“STROMBOLI WAS A GREAT EPIPHANY FOR ME –
I’M SO MUCH MORE RELAXED ABOUT MY LIFE
AND I SEE A HUGE IMPROVEMENT IN MY PHYSICAL
AND PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH.”
R.M., LONDON

F**K IT
RETREAT
HOW F**K IT CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE
STROMBOLI
JULY 24-30

I'm Ready To Book My Space

“THE HUMOROUS WAY IN WHICH YOU PUT ACROSS CONCEPTS MAKES THEM MEMORABLE. YOU CREATED A SAFE AND LIGHT SPACE FOR SOME VERY DEEP HEALING.“
D.T., AMSTERDAM

Ooohhh, a VIDEO from John & Gaia

Watch John & Gaia chatting with you personally about this F**k It Retreat 🙂

Why you’ll love this retreat – 

EXPERT INSTRUCTION

John is the author the bestselling F**k It books.
John has been running retreats since 2004, and the first F**k It Retreat in 2005. He is an expert in relaxation, eastern philosophy, and how to apply timeless wisdom to current trying times.

SUPER-RELAXING HOLIDAY

You’re going to be living on a live volcano for a week.
And swimming in the warm sea, wandering the blossom-heavy alleys, eating the Sicilian food, oh wow.

GOOD COMPANY

People don’t expect this,
but you’ll feel safe and supported amongst new friends, 
who are likely to one day be old friends.

YES, THE CURRENT NETFLIX FILM ‘STROMBOLI’, IS INSPIRED BY A F**K IT RETREAT, LED BY JOHN & GAIA

A writer, Saskia Noort, came on a F**k It retreat a few years ago.
She wrote a fictional book about a woman who goes on a retreat on Stromboli.
That book has been turned into a film, ‘Stromboli’, out now on Netflix.
It was filmed on Stromboli, including in the hotel that we use there, so the scenes of the group doing workshops on the roof terrace are where we do our group sessions.

F**K IT RETREAT
HOW F**K IT CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE

John here. 

F**k It saved my life. Several times actually.
And as I’ve revisited the power of F**k It this year, I thought of calling this retreat on Stromboli –
HOW F**K IT CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE

Then a film came out, called ‘Stromboli’, based on a book by a Dutch author who’d been on a F**k It Retreat a few years back.  Without giving anything away, it’s about a woman who comes to Stromboli and whose life is saved by a retreat she falls into (yes, inspired by us and our F**k It Retreat).  So it feels like a fitting title.

And do watch that film to get a feeling for Stromboli.  They shot the film in the hotel that we’ve been using since 2012, so you’ll see the spectacular location.  When you see them doing sessions and dancing on the terrace, that’s where we do our sessions.  Some of the exercises you see them doing, yes, we were doing years ago.  But that’s not the retreat you’ll be attending. This retreat is all about ease and loveliness, and unlocking the ways that F**k It can genuinely save your life too.

SO, HOW’S YOUR LIFE?

Maybe you’re thinking “But my life doesn’t need ‘saving’ “.
Sure, so how’s your life?

Most people don’t realise how accustomed they’ve become to struggle and stress (until it tips over into illness or crisis, as it sometimes does).

If you’re pushed and busy, if you have too much to do, and too much to think about…
If your mind is often racing, working out what you need to do, and what you need to keep an eye on…
If you’re worried about what might go wrong, whether at work, or with money, or with your relationships, or with your health.
If you know that stress and worry is affecting your health, or your sleep, to the point where you know you’re getting symptoms such as headaches, or gut issues, or high blood pressure that you know is related to stress…
If you often feel somewhat overwhelmed…
Then you’ve become accustomed to struggle and stress.

And maybe you think it’s part of life.
That everyone feels like this.

That the relaxation stuff doesn’t work for you anyway,
because you’ve tried meditation, and those apps like ‘Calm’ and ‘Headspace’, and some yoga,
and maybe they help for a bit, but the stress and overwhelm is soon back.

Well, you don’t have to feel like this.
And not everyone does.
And there’s much more you can do about it than calming apps.

And getting out of this stress and struggle could well be ‘saving your life’…
certainly your quality of life,
and maybe even your life too, as chronic stress is seriously bad for us.

HOW F**K IT SAVED MY LIFE

I’ve been there.
Everything that I describe above, I’ve felt.
I’ve suffered deeply because of stress.  And I’ve suffered mildly because of stress, over long periods.
Stress has made me sick, over long periods, and it’s put me in hospital more than once.
Stress has kept me up at night, and haunted me during the day.

I knew that stress was slowly killing me, and slowly eroding everything pleasurable in my life.

So I set about cracking stress and worry.
I tried everything over many years. I meditated and practised tai chi and qigong every day. I studied with masters of relaxation, people I now call ‘The Super Relaxers’.

And it did take a long time (around 15 years actually), but I realised what it was that was underlying my stress.  And all of our stress. And I set about finding ways to combat this underlying cause.

And ‘F**k It’ became a key way that I did this.

My F**k It epiphanies happened one by one, even before I had those words.  I describe these in my F**k It books, but each epiphany ‘saved’ me and took me to levels of relaxation and ease I’d never known before.

One F**k It epiphany saved my mental health, another one saved my physical health…
 and another one even saved our financial health.

So I started sharing some of these ideas, back in 2005.  And these ideas have helped literally thousands of people (and the books have sold more than a million copies). But the ideas have really developed over the years too…

HOW F**K IT CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE

I’ve spent the last 20 years refining how these underlying principles of F**k It can work for people.

I’ve taught the ideas to thousands of people over thousands of hours.

And I’ve learnt that certain things go deep, quickly, and people can use them in their everyday life to make a huge difference.

I’ve seen the changes in so many people that I know that, when people take the ideas and practices seriously, it will change their lives in one way or another.

So I know that CHANGE IS POSSIBLE.

Wherever you are now, however you’re feeling, however your confidence is, your health is, however up or down you’re feeling, I know the path to improving things.  And the philosophy of ‘F**k It’ is a powerful, irreverent, get-straight-to-the-heart-of-things part of that path.

I know this from the many people who have physically healed when they moved from stress to relaxation via F**k It.
I know this from the many people who’ve dropped soul-destroying jobs to do what they love, by saying F**k It.
I know this from the many people who’ve found new relationships, dropped dysfunctional relationships, married, had kids and are living happily ever after, because of F**k It.
I know this from the many people who now say they can sleep at night because of this teaching, and just that is life-changing.
I know this because saying F**k It, to this and that, every day, is still part of my healing movement from tension and stuckness to relaxation and freedom.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN on this retreat –

YOU’LL LEARN YOUR OWN PARTICULAR WAY TO RELAX DEEPLY, NO MATTER WHAT IS GOING ON

There’s no ‘one technique fits all’ when it comes to relaxation. You’ve probably been put off relaxation techniques because someone else’s miracle way is not your natural way.  When you find your own way to relax, and you will do on this retreat, you’ll never look back… except to wonder how you got so far in life without knowing how delicious deep relaxation is.

YOU’LL LEARN HOW TO BE FINE WITH WHATEVER YOU’RE FEELING IN EVERY MOMENT

Change will happen when you start using the principles of F**k It.  But, paradoxically, the route to change is through full surrender to how you are, how things are, and what and how you’re feeling, in every moment.  When you get this, and it can take a while, nothing is the same, as there is a full embracing of life, just as it is, not how you want it to be.

YOU’LL DISCOVER HOW TO ENJOY JUST BEING YOURSELF, AS YOU ARE

Again, you’ll probably change, because your view of the world will change when you live in a more F**k It way.  But it’s the full acceptance of yourself, as you are, that frees everything up and allows you to simply enjoy being yourself, no matter what anyone else thinks of you, or expects of you. You’ll sit into this joy of being yourself amongst a group of people who are all starting to enjoy being themselves and being with you, enjoying being yourself.  It’s a critical part of how this aspect of F**k It works on a retreat. And it’s the aspect that has become a whole new area of therapy with Gaia’s ‘Being Me Therapy’, so it’s Gaia that will guide you to the joy of Being Fully Yourself.

YOU’LL LEARN HOW TO BE LIGHT EVEN WHEN THINGS FEEL HEAVY

A few magical things happen on a retreat around the other people in the group.  The first is that you realize that you’re not alone in how you feel.  And that in itself is healing.  You then have the powerful experience of witnessing someone else expressing what you might express, and feeling empathy for them, but also feeling a lightness around their struggle, a form of knowledge that they’ll be okay.  I feel this all the time with clients…  no matter what their struggle is, a lightness of knowing that it’s all okay.  And this lightness of knowing then reflects in on ourselves, so that we eventually feel light even when things in our own lives are very heavy.

And you’ll learn this –

The astonishing art of ‘Qigong’, as well as deep relaxation, as well as how to live a freer, happier life in every moment.

“THANK YOU THIS WEEK FOR YOUR WISDOM, KNOWLEDGE AND UNIQUE BUT POWERFUL PERSPECTIVE ON LIFE. I WILL TAKE SO MUCH HOME WITH ME THAT I COULD NOT SEE BEFORE.”
A.D., EDINBURGH

OOHHH, YES, SOUNDS GREAT –
HERE’S HOW TO BOOK YOUR F**K IT RETREAT
(with your £200 limited-time discount) OFFER NOW EXPIRED.


The prices are below.
So check the dates are good.
Choose your room.
Click to book and pay your £690 first instalment.
Your balance will then be split
into 3 further instalments,
depending on the room you choose,
and the time of the year you book
(all payments are to be made by one month prior to the retreat).

ALL ABOUT WHERE YOU’RE HEADING…

STROMBOLI YUM SHOW

YES, YOU’LL BE LIVING ON A LIVE VOLCANO

ABOUT STROMBOLI

Stromboli is awesome, a one-off.
We’ve been going there for a month every summer for 10 years. And we’re still in love, and in fact, even more awed every time we go. I (John) was concerned that I’d never managed to successfully capture the Stromboli experience in words for you so when we got on the departing hydrofoil last year, having said goodbye to our Stromboli friends for another year, I started typing.  I just looked at that piece and it’s 2500 words long.
 STROMBOLI LONG CAPTURE

So, to be brief(er):  Stromboli is a volcanic island.
No, Stromboli is a live volcano rising out of the sea, that’s the truth. And you live on the edge of that volcano for a week.
It’s the only volcano in Europe that erupts constantly, with any lava that’s emitted running down the ‘sciara del fuoco’ (chute of fire) on the other side of the island from the main town. It depends on the year, and how active it is, but you will often hear what at first you think is a crack of thunder roughly every half-hour. That’s the volcano erupting. You can climb halfway up the volcano to see it erupting from closer quarters (it’s an astonishing experience) or watch it from a boat or even a remote pizzeria.
But forgetting the volcano (which is kind of hard to do when you’re living on it),
Stromboli is still a magical place.
There are no roads or streetlights – just enchanted lanes overhung with bright and perfumed blossom from the dreamy white-washed houses. Just walking around these unlit lanes at night under the star-packed sky is a dream (I’m dreaming of it now).
There are numerous coves to explore, accessed by difficult-to-miss paths, where you can sunbathe and swim in the warm sea.

YUM BEACHES

COVE AFTER COVE, LAPPED THE WARM TRANSLUCENT WATER

The hotel we stay in has the best position on the island – right on the beach.
You can hear the sea from wherever you are in the hotel.  It is a simple family-run hotel with a direct link to the dramatic history of the island (which was dramatised in the famous Rossellini / Ingrid Bergman film ‘Stromboli’).
And it now, as of 2023, has the added filmic history of the new ‘Stromboli’ film, set in the hotel, where you’ll see the rooms, the dining room, the roof terrace, the beach below the hotel, the lot…  a film based on a writer’s fictional interpretation of a F**k It Retreat with John & Gaia.
You can have a room with a sea-view.  And even if you don’t, you’ll be close to the sea. We have either lunch or dinner together at the hotel, depending on the schedule that day ( such as if we have something planned like a boat trip around the island, where we swim in the pure blue sea).
And we do the sessions on the delightful roof-terrace: covered from the high sun, but with views both up to the volcano and out to sea.
Stromboli is the perfect place for the work we do on our F**k It Retreats.  It supports and reinforces the life-transforming work. Well, Stromboli is the perfect place, full-stop.
Travelling to Stromboli (in brief):
stromboliWhen you’re on Stromboli, it feels like you’re on the edge of the world.  And, even though you’re in Europe, within reach of airports that are served by the budget airlines, getting there feels like quite an adventure.
We will give you (very) detailed instructions once you book (in your ‘holiday pack’), but, briefly…
We will also invite you to a private group online so that you can talk to other guests who are coming on the same week, and thus meet and share taxis, and sit with each other on the hydrofoil, etc., if you fancy.
For years, we’ve kept our advice on how to get there simple: fly to Naples (Napoli); get a taxi across town to the port; get the once-a-day hydrofoil to Stromboli (which takes 5 hours); then get the hotel to meet you at the Stromboli port with one of their golf-carts (there are no cars on the island).
But recently we’ve been giving other options too. By choosing to fly to Sicily, for example (such as to ‘Catania’), and then take a shuttle bus (they go regularly, take around 2 hours and cost around €50) across to the port of Milazzo, you can reduce both the time and cost of your hydrofoil (or ferry) trip.  The hydrofoils go around 5 times a day, take between 1 and 3 hours, depending on the one you choose and cost around €50/60. That’s the option we now take (we fly from Gatwick to Catania).
Also bear in mind that this is a FABULOUS part of the world, so do put aside time at the beginning or end of your retreat for some island hopping (the Aeolians are a UNESCO heritage area) or city visiting (Palermo or Napoli for example).

YUM HOTEL

THE HOTEL IS ON THE BEACH – AND THIS IS THE VIEW

“JOHN, LONG STORY SHORT, YOU CHANGED MY LIFE,
SO THANK YOU AND…  I’LL BE BACK.”
D.T., NEW YORK