THE SLOTH RETREAT: A NERVOUS SYSTEM RESET

Saturday 3 October 2026 | 10:30am–6pm

📍 Tsavo Lounge at The Reserve, Chester Zoo

⏳Just 20 places - Booking closes 20.09.2026

Join meditation teacher and author Felix New and Mo, founder of Soul Space Chester, for a special full-day nervous-system retreat inside Chester Zoo.

Your ticket includes:

• Chester Zoo entry (rated the UK’s #1 zoo on Tripadvisor)
• Our private luxury retreat lounge
• Buffet lunch and refreshments
• Guided meditations for nervous system regulation
• Immersive wireless-headphone Yoga Nidra with Mo
• Private ranger Sloth Talk & guided Discovery Walk
• Take-home tools for slowing down

...and more!

Inspired by the radically unhurried life of the sloth, this retreat is an invitation to explore the inner pressure to keep doing, fixing, answering and moving on to the next thing.

Even when we stop physically, urgency can still be running quietly in the background:

I should be doing something.

I’ll rest when everything else is finally taken care of.

Real responsibilities, pressures and challenges are part of life. Here, we’ll make room to notice how we carry them—and what may be driving us from within.

Through meditation, immersive Yoga Nidra, grounding, gentle parts work and shared reflection, we’ll explore how to create more space around urgency, meet ourselves with greater compassion and still do what needs to be done—with a little more softness around the edges.

You’ll also take home simple practices to support a calmer relationship with everyday life.

No meditation experience needed.

There’s no pressure to meditate perfectly.

There’s no requirement to become a different person.

Just a day to rest, notice what’s happening within you and explore what it might feel like to move through life with a little less inner pressure.

Early bird: £111 — until 18 September
Full price: £179 — from 19 September

Please book by 20th September so we can confirm your place and dietary requirements with Chester Zoo. Later bookings won't be possible.

The beautiful Tsavo Lounge at The Reserve, Chester Zoo’s five-star lodge, will be reserved privately for our small group.

Across the day, we’ll move between mindful exploration of the zoo, guided sessions with Felix, an immersive headphone experience with Mo, nourishing food, a private Chester Zoo ranger talk and Discovery Walk, time with the sloths and—importantly—genuine space where nothing needs to happen.

For once, somebody else will be holding the schedule.

You just get to be there.

• Full-day guided retreat from 10:30am–6pm

• Entry to Chester Zoo (usually £35 per person)

• Private use of Tsavo Lounge at The Reserve (unique opportunity!)

• Guided sessions and meditation with Felix New

• Full immersive wireless-headphone experience with Mo

• Buffet lunch (served in our private lounge)

• Refreshments throughout the day

• Private Chester Zoo ranger Sloth Talk

• Private Ranger-led Discovery Walk

• Time together at the sloth habitat

• Exclusive Sloth Prep audio one week before the retreat

• Optional pre-retreat WhatsApp group
• Take-home practices for more calm in your daily life

• A deliberately small and intimate group of just 20 participants

Not just a zoo visit. Not just a meditation workshop. A full day with two dedicated retreat facilitators, a private retreat space, immersive meditation, ranger-led discovery, lunch and refreshments—all in one ticket. Reconnect with yourself and take home practices that reach beyond the day. Come as you are - we’ll take care of the rest.

Felix New is a meditation teacher and author whose work has explored meditation, emotional wellbeing and personal development for more than a decade.

Through his guided meditations and music, Felix has built an international community of more than 20,000 people, with his work played over a million times. Drawing on lived experience, parts work and somatic practices, he helps people create more space around inner tension and pressure—and explore a gentler way of being with themselves.

The Sloth Retreat didn’t come from Felix having perfected the art of being calm. In many ways, it came from knowing the opposite very well.

Having experienced chronic fatigue when he was younger, Felix had to learn to relate to energy conservation in a very real way. Years later, a period of intense anxiety introduced him to inner urgency like never before.

Felix says: “This retreat is an invitation to explore these shared human experiences together. It isn’t about having everything figured out—it’s about being willing to show up as you are.”

Mo is the founder of Soul Space Chester, a yoga and meditation teacher, breathwork facilitator and creator of Breath of the Soul.

Her work brings together breath, meditation, sound, somatic awareness and deeply immersive experiences that invite people out of the noise of everyday life and into a more honest connection with themselves.

Having created and held transformational spaces for hundreds of people, Mo brings warmth, intuition and a grounded understanding of the nervous system to the day.

Mo says: “You spend so much of life doing and giving. This is a day to receive—to slow down, listen to yourself and let yourself be supported.”

A LOW-DISTRACTION DAY 📵

We’d love the retreat to feel like a genuine break from everyday stimulation, so we’ll invite everyone to keep phones tucked away for much of the day.

There will absolutely be opportunities to take photographs—we are at Chester Zoo, after all!

During meditations, immersive experiences and some of our time together, however, we’ll encourage you to give yourself the unusual luxury of being completely present.

BOOKINGS

To help us prepare your day, please book by Saturday 20 September. This is when we need to confirm participant numbers, details and dietary requirements with Chester Zoo.

Bookings will close on 20th September.

You may cancel up to 14 days before the retreat—19 September—for a refund of your ticket price, less any non-refundable processing fees.

After this deadline, tickets are non-refundable, as costs and arrangements for our small-group retreat will already have been committed.

If you can no longer attend, please contact us. Where possible, we’ll help arrange a transfer of your place to another person, subject to Chester Zoo’s requirements.

If we cancel the retreat, you will receive a full refund.

Tickets until 18.09: Early Bird - £111

From 19.09 tickets: Full Price - £179

⏳Only 20 tickets available. - Booking closes 20.09.2026

Where could 10% less pressure make a difference in your life?

Perhaps this is your invitation to find out.

IMPORTANT VENUE INFORMATION

The Sloth Retreat is independently organised by Felix New and Soul Space Chester.

Chester Zoo is the host venue only and does not organise, sponsor or endorse this retreat.

Info: We’ll begin at 10:30am with refreshments, introductions and time to arrive in our private retreat base at Tsavo Lounge.
There’s no rushing straight into the programme.

Info: From our lounge, we’ll head together into Chester Zoo’s Heart of Africa. Located directly next to our lounge, we'll be immersed in Chester Zoo's brand new 22-acre habitat. 57 species including giraffes, zebras, and ostriches living side by side.
Looking. Listening. Feeling our feet as we walk.
Noticing the impulse to get to the next thing. Beginning to enter Sloth Space.

Info: Back at Tsavo, Felix will guide an exploration of inner urgency, parts work, Sloth Space and the possibility of feeling “safe enough” in the present moment.
Instead of trying to force ourselves to feel calm or push away the parts of us that worry and rush, we’ll explore what happens when we meet them with awareness, acknowledgement and curiosity.
We’ll then move into a grounding meditation so these ideas can be experienced rather than simply understood.

Info: We’ll share a nourishing buffet lunch in our private lounge.
There is no prize for finishing first.
There’ll be time to enjoy the food, connect with others and let lunch be part of the retreat—not just another thing to fit in.

Info: After lunch, Mo will guide a full immersive headphone experience.
For an hour, Mo’s voice, music and wireless headphones will create a world within the retreat—a deeply nourishing space to breathe, experience and connect with yourself.

Info: Nothing in particular.
Rest. Journal. Chat. Look out of the window. Do what you please.
Perhaps there is something to discover simply by noticing:
What happens inside me when nothing is being asked of me?

Info: Later in the afternoon, a Chester Zoo ranger will join us privately in Tsavo Lounge for a Sloth Talk and an introduction to the Five Pathways to Nature.
Our ranger will then lead us on a Discovery Walk through the zoo, eventually bringing us to the sloth habitat.
We’ll spend time with the animals that inspired the retreat before making our own slow journey back through the zoo towards The Reserve.

Info: Back at Tsavo Lounge, we’ll bring the day together.
We’ll reflect on what we noticed and consider:
Where could 10% less pressure make a difference in your life?
We’ll finish with a closing meditation before saying goodbye at 6pm.

Event venue

The Reserve at Chester Zoo, The Reserve Chester Zoo, Upton, United Kingdom

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