Are you someone who experiences the world deeply – feeling, thinking and sensing with depth and intuition? Do you often find yourself moved by beauty, truth and energy? Are you empathetic, imaginative and deeply sensitive?
Do you yearn for deeper meaning? Maybe you carry powerful gifts – intuitive, emotional, or artistic – that have been overlooked, dismissed or misunderstood? Are you longing for a space to rest, discover and truly belong? If so, you belong here – with us. Welcome to SENSE, a sanctuary for sensitivity.
SENSE is a new kind of retreat which celebrates and supports the needs, values and gifts of sensitive people. Co-founded by Kirsty and Catherine, two deeply sensitive people who are passionate about inclusion and the right to personal growth, SENSE is more than a gathering: it’s a movement.
The SENSE Retreat is held at Broughton Sanctuary, an award-winning retreat space which offers deeply sensitive people the optimal conditions for deep rest. This ancient site houses the historic Broughton Hall and state of the art Avalon wellbeing centre, at the foothills to the idyllic Yorkshire Dales National Park. With extensive indoor and outdoor resources, it is the perfect place for deeply sensitive people to experience rejuvenation and to thrive.
A sensory sanctuary for deep feelers, thinkers and seekers, SENSE is the first retreat of its kind to be consciously and inclusively designed for people who experience the world in nuanced, profound ways.
With sensitivity to the culture of labels and identities, they enthuse that all who resonate with their message are very welcome. Whether you identify, for example, as a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), are neurodivergent (eg autistic, ADHD, AuDHD), an empath, a creative, or are on a journey of self-discovery without any labels at all, you are welcome here.
Why SENSE, and why now?
The retreat celebrates everyone – that is, neurodiversity in all its forms – and prides itself on being neuroinclusive, something that Catherine (who herself is autistic) says matters when safe places, faces and spaces aren’t always experienced, especially in the wellbeing space. Retreat culture often overlooks those who experience the world deeply and differently.
Catherine and Kirsty noticed this gap firsthand. Many retreats, they observed, are structured around activities, schedules and spaces that are overwhelming (such as enforced talking sticks and group sharing, or an expectation of ‘showing up’ for everything with a smiling Zen glow) but also siloed by design, prioritising uniformity over individuality. For people who are deeply sensitive, these settings can often feel overstimulating and emotionally unsafe.
So, they created something different: a place where everyone is met exactly where they are. Where diversity is welcomed, and labels, where used, are not dismissive but honoured as ways of understanding and affirming identity. Where small talk is optional, silence is respected, and there is dedicated space for all forms of rest – especially sensory rest.
Between them, Catherine and Kirsty landed on the term ‘deeply sensitive people’ because they know that language can be exclusionary. Together, they wanted to create a gathering for a journey of restoration, exploration and personal empowerment – with each of us arriving as we are, with our own way of being, feeling and sensing in the world.
Meet the co-founders of SENSE
Kirsty is a psychologist and esoteric practitioner focused on researching the gifts of consciousness (creativity, intuition, empathy, imagination and psychic phenomena) and the intersection with sensory processing. She is also a certified psychological wellbeing and guided self-help professional, an HSP coach, author of the self-help book IF: Ironic Fundamentalism – A Journey from Anxiety to Enlightenment and founder of The IF Crowd, an inclusive online club for people who think and feel deeply.
She is an advocate for what she calls ‘sensitive magic’. This is an innate capacity that deeply sensitive people have to sense into collective needs and respond as the natural healers and shamans of their communities, to understand subtle patterns and predict trends, and to know the fall of unlikely probabilities and respond in advance. Kirsty is also the research director of Wyrd Experience, and a consultant to consciousness tech and wellbeing companies.
Kirsty, whose work focuses on traits, states of consciousness and collective growth, guides the discovery and innovation aspects of the retreat. Her sessions invite guests to inquire deeply into their inner landscapes and explore how sensitivity can inform personal and collective transformation.
Catherine has dedicated her work to creating more inclusive, compassionate and human spaces. A former NHS strategist and integrative psychotherapist turned author and consultant, she works at the intersection of inclusion, neurodivergence, mental health and trauma-informed systems design, especially for those who have been historically marginalised. She founded the globally recognised podcast The Late Discovered Club, and her debut book
Rediscovered is a courageous, heart-led part-memoir, part-guide for late discovered autistic women. Her work honours both science and soul, weaving therapeutic insight, nature and somatic wisdom, and is grounded in deep compassion.
Once a place where Catherine practised in person as a psychotherapist pre-pandemic, Broughton Sanctuary became a place of personal healing over the last two years whilst Catherine was undergoing treatment for an aggressive form of breast cancer (twice). Now in remission, it has become the chosen home for the first SENSE retreat.
Their worlds converged in a synchronicity when Catherine was visiting for a regular float tank session, a key part of her healing. Kirsty was also visiting while she conducted research into floatation as a form of deep sensory rest and its capacity to promote precognition, and in the hydrotherapy pool, they bonded over a shared passion for inclusion and deep sensitivity. Together, they have brought the retreat to life.
Designed for deep sensitivity
At SENSE, the schedule is intentionally gentle and adaptive. Catherine brings a trauma-informed, experience-sensitive and neurodivergent-affirming approach, which is reflected in the scheduling of the retreat. She will be holding daily optional silent sensory spaces for those who need sensory respite, and a one-to-one emotional holding space for any guest who might need that safe, contained space for feelings and emotions that stir or surface throughout, or for any overwhelm that comes up.
Catherine recognises that shame and pain can weigh on us heavily, especially when we’ve spent a lifetime being told we’re ‘too sensitive’ or ‘too much’. As part of the retreat, she offers a guided fire meditation to help guests gently release what no longer belongs to them – the burdens, stories or expectations they’ve been carrying that were never truly theirs to hold.
The retreat also centres agency and autonomy for guests: for example, to choose where they eat, and an optional schedule of offerings. And if a morning nap is needed over an embodied movement session, we encourage guests to prioritise and honour what they need.
Catherine, a power chair user herself, recognises the co-occurrence of chronic illness and pain in sensitive and neurodivergent communities. For this reason the retreat offers a blend of science, art, gentle somatics, and philosophical soul.
A tapestry of experience
From stargazing to sound bathing, embodied movement to creative arts, SENSE invites participants to reconnect with their own rhythm. It’s a space to rest deeply, explore inner truth and connect meaningfully with others on a similar path.
Community and collaboration are key themes. The retreat is not just about personal restoration: it’s also about belonging and building networks, exchanging wisdom and imagining what a more sensitive, inclusive future could look like.
As well as profound rest and belonging, the retreat is also about discovery, suited to such deep thinkers and feelers. Very special guest facilitators have been invited in to share co-creative processes, delivering insights and practices for both wellbeing and real-time personal adventures at a deep level of personal inquiry.
The hosts also invite guests to be deeply curious and take part in playful science experiments, demonstrating extra-sensory perception and mind-matter interactions through technology and games, and offering real-time feedback in both solo adventures and shared experiences, too. Together, guests will explore how sensitivity can unlock creativity, deep interconnectivity with the weave of life itself, inspiring collective evolution.
SENSE is rooted in the belief that sensitivity is not a weakness, but a strength. That depth of perception, empathy, imagination and intuition are qualities our world needs more of, not less. Together, we will honour our stories, celebrate our sensitivity – and weave a little magic as we sense the future together, too.
Guests will leave not only soothed and seen, but activated. With a clearer sense of self, a supportive new community and a renewed call to use their sensitivity as a force for transformation, they step back into the world with the self-empowerment to create lasting change.
