensory & Slow was never meant to be something I make for other people while running on empty myself. Noticing texture, light and rhythm, sitting with something slow rather than rushing it, is the whole philosophy behind this brand. Yesterday I finally had a full day to actually live it, rather than just make it.

If you're the kind of person who gives your time freely, who says yes before thinking it through, who has a creative outlet you love but rarely gets to properly disappear into it, this is your permission slip. You don't need a whole day at a retreat to start, though if one lands in your lap, absolutely take it. You need one afternoon, properly away, where nobody can reach you with a question about what's for lunch.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Enwild Retreat's one-day self-care retreat?

It's a one-day version of Enwild Retreat's three-day longer stays, held at Willowbrook Farm in Oxfordshire and hosted by Imogen Hammond. It includes restorative practices, mindful movement, wild swimming and forest bathing, a group lunch, and time to properly switch off, all in a single day.

Why does International Self-Care Day matter?

International Self-Care Day, marked each year on 24 July, is a reminder to prioritise physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. It matters most for people who habitually put everyone else first, because that's exactly the group least likely to book the day off for themselves without a nudge.

Is creativity enough self-care on its own?

Not always. A creative practice can be genuinely therapeutic, but if it happens inside the same environment as your everyday responsibilities, the background pulls on your attention don't fully disappear. Removing yourself from that environment, even briefly, can make the difference.

How does this connect to the Sensory & Slow philosophy?

Sensory & Slow is built around noticing texture, light and rhythm, and choosing slow, deliberate processes over rushing. Spending a day at Enwild Retreat was a chance to live that philosophy directly rather than only express it through art.

With love and thanks to: Imogen, Lucinda, Lola and Famida the Enwild Retreat team; Tara Paonessa, Monica Franke, Rebecca Lisi, Alessandra Amico-Jones and Tania Noble our fabulous practitioners for the day; and the great group of guests who were so friendly and supportive, Claire, Jessica, Linda, Jacquie, Kath, Cathy, Sophie, Sarah, Catriona, Hannah, Caroline and Anne-Marie.

Thank you all for a day I won't forget.

Amanda Deadman
Founder, Sensory & Slow