I work with a lot of entrepreneurs, and lately I have become increasingly concerned by how much money people are spending before their businesses have really had a chance to become businesses.

There seems to be an assumption that starting a company means immediately assembling all the things a “real” company is supposed to have: the software, the office, the insurance policies, the subscriptions, the sophisticated systems, the branding, the technology stack, the advertising budget and sometimes even a team. Yet every one of those decisions creates overhead, and overhead has a way of quietly turning an exciting new venture into a monthly financial obligation before the business has even proven what it actually is.

That matters because most businesses do not begin as the business they eventually become.

Especially for a solopreneur, the first few years are often an extended period of discovery. You think you know your customer, and then a different type of customer starts hiring you. You think you know your service, and then one small part of that service becomes the thing people actually want. You create one offer, refine it, abandon part of it, combine it with something else, discover a niche you never expected and slowly begin recognizing where your real value sits in the market.

A young business can move through several renditions before it finally takes hold. That is not necessarily a sign that something has gone wrong. It is often simply how entrepreneurship works.

In my own current business, it took roughly three years before the niche became established enough that I felt comfortable spending money on certain systems and infrastructure. During those years, the business changed. The customers changed. The services changed. The language I used to describe the work changed, and so did the opportunities that began coming through the door. What I originally imagined the business becoming was not exactly what ultimately emerged.

I am grateful I did not build an expensive operational structure around the earliest version of it.

Yet I regularly see new entrepreneurs investing immediately in things I waited years to purchase. They buy sophisticated software, sign leases, subscribe to multiple platforms, build elaborate funnels, start paying for advertising and create complicated operating systems for a company that has barely begun operating.

Then six months or a year later, the business evolves and much of what they built is no longer relevant. At that point they are not simply changing their business model. They are trying to unwind the infrastructure they built around the old one.

This is particularly easy to do with software.

Software-as-a-Service has made starting a business easier in many ways, but it has also made accumulating overhead incredibly easy. A platform might only cost $39 a month. Another is $79. Another is $149. Then there is a CRM, scheduling software, email marketing, accounting, project management, client portals, automation tools, AI subscriptions, website applications, payment software and analytics.

The opposite can be just as problematic. An entrepreneur can purchase one expensive all-in-one SaaS platform that promises to do everything, while ultimately using only a small part of what it offers.

It can sound appealing to have one system that includes CRM, scheduling, invoicing, email campaigns, funnels, automations, courses, memberships, analytics and dozens of other functions. But more capability is not necessarily more useful. In an early-stage business, it can simply create more complexity.

There is also often far more repetition in a software stack than people realize. Your website may include email marketing. Your CRM may include email marketing. Your scheduling platform stores client information. Your payment processor stores client information. Your project-management software includes forms and automation, while another platform you pay for does many of the same things.

Before long, you may be paying several companies to solve variations of the same problem.

The larger risk is that you can accidentally build your business into the software itself. Your client information lives there. Your workflows live there. Your automations, intake forms, payments and communications begin depending on it. Eventually, leaving becomes difficult, even if the system is no longer a good fit.

For a mature company, sophisticated software can create enormous leverage. For an early-stage entrepreneur, it can just as easily create technological inertia before the business model has stabilized.

I have experienced a version of this in my own business. I spent time building out a blog on my website and eventually abandoned it for Substack. Substack was not simply another publishing tool. It was already where a significant portion of the people I wanted to reach were spending time, including many clients and professional connections.

The better decision was not to continue investing in the infrastructure I had already built simply because I had built it. It was to go where the audience already was.

That is another part of lean entrepreneurship that gets overlooked. Sometimes the best decision is not adding a new platform or expanding an existing system. Sometimes it is recognizing that a simpler path has emerged and being willing to follow it.

Years ago, a billionaire friend of mine who made his money in technology gave me a piece of advice I have never forgotten. He told me not to develop software until I had completely grown out of what already existed.

His advice was to cobble together the free and inexpensive tools already available, use spreadsheets and simple systems, and operate the business long enough to discover where the real friction actually existed. Only after the available tools had clearly become insufficient would it make sense to design something custom.

What I appreciate about that advice is that it allows the business to reveal its actual needs before you begin designing infrastructure around them. You are not building a system around a theory of how the company might operate. You are building it around evidence of how the company actually operates.

I think the same principle applies far beyond technology.

Take office space. An entrepreneur may decide that an office is necessary because they intend to see clients in person. My instinct is to question the assumption underneath that decision.

Do the clients actually need to be seen in person? Could some or all of those meetings happen on Zoom? Could you rent a professional office, treatment room or conference space by the hour or by the day when a client is actually booked? Could you meet at the client’s location instead?

There is also a larger question worth asking. Are you even certain that the final version of the business will depend on local, in-person clients?

You may think today that you are building a local practice, only to discover in a year that your strongest offer is consulting, education, advisory work or another service that can be sold nationally or globally. If that happens, the office you once considered foundational may turn out to have had very little relationship to the business you ultimately built.

This is why I try to question the assumption underneath every significant expense. If someone believes they need an office, I want to understand why. If they think they need a particular software platform, I want to know exactly what problem it is solving today. If they believe they need a full-time employee, I want to know whether there is actually forty hours of work. If they think they need a custom website or complex automation, I want to know what the simpler version is unable to do.

The goal is not to talk yourself out of spending money indefinitely. It is to make sure that every expense is solving a real problem rather than supporting an imagined future version of the company.

I recently spoke with someone starting a company who was preparing to purchase business insurance before having any clients. Depending on the industry, certain coverage may of course be required before work can begin, and those requirements should always be taken seriously. But there is a difference between being prepared for an expense and carrying that expense for months before it becomes necessary.

You can get the quote, understand the requirements, establish the relationship with the broker and know exactly what needs to happen before the first contract begins. Then the policy can be activated when the work actually arrives.

I know another entrepreneur who purchased an expensive SaaS platform to manage her practice. It offers an impressive range of features, but it also has far more functionality than she currently understands or needs. Meanwhile, the practice itself is still being defined.

Another is paying for office space to see clients while still working on attracting the clients who might someday sit in that office.

These decisions are understandable. Starting a company is exciting, and purchasing the infrastructure of a business can create a sense of legitimacy. But infrastructure does not necessarily create demand. Customers, revenue and a valuable offer are what begin shaping a durable company.

Advertising is another area where entrepreneurs can get ahead of themselves.

There is often a rush to start paying for ads because paid promotion feels like the obvious next step once a business exists. Before spending money to find an audience, however, I usually want to know whether that audience is already gathered somewhere else.

Facebook groups are a good example. If there is already a well-engaged group filled with your target customer, there may be little reason to immediately pay to put an advertisement in front of the same type of person.

A well-chosen group can offer market research, visibility, relationships and leads. By participating in the conversation, answering questions, sharing expertise and paying attention to the language people use to describe their problems, you learn a great deal about the market before spending money to reach it.

This is a strategy I use often. It is not about dropping promotional posts into every group you can find. It is about becoming a useful participant in communities where your ideal clients already spend time.

I approach social media in much the same way. Rather than creating completely separate content for every platform, I tend to stack the work. I may write one substantive article on Substack, share that thinking on LinkedIn, bring part of the conversation into relevant Facebook groups, adapt another section into a shorter post and then use the comments and responses to shape the next piece of writing.

One piece of thinking can travel through several channels.

That not only reduces the workload. It also allows you to see where the response actually comes from. Perhaps LinkedIn is where professional clients engage. Perhaps Facebook groups consistently create conversations and referrals. Perhaps Substack becomes where deeper relationships form. Another platform may generate visibility but little actual business.

You learn that by using the channels first.

Then, if you eventually decide to advertise, you are doing it with much better information. You know which message resonates, which audience responds, which offer generates interest and which channel appears connected to actual revenue.

At that point, advertising can become a way to amplify something that is already working rather than an expensive experiment designed to discover what your business should be.

The same principle applies to hiring people and professional expertise.

Today, a founder has access to an extraordinary range of support. There is AI, virtual assistants, freelancers, strategists, accountants, attorneys and specialized consultants. Lean entrepreneurship does not mean avoiding outside expertise. It means understanding which level of support is appropriate for which kind of problem.

I am a strategist, and my consulting rate is $150 an hour. There are situations where paying that rate makes perfect sense. A business owner might bring me in to look at the business model, identify opportunities, clarify the customer, refine the offer, develop the marketing strategy and determine what systems should be built next.

That is strategic work.

It would make very little sense, however, to pay me $150 an hour to spend several hours scheduling social media posts or entering information into a spreadsheet. Once the strategy has been created, I will often recommend onboarding a part-time virtual assistant who may cost around $10 an hour to handle many of the repetitive tasks required to keep that strategy moving.

The distinction is not simply about hourly rates. It is about using the appropriate level of expertise for the appropriate level of work.

The strategist should be helping determine what needs to happen, in what order and why. Once a process is understood, a lower-cost assistant can often execute the recurring administrative work. Paying senior-level rates for repetitive tasks is unnecessary, but handing important strategic decisions to the lowest-cost person available can be equally expensive in the long run.

I think about accountants and attorneys in a similar way. There are moments when specialized professional expertise is absolutely worth paying for. Someone who has spent years developing judgment in a particular field can help structure something correctly, identify a risk or prevent a costly mistake.

That does not mean every preliminary question requires a billable hour.

AI has changed that equation considerably.

There are many things today that I would once have hired a consultant, researcher, copywriter, creative agency or junior team member to help with that I can now explore first with AI.

I use ChatGPT frequently as a preliminary layer of thinking. Before contacting an attorney, for example, I may use AI to help me understand terminology, organize the facts, identify the questions I should be asking and get a general sense of the landscape. If the issue then requires legal advice, I can go to the attorney with a much clearer and more focused question.

That does not make AI my attorney. It makes me a more prepared client.

The same approach can apply to accounting, technology, marketing, contracts, research and many other areas. AI can help explore possibilities, compare approaches, organize information, draft questions, analyze options and complete a significant amount of preliminary work before a specialist becomes necessary.

It has also changed the economics of creative work. A small business once might have needed an agency for basic copy, content planning, research, presentation development, brainstorming or early-stage brand exploration. Today, a founder who knows how to work effectively with AI can often do much of that work independently before deciding where human judgment and experience would genuinely add value.

The important distinction is not whether AI can technically produce something. It is whether the task requires judgment, responsibility or expertise that should remain with a qualified professional.

Where legal liability, taxes, regulatory compliance, engineering, medical decisions or other specialized matters are involved, there are points where professional advice may be essential. But AI can still help a business owner arrive at that conversation better informed and better prepared.

In practical terms, I often think the leanest structure for a young company is relatively simple. Use AI where it can reduce unnecessary research, production and preliminary thinking. Use a virtual assistant for repeatable administrative execution once the process is understood. Bring in experienced professionals at the points where strategy, judgment or specialized knowledge materially affects the outcome.

Meanwhile, the founder should remain focused on the things that are most difficult to outsource early on: understanding the customer, building relationships, developing the offer, recognizing patterns in the market, making decisions and generating revenue.

This is another reason I think entrepreneurs need to become comfortable asking why before they spend. Why am I hiring this person? Am I paying them to think or to execute? Could AI help me prepare this first? Could a virtual assistant handle this once the process is established? Do I genuinely need a specialist, and if so, what specifically do I need that specialist to solve?

Those questions can dramatically change the cost of building a company.

I think we sometimes misunderstand the earliest stage of entrepreneurship because we treat it like a miniature version of a mature company. In reality, the early stage is largely a period of research.

Your first customers are teaching you what business you are actually in. Your early offers are experiments. Your pricing is an experiment. Your marketing is an experiment. Even your assumptions about who the customer is may still be changing.

You are learning who wants what you offer, why they want it, what part they are willing to pay for, what language helps them understand the value, what takes too much time, what can be eliminated and what repeatedly creates the most value.

Until those answers begin becoming clear, it makes sense to be cautious about creating fixed infrastructure around assumptions that may not survive contact with the market.

This is what I mean when I talk about lean entrepreneurship.

Lean does not mean sloppy, nor does it mean avoiding necessary professional obligations. It does not mean operating without required insurance, contracts, accounting, compliance or risk management. It means understanding the difference between necessary infrastructure and premature infrastructure.

A lean entrepreneur can be extremely prepared. They may already have an insurance quote waiting, know which software they will migrate to when the current system becomes unmanageable, have identified an office they can rent by the day when in-person meetings increase, or know which contractor or virtual assistant they will bring in when the workload reaches a certain point.

They simply do not activate every possible expense before the business gives them a reason to.

One of the greatest assets a young company has is its ability to change quickly. A solopreneur can refine an offer, adjust pricing, serve a different market, drop a service that is not working or add one that customers keep requesting with relatively little disruption.

Every piece of fixed infrastructure reduces some of that flexibility. A lease makes changing locations harder. Employees make changing an operating model more complicated. Custom software makes changing processes harder. Complex automation makes changing a customer journey more difficult. Expensive SaaS can make changing platforms painful. Debt adds pressure to almost every decision.

This is why I see low overhead as more than a financial strategy. It protects adaptability.

There will eventually come a point when the right software saves substantial amounts of time, an office improves the customer experience, hiring creates capacity, advertising expands a proven acquisition channel, automation creates meaningful leverage or custom technology becomes a competitive advantage.

Those investments are not the problem.

The question is whether the business has actually grown into them.

Before taking on a new expense, I think it is worth asking whether the business needs it today or whether it belongs to the version of the company you imagine having later. It is also worth asking what would actually happen if you waited.

If a spreadsheet still works, there may be no urgency to replace it. If you can rent a room when a client books, a lease may not yet be necessary. If a lower-cost platform performs the functions you currently need, a larger system may not improve the business. If a process can still be handled manually in a few minutes, an elaborate automation system may be solving a problem that has not yet developed.

If the business changes direction six months from now, you may be very grateful that changing direction does not require dismantling an entire operating system first.

A startup benefits from being light enough to move while the market is still teaching you what the business wants to become. As the customers become clearer, the offer becomes clearer. As the niche becomes clearer, the right systems usually become clearer too.

The goal of lean entrepreneurship is not to build the cheapest business possible. It is to avoid carrying unnecessary weight while the business is still finding its shape, and to spend money where it produces the greatest amount of real leverage once the need has actually emerged.

There is a moment I see happen with a lot of entrepreneurs. They finally get their branding together. The logo looks good, the colors make sense, the website feels polished, and the photography is beautiful. Their Instagram suddenly looks like an actual business instead of a collection of unrelated ideas.

And then they wait for the business to happen.

Somewhere along the way, branding and business strategy became almost interchangeable. We have been taught that if we can just get the right website, the right social media presence, the right messaging, and a beautiful enough brand, the clients will come.

Sometimes they do.

But your brand is not your strategy.

Your brand is how the business is expressed. Strategy is deciding what business you should actually be building in the first place.

That distinction matters enormously.

When I start working with a client, I do not begin by asking what color they want their website to be. I do not even begin by asking what they want to sell.

I want to understand their life.

What do you actually want your days to look like? How much do you want to work? Where do you want to live? Do you want to travel? Do you want employees? Do you want to manage people? Do you want to be on calls all day? Do you want to work directly with clients, or would you eventually rather create something that can exist without you?

How much money do you actually need to make for the life you want? And perhaps more importantly, what are you willing—and unwilling—to trade for that money?

Then we look at what you are extraordinarily good at, what people already come to you for, what you have learned through your career and your life, what resources and relationships already exist around you, what parts of your current work give you energy, and which parts you secretly never want to do again.

That is where business strategy starts.

I am not particularly interested in helping someone build a highly successful business they are going to hate running.

And it happens all the time.

Someone creates an offer because that is what people in their industry sell. They build a course because everyone tells them they need passive income. They launch a membership because recurring revenue sounds great. They hire employees because they think growth means building a team. They start posting constantly because someone told them consistency is the secret to social media.

Suddenly, they have built themselves another job—except now they own all of the problems.

A good strategy works in the opposite direction.

We start with the future.

If your life is working beautifully three years from now, what does it look like? What does the business look like inside that life?

Then we work backward.

Maybe you do not need fifty clients. Maybe you need six exceptionally good ones.

Maybe you do not need a giant audience. Maybe you need to become incredibly well known within one very specific industry.

Maybe the service you are currently selling should actually become intellectual property, a licensing model, a book, a methodology, a product, a partnership, or an evergreen offer.

Maybe the business you have been trying desperately to grow is actually the vehicle that finances the business you really want to build.

Maybe the answer is not more.

Maybe it is better.

This is also why I look at the whole business rather than treating marketing, branding, operations, pricing, offers, and lifestyle as separate conversations. They are not separate.

Your pricing determines what kind of clients you need. Your client base determines how much time you spend delivering. Your delivery model determines how much freedom you have. Your positioning determines who finds you. Your marketing determines what they understand about you before they ever speak to you. Your systems determine whether growth makes your life easier or creates chaos. And your own vision determines whether any of it is actually worth building.

Once we understand all of that, branding becomes incredibly powerful.

Now we know what the brand needs to communicate. We know who it is speaking to, what it should feel like, where it sits in the market, and what the customer needs to understand immediately. We know what you are selling today and what the company may grow into tomorrow.

The logo, website, photography, language, and visual identity become an expression of an actual strategy instead of beautiful decoration sitting on top of an unclear business.

And yes, I love the brand part.

I love watching something go from scattered and homemade to cohesive and unmistakably itself. There is enormous value in giving a business a visual identity that finally matches the quality of the work behind it.

But I do not want to make something look expensive if we have not figured out how it makes money.

I do not want to build you an audience without knowing where we are taking them.

I do not want to create demand for an offer you do not actually want to spend the next five years delivering.

And I definitely do not want to help you build a business that looks incredible from the outside while quietly consuming the life you were hoping the business would give you.

Your brand matters.

But the brand comes after a much bigger question:

What are we actually building?

And then:

What kind of life is it supposed to create?

That is strategy.

I learned a new term today: male blindness.

I was cleaning and organizing the tool room at the job site where I’ve been working. It had gotten to the point where I couldn’t stand it anymore. Tools were everywhere, materials didn’t have obvious homes, and things that should have taken seconds to find required searching. The space wasn’t functioning as a system, so I cleaned it.

One of the guys walked in afterward and was genuinely stoked about what I’d done. Then he said, almost casually, “Yeah, my wife calls it male blindness.” I stopped because the phrase immediately clicked. That was the thing I’d been observing for years without having a name for it.

Some of the most successful businessmen I’ve worked with can operate incredibly complex companies, negotiate deals, build things, manage employees, and make enormous decisions, yet somehow live surrounded by a level of physical disorder that makes me want to crawl out of my skin. And often, they simply don’t seem to see it.

I do.

I don’t just prefer order. I have an almost visceral reaction to disorder. I have difficulty functioning when the environment around me is chaotic. When I walk onto a disorganized job site, I immediately start seeing everything that isn’t working. I notice the tool that has no designated place, the materials that should have been staged before the crew arrived, the fifteen minutes being wasted looking for something that gets used all day, and the same small inefficiency repeating itself every morning. I don’t really have to look for these things. They practically announce themselves to me.

It has made me wonder whether this thing we jokingly call “male blindness” points toward something larger about masculine and feminine strengths. Obviously, not every woman is organized and not every man is oblivious to his environment, but there is a broader pattern worth considering.

Women have historically carried an enormous amount of what is now often called invisible or cognitive labor: noticing what is needed, remembering what is running out, anticipating what happens next, maintaining the environment, coordinating people, preparing ahead, and continually restoring order. Those things were easy to dismiss when they happened inside a home. Put those same abilities inside a company, though, and suddenly we call them operations, systems, management, and strategy.

I think that is fascinating.

When women entered the professional workforce in much larger numbers, many proved remarkably capable in management and executive roles. We usually discuss that through the lens of equality and opportunity, which is important, but I’m also interested in another question: what did women bring into organizations that perhaps hadn’t been adequately valued before?

Maybe part of it was the ability to see the environment as a system.

That certainly describes my own career. Years ago, when I was managing large construction projects, I wasn’t the person with the greatest physical strength on the job site. I couldn’t out-lift the guys, and that wasn’t my value. My value was that I could see the entire job.

I could see what needed to happen tomorrow while everyone else was working on today. I could see where labor was being wasted, when materials needed to arrive, which trade needed to finish before another could begin, where a bottleneck was developing, and what seemingly insignificant issue was going to become an expensive problem three days later. My job was to create order, and order creates efficiency.

A clean job site isn’t merely prettier. It’s faster and safer. Tools don’t disappear, materials don’t get damaged, and people aren’t stepping over yesterday’s work to accomplish today’s. Everyone knows where things belong, and their energy can go toward building instead of navigating chaos.

I didn’t understand then that the same ability would eventually make me a business strategist.

When I walk into a business now, I’m essentially doing the same thing. I see the pile of tools on the floor, except now they’re metaphorical. I see the duplicated process, the missing system, the employee doing something that should be automated, the customer falling through a gap, the service nobody quite understands, the founder spending hours doing a task someone else could handle, and the beautiful idea buried underneath years of accumulated clutter.

I want to clean the tool room.

Another conversation came up on the job site today that made the connection even clearer. Every substantial construction project needs both a superintendent and a project manager. The superintendent is in the field dealing with what is happening right now: the crew, subcontractors, equipment, scheduling changes, the concrete truck that is late, the measurements that don’t match the plans, and the thousand decisions required to keep the work moving.

The project manager has a different responsibility. That person has to stay far enough outside the immediate work to see the project as a whole: schedule, budget, procurement, sequencing, contracts, communication, and the problems that are coming three weeks from now.

Trying to do both at the same time is incredibly difficult, yet business owners do it constantly. They spend every day answering emails, dealing with employees, serving customers, fixing problems, paying invoices, ordering materials, and putting out fires. They are acting as the superintendent of their business, and somewhere in the middle of all of that they are also expected to become the project manager and ask where the company is actually going, what isn’t working, where money is being wasted, what opportunity is being missed, and what systems need to exist next.

It is difficult to see the entire construction project when you are standing in the trench.

Sometimes you need someone who is not in the trench.

Someone who can walk onto the site, look around, and immediately see what has become invisible to everyone else.

Maybe that is what I’ve actually been doing for people all these years. Whether I’m organizing a tool room, managing a construction project, walking into someone’s home, or analyzing their company, I’m doing essentially the same thing. I’m seeing disorder, seeing the system underneath it, and putting things back where they belong.

Maybe “male blindness” is just a funny term someone’s wife came up with. But today it made me realize that something our culture has often treated as women’s fussiness—the insistence that environments be maintained, details be attended to, and things be put in order—may actually be an extraordinarily valuable form of intelligence.

Someone has to see the whole. Someone has to notice what everyone else has stopped noticing. And sometimes the person standing outside the trench can see exactly what the person working inside it cannot.

I ask business owners all the time if they have a brand, and almost inevitably, they say, “Yes, I have a logo.” That is not what I asked. A logo is part of your brand. It can be an important part of your brand, but your logo is not your brand.

Your brand is the entire system that tells people who you are, what you do, who you are for, what you value, how you sound, how you look and, perhaps most importantly, how you make people feel. Your logo is simply one visual representation of all of that.

This distinction used to matter mostly to larger companies because developing a professional brand identity could be expensive. You might hire a branding agency, a designer, a copywriter, a photographer and a strategist just to get all the pieces aligned. Today, there is really no excuse for a business not to have at least a basic brand kit because AI has changed the accessibility of this dramatically.

You can sit down with ChatGPT and explain your business, your customer, your personality, your goals, the feeling you want the company to evoke, the businesses and aesthetics you are drawn to, and where you ultimately want the company to go. From that conversation, you can develop a surprisingly sophisticated brand foundation. That doesn’t mean AI replaces taste, experience or strategy. It means tools that used to be available primarily to companies with substantial marketing budgets are now available to almost everyone.

So what should actually be in a brand kit? At minimum, you should understand your brand positioning: what you do, who you do it for and why someone should choose you instead of another option. You should have a clear description of your ideal customer, not simply their age and income, but what they care about, what they’re looking for, what problem they’re trying to solve and what they want to feel when they encounter your business.

You should understand your brand personality. Are you sophisticated, warm, irreverent, minimal, rugged, rebellious, elegant, playful, academic or earthy? You should have a defined voice and tone so that whether someone is reading your website, an email, a social media post or a proposal, it feels like it came from the same company.

Then there is the visual identity. Yes, this includes your logo, but it also includes your primary and secondary fonts, color palette, logo variations, iconography, photography direction, graphic style, layouts and guidelines for how all of those pieces work together. You should know what kind of photographs belong in your brand and what kind absolutely do not. You should know whether your imagery is bright or moody, polished or candid, minimal or layered, contemporary or nostalgic. You should know whether your graphics use rounded edges or hard lines, whether your colors are saturated or muted and whether the overall visual language feels luxurious, approachable, playful, serious, masculine, feminine or somewhere in between.

Your brand kit should also address your messaging. What is the simplest way to explain what you do? What is your value proposition? What are the three or four ideas you want people to consistently associate with your company? What language do you repeatedly use, and what language do you intentionally avoid? What does your homepage say? What does your Instagram bio say? How do you introduce yourself in person? What do you want someone else to say about your company when you aren’t in the room?

All of that is branding, and once those decisions are made, running the business becomes so much easier. You’re no longer reinventing your Instagram every week or choosing random fonts in Canva. You’re not writing one webpage that sounds luxurious and another that sounds like your cousin posted it on Facebook. You’re not redesigning your business card every six months because something still feels off. You have a system, and every time the business shows up somewhere, it reinforces the same identity.

When I build or refine a brand with a client, what I am really trying to create is consistency between the quality of the business and the way the business presents itself to the world. There are some extraordinarily talented people running businesses that look dramatically less sophisticated than the work they actually do, and that costs them money.

People make assumptions very quickly. Before someone experiences your work, they experience your brand. They see your website. They see your photographs. They read a few sentences. They look at your Instagram. They notice your pricing and presentation. And consciously or unconsciously, they begin deciding where you belong in the market: inexpensive or premium, experienced or amateur, interesting or generic, trustworthy or questionable, relevant to them or not for them.

Your brand is helping people make those decisions whether you intentionally created it or not. Because every business already has a brand. The question is whether you designed yours.

The good news is that creating the foundation doesn’t have to be complicated anymore. You don’t need a fifty-page agency presentation to begin. You need clarity about who you are, who you’re talking to, what you want to communicate and how all of that should consistently show up visually and verbally. And ChatGPT is an incredibly useful tool for working through those decisions and turning them into an actual brand guide you can use.

So yes, get a great logo. Just don’t stop there. Your logo is not your brand. It’s one small piece of the much bigger story your business is telling every single day.

And if you’ve never actually created a full brand kit for your business, I’m going to make this ridiculously easy. I’ve created the AI prompt I use to help develop a complete brand foundation. You can grab it for free below, paste it into ChatGPT and start building yours.

AI Prompt: Build My Complete Brand Kit

I want you to act as a senior brand strategist, creative director and marketing strategist and help me develop a complete, cohesive brand foundation for my business.

Do not jump straight into creating the brand. First, interview me so you understand the business deeply. Ask me questions conversationally, in manageable groups, and use my answers to ask smarter follow-up questions. If I don’t know an answer, help me figure it out rather than simply moving on.

I want you to understand:

• What my business does and what I currently sell

• The products, services and offers I may want to sell in the future

• My short- and long-term vision for the company

• Who my ideal customers are

• What problems I solve for them

• What they want, value, fear, desire and aspire to

• Why someone should choose me instead of my competitors

• What makes my business genuinely different

• My experience, expertise, story and credibility

• The personality I want the brand to have

• How I want people to feel when they encounter the brand

• The brands, businesses, places, aesthetics and experiences I am naturally drawn to

• What I absolutely do not want my brand to look or sound like

• Where and how the brand will be used: website, social media, print, packaging, signage, presentations, advertising, etc.

• The price point and market position I want the brand to support

• Where I want this business to be in three to five years

Challenge me when my answers are vague, generic or inconsistent. Don’t simply agree with everything I say. Help me identify what is distinctive, ownable and strategically useful.

Once you have enough information, create a complete brand kit that includes:

Brand Foundation: Write a concise description of the brand, its purpose, mission, vision, values, positioning and unique value proposition. Define what category the business belongs in and where it should sit within that market.

Ideal Client: Develop a detailed ideal-client profile that goes beyond demographics. Explain what this person wants, what problem they are trying to solve, what motivates their buying decisions, what they value, what may prevent them from purchasing and what they need to believe before choosing this brand.

Brand Positioning: Explain how the business should be positioned relative to its competitors and identify the 3–5 ideas I should work to become known for. Include a clear positioning statement and a simple one- or two-sentence explanation of what the company does.

Brand Personality: Choose 4–6 defining personality traits and explain what each means in practice. Also define what the brand is not so future marketing doesn’t slowly drift away from the intended identity.

Voice & Tone: Create detailed guidelines for how the brand speaks and writes. Include vocabulary we should use, language and clichés we should avoid, sentence style, level of formality, sense of humor if appropriate, and examples showing what sounds “on brand” versus “off brand.”

Core Messaging: Develop the primary brand message, value proposition, tagline or tagline directions, elevator pitch, short company description, longer company description and key messaging pillars. Give me language I can actually use rather than generic marketing terminology.

Visual Direction: Recommend an overall visual identity that supports the positioning. Describe the aesthetic, mood and emotional impression the brand should create.

Color Palette: Recommend a primary and secondary color palette with HEX codes. Explain the role of each color and how it should be used rather than simply giving me a collection of colors.

Typography: Recommend specific, readily available fonts for headlines, subheads, body copy and accents if needed. Explain why they work together and provide alternatives if the first choices aren’t available.

Logo Direction: Do not simply generate a random logo. Give me 2–3 strategically appropriate logo directions, including wordmark, icon or monogram ideas where appropriate. Explain what the logo should communicate, how simple or complex it should be and what should be avoided.

Photography & Imagery: Create an art direction guide describing subject matter, composition, lighting, environments, people, styling, texture, editing and overall mood. Include specific examples of images that belong in the brand and images that do not.

Graphic System: Recommend supporting visual elements such as shapes, borders, line work, patterns, illustrations, icons, textures and layout principles so the brand can remain recognizable even when the logo isn’t present.

Brand Application: Show me how this identity should translate across my website, Instagram/social media, business cards, proposals, presentations, email marketing and any other important customer touchpoints for my particular business.

Quick-Reference Brand Guide: Finally, condense everything into a practical one-page reference that I can give to a graphic designer, web designer, virtual assistant, social media manager, copywriter or AI tool so they can create work that consistently stays on brand.

Make the recommendations specific to my business. Avoid generic branding language and trendy choices simply because they are popular right now. Every recommendation should have a strategic reason behind it.

Most importantly, build a brand that can grow with where this company is going — not just where it happens to be today.

Start by interviewing me. Do not create the brand kit until you’ve gathered enough information to understand the business.

One of the things I love most about my work as a business strategist is that I never quite know what seat I’m going to find myself sitting in next. Working across different industries means that one week I might be helping someone rethink a business model or build a brand, another week I’m looking at hospitality operations or construction projects, and occasionally I get handed something that takes me into an entirely different world.

This time, I got to be an editor.

Technically, I’ve been editing for years. I’ve edited my own publications, articles, and books, including Less, and I’m currently preparing to release my forthcoming book, The Restorative Power of Place. But Ed’s new book, This Generation, No Imagination, became my first official editing project for someone else, and I absolutely loved it.

Ed is a friend of mine, and when he first sent me the manuscript, the bones of a really good book were already there. More importantly, the stories were there. His voice was there. He had captured something I immediately recognized as worth preserving. What the manuscript needed was the kind of editing that would help those stories come through as clearly and powerfully as possible.

Working with Ari, my assistant, I was able to take Ed’s original manuscript through the kind of extensive refinement you would expect from a professional publishing process. We worked on structure, clarity, pacing, repetition, grammar, transitions, consistency, and all the little details that allow an author’s voice to shine without the mechanics of writing getting in the way.

That distinction mattered to me. I didn’t want to turn Ed into a different writer. I wanted the finished book to sound like Ed, only clearer, tighter, funnier where it was already funny, and more powerful where the stories deserved a little room to land.

The more I worked on it, the more I realized how much I genuinely loved this book.

On the surface, This Generation, No Imagination is a collection of stories about growing up in a completely different era. It is filled with the mischief, mayhem, questionable decisions, accidents, adventures, experiments, freedom, and occasional outright insanity that came with being a kid before parents could reach you by cell phone and before childhood took place within the boundaries of a screen.

Much of it is funny precisely because it feels almost unimaginable now. Kids disappeared for hours. They built things, broke things, wandered through neighborhoods and woods, and invented games out of whatever happened to be lying around. They got themselves into situations no parent today would deliberately approve of, figured out how to get themselves back out, and came home with stories.

There was no group text, no GPS location being shared with Mom, and no algorithm deciding what should hold their attention next. There was imagination because there had to be.

That is what makes this book more important than simply being an entertaining collection of childhood stories. As I edited it, I began thinking of This Generation, No Imagination almost as historical nonfiction. Not in the traditional sense of documenting presidents, wars, or major cultural events, but as a record of something equally revealing: everyday life.

It documents childhood, parenting, neighborhoods, friendships, freedom, boredom, risk, creativity, discipline, and independence. It captures the way people interacted with each other before digital technology became the background infrastructure of nearly every waking hour.

We talk constantly about what screens are doing to children today, and there is certainly plenty to discuss. But sometimes the clearest way to understand what has changed is not another argument about technology. Sometimes we need someone to show us what existed before it.

What did a ten-year-old do with an entire Saturday when nobody handed him a device? What happened when children were bored? How did friendships work when you couldn’t text each other? How did kids solve problems when an adult wasn’t immediately available? And how much trouble could a group of children get into when armed primarily with curiosity, bicycles, tools, dirt, imagination, and questionable judgment?

Ed can answer that last question particularly well.

Underneath the humor, that is what makes these stories so valuable. They preserve a reference point. We are raising children who have never experienced a world without the internet, and soon we will have generations of parents who never experienced one either. The ordinary details of pre-digital childhood, the things nobody thought to document because they seemed completely normal at the time, are becoming history.

Books like this give us a way to remember. Not because everything about the past was better, and not because we should attempt to recreate some romanticized version of another generation’s childhood, but because there were things we learned through freedom, boredom, physical play, face-to-face friendships, experimentation, consequences, responsibility, and occasionally getting ourselves into spectacular amounts of trouble.

There was something enormously human about it.

That is why I’m so excited to see This Generation, No Imagination become a real book and make its way into the world. I started this project thinking I was helping a friend publish his manuscript. Somewhere during the editing process, I realized we were also preserving a little piece of cultural history.

And I got another unexpected seat at the table in the process. Turns out, I really like this one.

This Generation, No Imagination is available now: Get the book on Amazon.

Watch for my forthcoming book, The Restorative Power of Place: How Travel and Hospitality Can Help Us Rest, Recover, and Reconnect, launching August 29.

I’ve always said, after spending years working in the trades in my early twenties, that it isn’t that women can’t do construction. I’ve met plenty of fabulous women in the trades. It’s that most women are smart enough not to.

Construction is hard. It’s hot, dirty, freezing, physically demanding work. Things are heavy. Everything seems to have sharp edges. You’re either sweating, covered in dust, soaking wet, frozen, or somehow experiencing several of those conditions simultaneously. I learned that pretty thoroughly in my early twenties when I somehow made my way onto a pipeline crew in New England.

The company was owned by an Italian man named Tony, who remains, to this day, one of the best excavator operators I have ever seen. Watching him operate a machine was almost like watching an artist work. He could make an excavator do things I didn’t know an excavator could do. Tony was also adamant that bumbetta were not supposed to be in construction.

I was the bumbetta.

I had originally met the crew while working as a subcontractor operating a tree spade, and by then I was dating the superintendent. Eventually, they needed a dump truck driver. I had my CDL, the guys talked Tony into letting me do it, and reluctantly, he agreed. I don’t think Tony had any particular interest in pioneering gender equality in construction. He needed someone who could drive the truck, and apparently everyone convinced him I wasn’t completely useless.

So I got my shot.

I can drive truck. I can operate the loader and the shovel. I can run equipment, learn quickly, keep up with what is happening around me and make myself useful. But I also started doing the other things I naturally do. I organized the job box, a 20’ shipping container jammed full of materials and tools. I kept track of what we were running low on. Our jobsite was too far out to conveniently run for coffee and donuts in the morning for our coffee break, so I started showing up with a thermos of coffee and something freshly baked every day. Coffee cake, muffins, whatever I had made that morning.

Nobody assigned me that job. I just saw something that would make the day better and did it. I took pride in having coffee ready when break time started and in knowing the things people needed were stocked and organized before they went looking for them.

That’s something I learned very young about jobsites: your value isn’t necessarily determined by whether you can lift the heaviest pipe.

Eventually winter came. If you’ve never worked construction through a New England winter, I don’t especially recommend adding it to your bucket list. I was actually looking forward to getting laid off. Construction slows down, crews get cut, and I figured I would get a nice little winter break to spend time with my family back in sunny Southern California.

Tony apparently had other ideas.

Guys with families got laid off, and I stayed. The same man who didn’t think women belonged in construction had apparently decided that this particular bumbetta was worth keeping. So that winter I learned to work through snow, sleet, freezing rain and the kind of cold that makes you question every life decision that led you to standing in a trench in a snowstorm in New England.

It was one of the best compliments I could have received. I had proven my worth, and I hadn’t done it by trying to out-man the men. I showed up. I could drive the truck. I could operate the equipment. I did my job. I paid attention. I stayed busy. If there wasn’t an immediate task to accomplish, I cleaned. If we needed materials, I would call ten places if that was what it took to get the best price. I found ways to make myself useful rather than waiting for somebody to hand me the next assignment.

More than twenty years later, apparently I still haven’t learned to stay off construction sites. At 46, despite having built an entirely different career, I still occasionally moonlight doing general labor, final cleanup, organization, material runs or whatever else needs to happen when somebody I know calls and says they need another set of hands.

This time, though, I volunteered.

I’ve worked my way onto my friend Topher’s crew here in Missouri because I want to learn earthbag construction from the inside out. I have plans for underground and natural structures on my own property, and I don’t want to understand them only from drawings, books, videos or a weekend workshop. I want to understand the intricacies of how these buildings actually go together.

At this point in my career, I also don’t have it in me to pay thousands of dollars to attend a construction course where I get to delicately place a few bags for the educational experience. Put me to work. I’ll learn that way.

On my first day, the Missouri heat nearly took me out. I overheated enough that I knew it was time to stop, get cold water on the back of my neck, cool myself down and get my body under control before my body made that decision for me. I knew better, and I know I’ll acclimate, but it was also a pretty immediate reminder that there are physical realities involved in this kind of work.

I heard that Topher doesn’t particularly want women doing this kind of hard physical labor, and frankly, I agree with him.

That doesn’t offend me. I can’t do the brawn required for some of the work onsite, and I don’t feel any need to pretend I can. Moving heavy earth by sheer strength is simply not in my repertoire. There are men on the crew who can lift, shovel, carry and move things with a physical power I do not possess. I am great at lighter, detailed work. I can operate equipment. I can organize. I can problem solve. I can keep moving. But there is a level of brute physical strength required for certain tasks that my body simply does not have.

I don’t see acknowledging that difference as diminishing women. I think pretending those differences don’t exist diminishes what women actually do bring to a situation.

One of the things I’ve noticed over decades of being around construction is that when I’m on a crew, I naturally tend to end up in the role of brain over brawn. There is enormous value in that because a functioning jobsite isn’t just a collection of people lifting heavy things. Somebody has to notice what is about to run out before it runs out. Somebody needs to know where the tools wandered off to. Somebody needs to make the material run, organize the work area, keep supplies stocked, clean up yesterday’s disaster, remember the twelve things everybody else forgot and anticipate the problem that is going to stop production two hours from now if nobody handles it.

I stay busy. If there isn’t a task immediately in front of me, I find one. I clean. I organize. I straighten things out so the next person isn’t searching for something they need. If we need materials, I’ll call ten suppliers and find out who has them, who can get them there fastest and who has the best price. I’ll run into town. I’ll pick up what we forgot. I’ll figure out the next logistical problem before it becomes everybody else’s problem.

And I take pride in the little things that make a workday more pleasant. I like having coffee ready when break time starts. I like the idea of making lunch for the guys so instead of everyone grabbing something separately or forgetting to eat altogether, we can stop, sit down and eat together. I like keeping the cooler stocked and making sure there is enough water. I like creating a moment in the middle of a hard physical day where everyone gets to reset.

None of that moves a mountain of dirt, but it makes the people moving the mountain of dirt function better.

This is the part I think we sometimes miss when we talk about women entering traditionally male spaces. We tend to frame success as proving that women can do exactly what men can do, in exactly the same way. But why is that the measure?

Women often notice the spaces between the obvious tasks. We notice the environment people are working in. We notice whether people have eaten. We notice the details. We anticipate. We organize. We tend. We nurture. We often have a natural instinct to make a space cleaner, more functional, more comfortable and more human.

Not every woman is wired that way, of course, just as there are plenty of men who are exceptional at those things. These are tendencies, not rules. But I do think there are distinctly feminine qualities that enhance almost any environment, including a construction site.

And those contributions can be easy to dismiss precisely because they are difficult to measure. You can count how many bags someone moved. You can measure how many yards of dirt someone shoveled. It’s much harder to calculate the value of the person who kept the entire day moving smoothly, who noticed that supplies were low before production stopped, who kept the tools organized, who found the better price, who cleaned up the mess or who made sure everyone got a real break.

At 22, maybe I felt like I had something to prove. At 46, I don’t.

I don’t need to carry the heaviest thing to prove I belong there. I’m perfectly happy letting the guy who can pick it up without hurting himself pick it up. I’ll figure out where it needs to go. I’ll make sure we have the next load coming. I’ll notice we’re almost out of something. I’ll take the truck for materials. I’ll clean up the catastrophe everybody has been stepping around. I’ll photograph the process. I’ll ask sixteen questions about why we’re building something this way because I want to understand how I’ll design my own.

And there will probably be coffee when we stop for break.

Tony figured something out more than twenty years ago, even if he probably never would have articulated it this way. The Italian contractor who was adamant that bumbetta didn’t belong in construction ended up keeping one working through a brutal New England winter while laying off men around her. Apparently he no longer was worried that I could handle the extreme weather.

I think about that now and smile because equality was never supposed to mean sameness. Men don’t have to become women for women to matter, and women don’t have to become men to prove we’re capable.

A good crew, like a good family, business or community, becomes stronger when people bring what they are naturally good at to the table. Sometimes that is operating an excavator like an extension of your own body. Sometimes it’s driving the dump truck or running the loader. Sometimes it’s having the strength to move an enormous amount of earth by hand.

Sometimes it’s figuring out what everyone is going to need before they know they need it, finding the best price on the materials, making really good coffee, keeping the site running smoothly and making sure everyone has what they need to get through the day.

I work as both an intuitive and a business strategist, which means that when I sit down with someone to talk about their business, I rarely see only the business. I see patterns. I see where someone is exceptionally capable and still hesitating, where they continue recreating the same circumstances with different clients, different partners, different employees, or different opportunities, and where what looks like a business problem is actually connected to an identity they have been carrying for years.

I believe very literally that how you do one thing is how you do all things. The identities we carry into our businesses are the same identities we carry into our relationships, our finances, our health, our families, and our decision-making. The circumstances may change, but the underlying pattern often does not.

If someone believes they are bad with money, that belief does not disappear when they become an entrepreneur. If someone has spent a lifetime believing technology is overwhelming, complicated, or simply not for them, that identity follows them into a marketplace increasingly dependent on technology. If someone believes asking for money is uncomfortable, they may chronically underprice their work. If they learned that being needed makes them valuable, they may build a business where everything depends on them. If they are afraid of disappointing people, they may struggle to establish boundaries with clients, employees, or collaborators.

This is one of the reasons I became interested in the Mace Energy Method.

I began the path toward becoming a Mace Energy Method practitioner because I could see how valuable it could be for people who were continually repeating patterns they consciously wanted to change. I have since paused the training to focus on my own business, but that has not changed my view of the method. If anything, working more deeply with business owners has reinforced how useful I believe it can be.

Mace Energy Method is not therapy, and it is not coaching. It is not about spending months analyzing why someone became the way they are or teaching them how to think differently about a problem. The work is focused on identifying and clearing the energetic imprints connected to negative identities and the patterns those identities continue to create.

That distinction matters to me because I can often see very clearly what is happening with someone professionally, but seeing the pattern and intellectually understanding the pattern are not always enough to change it. Someone can know exactly why they behave a certain way and still continue doing it. They can have read the books, taken the courses, worked with coaches, and have tremendous self-awareness while still finding themselves back in the same situation.

What interests me about MEM is the possibility of addressing the imprint underneath the pattern rather than continually managing all of its different expressions. A person may have problems with money, visibility, relationships, delegation, technology, confidence, or decision-making that appear to be completely separate issues. They may actually be different manifestations of the same underlying negative identity. In that sense, they do not necessarily require a collection of different solutions. Clearing the underlying energetic imprint can potentially affect many areas of a person’s life at once.

Technology is one of the clearest examples I see in business. I work with a number of Baby Boomers and Gen X business owners who are extraordinarily talented at what they do. They may know how to build things, heal people, manage teams, create beautiful work, understand complicated systems, sell, negotiate, or run businesses that have survived for decades. Then I put a website dashboard or a new piece of software in front of them and suddenly I hear some version of, “I can’t do this,” “I’m terrible with technology,” or “I need someone younger to handle this.”

Sometimes those statements have been repeated for so long that they are no longer descriptions of frustration. They have become identities. The person is no longer saying that a particular platform is confusing. They are saying, in effect, this is who I am: I am someone who cannot understand technology.

Once an identity is established, we tend to keep finding evidence to support it. Every forgotten password, unfamiliar interface, or mistake becomes confirmation. At the same time, the enormous amount of evidence contradicting the identity gets ignored. This same person may have mastered a profession that required years of study, learned complex equipment, managed employees, raised a family, navigated financial transactions, or developed a craft requiring extraordinary precision. Their capacity to learn is obviously there.

The issue is not necessarily the technology. It may be the identity attached to it.

In today’s business environment, that identity can have very real consequences. It can limit independence, increase operating costs, slow communication, complicate marketing, and create dependence on other people for things that have become fundamental to doing business. It can also keep extraordinarily talented people from bringing their work to a larger audience simply because they have accepted a story about themselves that may no longer be serving them.

This is also why I think business strategy has to look beyond the mechanics of a business. Of course I look at positioning, marketing, offers, websites, systems, revenue opportunities, and where someone should be putting their time and energy. Those things matter tremendously. But there is another operating system underneath all of them, and that is the person running the business.

Their beliefs about money affect pricing. Their beliefs about visibility affect marketing. Their relationship with authority affects leadership. Their relationship with being needed affects delegation. Their ideas about struggle, success, worthiness, safety, and responsibility influence decisions every day, whether they are conscious of those beliefs or not.

One of my strongest abilities is pattern recognition, and often I can feel very quickly when the problem someone is describing is not the actual problem. A client may tell me they need more customers when what I see is a resistance to being visible. They may tell me they need a better website when what I see is an identity built around being incapable of understanding technology. They may say their employees refuse to take responsibility when I can see that they have difficulty relinquishing enough control for anyone else to truly take ownership.

The circumstances look different, but the underlying imprint can be the same.

This is why I have recommended the Mace Energy Method to nearly every business strategy client I have worked with when I can see that they are repeatedly encountering the same kind of block. Not because they need therapy and not because they need someone to coach them through it, but because sometimes the most efficient thing may be to clear the energetic identity creating the pattern in the first place.

I still consider myself a business strategist rather than a coach. My role is to help people see what they cannot see from inside their own business, identify opportunities, sharpen their positioning, create better offers, build systems, communicate their value, and make more intelligent decisions about where to place their energy. At the same time, I cannot ignore what becomes visible when I work closely with someone.

A business is constantly reflecting the person who created it. It reflects their expectations, their boundaries, their relationship with money, their willingness to receive, their comfort with being seen, their ability to trust other people, and the identities they carry about what they are and are not capable of doing.

You can redesign the website, restructure the company, change the pricing, hire a new employee, build a funnel, or write a new marketing plan, and sometimes those are exactly the changes that are needed. But when the same circumstances keep reappearing in different forms, there is value in looking underneath the strategy.

Sometimes the most transformative business work has very little to do with business at all. It is clearing the identity that has been quietly shaping the business, the relationships, the decisions, and often much of the person’s life.

For more information about the Mace Energy Method, including how it works and how to find a practitioner, visit carleymontgomery.com/mace-energy-method.

Had I not already fallen in love with Idaho and moved there, I’m pretty sure this trip would have had me seriously considering Montana. I swear I’ve had an eyegasm around nearly every turn. The rivers, the mountains, the ranches, the little towns, the huge stretches of absolutely nothing, the way the light hits the hills—it’s hard to drive through this state without constantly wanting to pull over and take it all in.

This is a part of the country I’ve been dying to see, and now that I’m finally moving through it, I completely understand why people fall so hard for Montana. I’m headed east toward Missouri to spend time with Topher and learn how to build dome structures, which I’m genuinely excited about, but first I’m cutting through South Dakota for the Badlands and Sioux Falls.

Sioux Falls is a particularly meaningful stop for me because some of the buildings my great-grandfather designed as an architect are still standing there. I’m excited to actually step inside buildings he imagined and drew generations ago and see them still living in the world.

And somewhere along this route, I bought a house.

Sort of.

Read more

As restorative hospitality begins to take shape as a distinct idea within the broader wellness travel landscape, the most interesting properties are not necessarily the ones adding the most programming, treatments or amenities. They are the ones reconsidering the guest experience from the ground up and asking a more fundamental question: what kind of environment actually helps a person slow down, settle and reconnect?

That is what first drew me to Alma Creek Retreat.

Currently under development on approximately ten acres in Rutherfordton, North Carolina, Alma Creek is the vision of Lucas and Stefania, a Colombian couple creating an intimate retreat for individuals and couples who want to step away from the pace, stimulation and demands of everyday life. The property is surrounded by native forest, open land and a natural creek, and from the early renderings alone, there is a clear sensitivity to both landscape and atmosphere. The cabins feel contemporary without feeling disconnected from their surroundings, and the overall aesthetic is warm, restrained and deeply rooted in place.

What makes the project particularly compelling, however, is that the thinking behind it goes well beyond design.

Lucas and Stefania describe their vision as a place where wellness feels effortless rather than scheduled, where the environment itself encourages guests to slow down. That idea sits at the heart of what I mean when I talk about restorative hospitality. Restoration is not something that necessarily needs to be delivered through a program. It can be supported through the cumulative effect of privacy, quiet, thoughtful architecture, access to nature, good food, reduced stimulation and enough unstructured time for the nervous system to begin finding its own rhythm again.

Alma Creek is still in the development stage, which makes this an especially exciting moment to follow the project. Rather than retrofitting a conventional hospitality property with wellness offerings later, Lucas and Stefania have the opportunity to consider restoration while the place itself is still being formed. Their answers reveal an unusual level of intentionality around that process, from preserving the natural character of the land to creating spaces where guests can simply read, journal, walk, sit beside the creek or spend uninterrupted time together.

I asked them to share more about the story behind Alma Creek, the philosophy guiding the project and what they hope guests will eventually experience there.

Where are you both from, and what inspired you to create Alma Creek Retreat?

We are both originally from Colombia.

Alma Creek began as a shared dream of creating a place where people could genuinely disconnect from the noise of everyday life and reconnect — with themselves, with their partner and with nature.

We have always been drawn to travel, wellness, thoughtful design and meaningful experiences, but we wanted to create something that felt more personal than a traditional hotel or vacation rental.

When we discovered this property in Rutherfordton, surrounded by trees, mountains and a beautiful creek, we immediately felt that it could become something special.

Our vision became a small, intimate wellness retreat where luxury is not necessarily about excess, but about privacy, silence, beautiful surroundings, thoughtful details and the ability to slow down.

Was Alma Creek already the name of the property?

We created the name specifically for the project.

“Alma” means soul in Spanish, so for us the name represents the connection between the soul and nature.

The creek is one of the most meaningful features of the property and was one of the things that made us fall in love with the land.

Together, the words represent what we hope guests experience here: grounding, peace, reconnection and a deeper sense of presence.

It also reflects our Colombian roots while still feeling simple, natural and connected to this place in North Carolina.

How would you describe Alma Creek’s mission and values?

Our mission is to create a space where people can pause, breathe and reconnect.

Alma Creek is being designed primarily as an intimate wellness retreat for couples and individuals who want to step away from routine and spend intentional time in nature.

Our vision is to create an experience where wellness feels effortless rather than scheduled — where the environment itself encourages you to slow down.

The values behind Alma Creek are connection, intentionality, nature, privacy, simplicity and authenticity.

We believe luxury can be found in quiet mornings, thoughtful design, good food, time by the water and having enough space to simply be present.

That idea — wellness that feels effortless rather than scheduled — really stood out to me. How are you designing the property to support that?

Every part of the property is being considered through the lens of how it can make someone feel.

The cabins are designed to feel private, warm and connected to the landscape, with large openings toward nature, outdoor decks and spaces for couples to spend time together.

Beyond the cabins, guests will be able to experience the creek, walking trails, quiet areas for reading or journaling, outdoor relaxation spaces and opportunities for grounding and spending time by the water.

We also envision wellness experiences such as yoga, breathwork, meditation, healthy cooking, nutrition-focused experiences and nature walks, as well as an Experience Center where some of these activities can eventually take place.

Our goal is not to overwhelm guests with activities.

We want to provide opportunities for wellness while also protecting something that has become increasingly rare: quiet, unstructured time.

Where is the project now?

Alma Creek is located on approximately ten acres in Rutherfordton, North Carolina, surrounded by native forest, open land and a natural creek.

We are currently developing the first phase of the property, which includes the initial guest cabins, infrastructure, landscaping and the outdoor spaces that will shape the Alma Creek experience.

We are taking a very intentional approach to development because we want the property to remain intimate and preserve as much of its natural character as possible.

Alma Creek and the Evolution of Restorative Hospitality

There is a great deal about Alma Creek that reflects where I believe hospitality is beginning to move.

For years, wellness travel has largely been defined by what a property can add: more treatments, more programming, more fitness, more modalities and more opportunities for guests to actively participate in their own wellbeing. Those experiences can be valuable, but they represent only one interpretation of what people increasingly need from travel.

Restorative hospitality begins from a different premise. It asks how the entire environment influences the guest, including the architecture, landscape, soundscape, lighting, materials, water, food, technology, privacy and pace of the stay. Instead of assuming that restoration must happen through an activity, it recognizes that the environment itself can either support or interfere with a person’s ability to decompress.

Alma Creek is compelling because Lucas and Stefania seem to understand this intuitively.

Their description of luxury is not centered on excess. It is centered on silence, privacy, thoughtful details, beautiful surroundings and the ability to slow down. Their wellness vision includes yoga, breathwork, meditation and nutrition, but those offerings do not appear to be the foundation of the property. The foundation is the place itself.

That distinction matters.

A guest may choose to participate in a yoga class or a guided experience, but they may also spend a morning with coffee overlooking the trees, walk along the creek without a destination, read outside for several hours or simply sleep longer than they normally would. When a property has been designed well, those moments do not feel like the absence of an experience. They become the experience.

The setting at Alma Creek gives the project an extraordinary natural foundation for this kind of hospitality. Water, trees, open land and mountain surroundings already offer many of the sensory conditions people travel great distances trying to rediscover. The opportunity now is to protect those qualities as the property develops rather than overwhelming them with unnecessary layers.

The renderings suggest that Lucas and Stefania are already approaching that balance thoughtfully. The architecture feels refined while remaining visually connected to the landscape. Large openings draw attention outward, private decks extend the living space into nature, and the cabins appear designed to create intimacy rather than spectacle. There is a sophistication to the project, but it does not rely on excess to communicate luxury.

That is an important evolution in hospitality.

The most restorative properties of the future may not be the places trying hardest to announce themselves as wellness destinations. They may be the places that quietly make better decisions at every level of the guest experience.

They will consider how artificial light affects evenings, how much sound travels between accommodations, whether guests are constantly exposed to screens and notifications, how cleaning products influence indoor environments, how water is treated, how much privacy people actually have and whether the design encourages constant consumption or allows enough space for stillness.

They will also understand that not every moment needs to be filled.

Lucas and Stefania’s desire to protect quiet, unstructured time may ultimately be one of Alma Creek’s greatest strengths. In an industry that often measures hospitality by how much can be offered, there is something increasingly valuable about creating the conditions in which a guest no longer feels the need to be entertained.

For couples, that may create more space for genuine connection. For solo guests, it may offer an opportunity to hear their own thoughts again. For anyone arriving after prolonged periods of work, travel, digital stimulation or responsibility, it may simply provide the rare experience of having nowhere else they need to be.

Alma Creek is not open yet, and there will be many decisions between the renderings and the first guest arrival. That is precisely why the project is so interesting to watch now. Lucas and Stefania are developing the property at a moment when travelers are beginning to seek something deeper than conventional luxury and broader than the traditional wellness retreat.

They are building from a philosophy that already feels remarkably aligned with that shift.

If they continue to protect the intimacy of the land, preserve the quiet that drew them there in the first place and allow restoration to guide the operational details as carefully as it has guided the initial vision, Alma Creek has the potential to become a beautiful example of what restorative hospitality can look like in practice.

Not because it promises to transform its guests, but because it is creating a place where they may finally have the space to slow down enough for something to shift naturally.

Alma Creek Retreat
Rutherfordton, North Carolina
Website: www.almacreekretreat.com
Instagram: @almacreekretreat

I found Vladimir Sitnikov because he left a comment on one of my LinkedIn posts.

I had been writing about something I keep returning to in my work around restorative hospitality: that perhaps the most powerful wellness intervention a hotel can offer is not an intervention at all. It may be the conditions of the place itself.

Vladimir responded with hotel performance data supporting the idea that the market may already be moving in this direction. He wrote a sentence I have not been able to stop thinking about: “The market is rewarding the conditions, not the square footage of the spa.”

That sent me down a rabbit hole.

I discovered that he works at the intersection of technology, health data, wellbeing, and artificial intelligence, and then I found his new book, More Alive: A Novel of Care, Consent, and the Price of Being Known.

I downloaded it expecting something adjacent to health optimization. What I found instead was a much more interesting examination of the tension between data and lived experience, between measuring the body and actually understanding it.

That distinction matters to me because I have been trying to understand what we really mean when we talk about nervous system regulation in hospitality.

The phrase is everywhere now. Hotels, retreats, wellness brands, designers, and practitioners increasingly use it to describe experiences intended to calm, reset, or regulate the body. But once you move beyond the language, the question becomes more difficult. What does regulation actually look like in a person, and how would we know whether a place contributed to it?

I had assumed the challenge was primarily one of measurement.

More Alive made me realize the problem is more complicated than that.

Sitnikov devotes an entire chapter to what happens when human experience becomes continuously quantified. Sleep, mood, stress, recovery, heart-rate variability, glucose, and other measures can reveal patterns we would otherwise miss, but the act of tracking can also change our relationship to what is being tracked.

His discussion of sleep is particularly striking. He writes about orthosomnia, a term coined to describe people whose fixation on achieving perfect sleep data can actually worsen their sleep. The tracker begins as a tool, but eventually the score becomes more authoritative than the experience itself.

That idea feels very close to the territory of placebo and nocebo.

They are not the same phenomenon, but they share a fundamental premise: expectation and interpretation are not biologically neutral.

In the book, Sitnikov explores predictive processing, the idea that the brain is not simply receiving reality but continuously anticipating it and updating its internal model based on incoming information. He specifically uses placebo as an example of expectation becoming physiologically consequential.

That has enormous implications for the way we think about measuring restoration.

If a guest wakes at a retreat feeling rested and then opens an app that tells them their recovery score is poor, the measurement has entered the experience. The device is no longer simply observing the body. It is shaping the person’s interpretation of the body.

The same thing can happen in reverse. A guest who feels depleted may be told they are performing beautifully according to the data and begin to distrust their own internal signals.

This is where More Alive becomes especially relevant to the broader wellness industry.

Sitnikov is not anti-data. That is precisely what makes his criticism interesting. He is deeply interested in what data can reveal, particularly when patterns are personalized rather than imposed from population averages. In the book, he describes systems capable of identifying relationships between sleep, behavior, stress, glucose, cortisol, and other variables, and then building models around the response of an individual body rather than the average body.

The promise is extraordinary.

The danger is that measurement quietly becomes the objective.

That is already visible throughout modern wellness culture. A person may begin by wanting to feel better and eventually find themselves managing scores, routines, protocols, light exposure, meal timing, supplements, exercise, sleep windows, and biometric dashboards with the intensity of a second job.

The book is particularly sharp when it questions what optimization is actually for. It describes a culture in which the research may be legitimate, the metrics meaningful, and the interventions useful, while still asking whether we have confused improved numbers with a richer life.

That question belongs in hospitality too.

The industry has become increasingly sophisticated at creating wellness programming, yet sometimes the guest who arrives exhausted is met with another schedule. Another set of treatments. Another morning alarm. Another thing to accomplish in the name of recovery.

This is the part of restorative hospitality that interests me most.

What if the environment itself carries more of the work?

We still tend to categorize silence, darkness, natural surroundings, clean air, views, temperature, materials, and space as design decisions or amenities. Yet these conditions shape the amount of sensory and physiological load a person is absorbing continuously.

More Alive repeatedly returns to the concept of allostatic load, the accumulated cost of adaptation. The important question is not whether a person encounters stress. Everyone does. The question is whether the body is being asked to absorb more than it has the capacity to recover from.

That framing is deeply relevant to hospitality.

Perhaps a restorative property does not need to promise that it heals anyone. Perhaps the first responsibility is simply to stop adding unnecessary load.

A room does not need to stimulate at every turn. A guest does not need another itinerary. Night does not need to look like day. Silence does not need to be filled. A meal does not need to become a performance. Nature does not need to be converted into an activity.

Sometimes restoration may begin when enough demand is removed that the organism can do what it already knows how to do.

This is why the question of measurement becomes so interesting.

I still want to know whether restorative environments produce measurable changes. In fact, after reading More Alive, I am more interested in that question than I was before.

But I am less interested in producing a universal score.

The more compelling possibility may be to understand how an individual’s physiology and experience shift relative to their own baseline when they move into a different environment. Sitnikov’s discussion of personalized modeling makes exactly this distinction: the individual response may be more meaningful than forcing every person into a population average.

And yet the numbers alone would still be incomplete.

One of the recurring tensions in the book is the relationship between objective and subjective data. The body can be measured from the outside, but it is also being experienced from the inside. Sitnikov argues repeatedly for humility about the difference. Measurement can reveal something important without becoming the final authority on what a person is experiencing.

That may ultimately be the right philosophy for studying restorative hospitality as well.

A guest’s sleep data matters.

So does whether they feel restored.

A measurable change in recovery matters.

So does whether they experienced beauty, safety, connection, spaciousness, or awe.

And the most important outcome may not always be the one that fits most neatly into a dashboard.

The phrase I wrote in my notes after reading Sitnikov was this:

Measure restoration without turning restoration into another performance metric.

That is the tension I want to preserve.

I would love to see hospitality become more evidence-based. I would love to see owners and designers understand that environmental conditions have physiological consequences. I would love to see restorative properties become places where we begin learning, carefully, how humans actually respond to darkness, quiet, nature, sensory simplicity, better sleep conditions, and reduced demand.

But I do not want a person checking their “restoration score” before breakfast.

I do not want restorative hospitality swallowed by biohacking culture.

And I do not want us to become so sophisticated at measuring the body that we forget to ask the person inhabiting it how they feel.

That is what I found so compelling about More Alive.

It is not arguing against technology or science. It is asking us to remain aware of the point at which our tools for understanding ourselves begin replacing our own capacity to know ourselves.

For anyone working in wellness, longevity, health technology, or hospitality, that is a question worth taking seriously.

For me, it opened another one:

What would it look like to create places that measurably support recovery without turning recovery itself into another thing to optimize?

That may be one of the most important questions restorative hospitality has to answer.

Read More Alive

More Alive: A Novel of Care, Consent, and the Price of Being Known is a work of literary fiction grounded in scientific research. You can learn more about the book and purchase it through Vladimir Sitnikov’s website.

More Alive — Vladimir Sitnikov

Most hospitality marketing begins with the destination.

Travelers are encouraged to come for the beach, the ski season, the national park, the wineries, the restaurants, the festival, the wedding, the conference, or the list of attractions nearby. The hotel supports the trip. It is where the traveler sleeps between the things they came to do.

Restorative hospitality has the potential to reverse that relationship.

Instead of asking, Where do I want to go, and where should I stay while I am there?, a restorative traveler may begin with a different question: Where can I go to actually rest?

That shift may sound subtle, but from a hospitality perspective it could be significant. If the purpose of the trip is restoration rather than sightseeing, entertainment, or activity, the guest begins evaluating a property through a different set of criteria. Proximity to nightlife matters less. A long list of attractions becomes less important. The quality of the room, the surrounding landscape, the sensory environment, the pace of the property, and the ability to disengage become central to the decision.

For small inns, lodges, farm stays, rural hotels, and independent properties outside major tourism destinations, that could open an entirely different market.

When the Property Becomes the Destination

Hospitality has spent decades teaching travelers to evaluate accommodations according to what surrounds them. How close is the hotel to downtown? How far is it from the airport? What restaurants are nearby? What activities can be booked? What can the guest see within a thirty-minute drive?

Those questions remain important for many forms of travel. They are not necessarily the questions someone asks when they are exhausted and looking for somewhere to recover.

A restorative traveler may be looking instead for quiet, darkness at night, clean air, a comfortable bed, natural surroundings, simple food, room to walk, low sensory stimulation, and a place where there is very little expected of them. For some guests, poor cell service or the absence of Wi-Fi may be an inconvenience. For others, it may be one of the reasons they choose the property.

This changes the value of location. A small lodge outside a city may struggle to compete as a conventional tourism destination if there is little nearby to entertain a guest. Yet the same property may be exceptionally well positioned for someone seeking a few quiet days after an intense work period, a major life transition, prolonged stress, or simply too much time spent in a highly stimulating environment.

In that context, remoteness is no longer something the property has to apologize for. It is part of the product.

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Restoration May Be a Regional Travel Market

One of the most interesting possibilities is that restorative hospitality could create more demand from travelers who live relatively close to the property.

Meaningful travel has become culturally associated with distance. We tend to think of a trip as something requiring an airport, a major destination, or a long itinerary. Yet the person most in need of rest may be the least interested in making recovery logistically complicated.

If someone is depleted, the ideal trip may not be a six-hour flight followed by a rental car and three scheduled activities. It may be a quiet property just outside the city, ideally within a three-hour drive and often much closer. Far enough away to create real separation from everyday responsibilities, but close enough that getting there does not become another exhausting part of the experience. The appeal may be as simple as having enough distance that the kids are not likely to come barging in, while still being able to get home easily when the stay is over.

That changes the geographic market available to an operator. A rural inn may currently focus its marketing on people already planning to visit its region. Restorative positioning allows that same property to speak to people in nearby cities who may have no interest in the region as a tourism destination at all.

They are not necessarily searching for the best hotel in a particular town. They may be looking for a quiet weekend, a digital break, a solo retreat, several nights in nature, a place to sleep, or simply somewhere they do not have to perform.

This is a different type of traveler, and potentially a much larger local and regional market than many properties currently consider. For some independent properties, the nearest population center may ultimately matter more than the nearest tourist attraction.

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I have spent years working in wellness. I have helped open wellness-centered properties, studied different approaches to healing and recovery, worked alongside practitioners and spent an enormous amount of time trying to understand what actually helps the body regenerate.

Somewhere along the way, however, my thinking began moving in the opposite direction from much of the wellness industry.

Instead of asking what else we could add, I started asking why we needed so much intervention in the first place.

Wellness has become increasingly sophisticated in what it can offer. We now have hyperbaric oxygen chambers, red and near-infrared light devices, infrared saunas, cold therapies, sound therapies, IVs, supplements, advanced diagnostics, biohacking equipment and increasingly elaborate programs designed to improve sleep, reduce inflammation, accelerate recovery and regulate the nervous system.

I have explored many of these ideas myself. I have also spent years studying nutrition and supplementation, particularly in relation to regenerative medicine protocols such as stem-cell treatments and ozone therapy. Over time, even my own healing philosophy became simpler. Supplementation, which once occupied a significant place in it, largely fell away.

The deeper I went, the more interested I became in a different question: what is the body already capable of doing when we stop interfering with it and give it the conditions it requires?

That question ultimately changed the way I think about hospitality too.

We keep rebuilding pieces of nature indoors

One of the strangest realizations I have had after years around wellness environments is how many of our interventions are technological attempts to isolate something nature already provides.

We manipulate light because light affects human physiology. We manipulate heat and cold because temperature changes affect physiology. We manipulate oxygen, sound and sensory input because the environment surrounding the body matters. We purify indoor air because breathing clean air matters. We design circadian lighting because the body responds to the changing light of day.

None of this means these technologies are inherently useless. Some have legitimate clinical applications and some people may benefit from them enormously.

But I began seeing a pattern.

We were taking individual components of the natural environment, separating them from the whole, engineering them into a treatment and placing the treatment inside another highly engineered environment.

Often that means a person is lying beneath an expensive light panel or inside a sophisticated chamber while still enclosed by walls, artificial lighting, electrical equipment, mechanical ventilation and all the sensory regularity of a modern building.

Even good architecture remains architecture.

The natural world does not organize itself into perfectly straight corridors, repeating ceiling grids and identical right angles. It is irregular, layered, moving and constantly changing. The branches outside the window never form quite the same pattern twice. Light moves through leaves. Shadows shift. Wind changes direction. Water refuses to travel in a perfectly straight line. The horizon creates depth that a wall cannot.

There is an entire field of biophilic design attempting to bring some of these qualities back into buildings, and research suggests that natural elements, views and nature-inspired patterns can support stress recovery. Studies of fractal patterns—the repeating but irregular geometries found throughout nature—have also reported reductions in physiological stress associated with viewing certain naturalistic patterns.[1][2][3]

I believe this work is valuable.

But to me it also reveals something fundamental.

We are trying to make our buildings behave a little more like nature because human beings respond differently to nature.

And there is a limit to how closely the imitation can ever resemble the original.

A forest is not one therapy

This is where I began questioning the wellness model more deeply.

Think about what happens when you lie on the ground in a forest.

You are not receiving a single isolated intervention.

Sunlight is moving across your skin and changing by the minute. Your eyes are taking in irregular shapes, depth, movement and enormous variations in green and brown. You are touching the earth. Temperature and humidity are changing around you. You are hearing wind, birds, insects and leaves rather than a manufactured soundtrack. You are breathing air containing compounds released by plants and trees.

Research into forest environments has identified naturally occurring volatile organic compounds from trees, often described as phytoncides, including alpha-pinene and beta-pinene. Human forest-bathing studies have reported changes in stress hormones and natural killer cell activity after time spent in forests, although researchers appropriately caution that the effects of nature exposure are complex and cannot be attributed to a single compound or mechanism.[4][5][6]

That complexity is exactly what interests me.

A forest does not give us light therapy and then send us down the hall for sound therapy.

The light, air, scent, visual field, temperature, terrain, sound, microbial environment and movement all arrive together.

Nature is not administering modalities.

It is creating an environment.

I don’t believe we will ever manufacture something more complete than that environment, regardless of how much the machine costs.

This is where restorative hospitality began for me

When I originally imagined restorative stays, I wasn’t thinking about putting another wellness center in the middle of a major city.

The entire point was to leave.

I imagined places just beyond our population centers where someone could retreat into a fundamentally different environment: a small lodge surrounded by forest, a guesthouse beside a river, a farmhouse in open country, cabins in the mountains, a property overlooking a lake or somewhere along a quiet coastline.

These were not necessarily places people would visit for a treatment weekend.

I imagined people staying for two weeks, three weeks or a month.

Long enough for the pace of ordinary life to fall away. Long enough to sleep until the body no longer demanded twelve hours of it. Long enough to walk without having somewhere to go. Long enough for sunlight, darkness, weather, silence, food and movement to begin organizing the day again.

Nature was never supposed to be an amenity attached to the experience.

It was the center of it.

Hospitality was there to protect and support the conditions the place was already creating.

We have confused access to nature with immersion in it

Hospitality often describes a property as nature-oriented because it has a forest view, trails nearby, access to outdoor recreation or mountains visible in the distance.

Those things are wonderful, but restorative hospitality asks something more fundamental.

What happens when you actually step outside the room?

Can you walk directly into the landscape or do you first cross a parking garage and a six-lane street? Can you hear natural sound when the windows are open? Does real darkness arrive at night? Can you see stars? Is the horizon visible? Are the forms around you varied and organic, or is nature something framed behind glass while the guest remains almost entirely inside a controlled building?

There is a difference between looking at nature and being surrounded by it.

Biophilic interiors may help. A beautiful window looking onto trees may help. Natural materials, curved forms, irregular patterns and thoughtful daylighting may all make a built environment more humane. Research supports incorporating nature into indoor environments when access to actual nature is limited.[1][2]

But those things should not lead us to believe we have replaced nature.

They are acknowledgments of how much we need it.

The body is already a regenerative system

My thinking about regenerative medicine followed a surprisingly similar path.

For years I studied diets and supplementation protocols because I wanted to understand how best to prepare the body for treatments such as stem-cell injections and ozone therapy.

If someone was going to invest in regenerative medicine, I wanted to know: what nutritional state would reduce inflammation? What would create the best metabolic environment? What would give those treatments the greatest opportunity to work?

That research led me deeper into fasting.

One of the studies that caught my attention was work from researchers at the University of Southern California examining prolonged fasting and hematopoietic stem cells. In animal models, repeated periods of fasting lasting 72 hours or longer lowered IGF-1 and PKA signaling and promoted changes associated with hematopoietic stem-cell self-renewal and regeneration. Preliminary human data in people receiving chemotherapy suggested that fasting also affected the immune system and might reduce some chemotherapy-associated damage.[7]

More recent human research continues to make the picture interesting. A study of healthy adults practicing Ramadan fasting found an increase in circulating hematopoietic stem/progenitor cell populations during the fasting period.[8] Human studies are also beginning to demonstrate changes in measurable autophagic activity with different forms of fasting, although the timing, tissue specificity and clinical significance of human autophagy remain much less settled than wellness culture often suggests.[9][10]

I initially approached all of this from the standpoint of optimization.

If stem cells were going to be injected, when would the body be most receptive to them? Would it make sense to arrive at treatment after several days of fasting, when insulin and glucose signaling had shifted, inflammation may be lower and the body’s metabolic state had changed dramatically?

Then another question began bothering me.

If fasting itself is already activating endogenous repair and regenerative pathways, why am I thinking only about how to optimize the intervention?

Why not continue asking what the body will do when given the opportunity?

That does not establish that fasting replaces stem-cell therapy, and the science does not currently justify that conclusion. There are clinical situations in which regenerative medicine may have a role that fasting simply does not reproduce.

But philosophically, the question changed everything for me.

I had spent years asking how to make interventions work better and eventually found myself increasingly fascinated by what happened when the intervention was removed.

And if someone is several days into a fast, resting deeply while the body is undergoing a profound metabolic shift, what do they actually need from hospitality at that moment?

Probably not another appointment.

They need a comfortable bed.

Quiet.

Water.

Fresh air.

Sunlight.

Somewhere beautiful to walk when they feel like walking.

And nature.

That realization is much closer to the origin of Sanctuary Found than any spa treatment menu could ever be.

Restoration is not another schedule

This is also why I have become uncomfortable with the way wellness travel often treats exhausted people.

Someone arrives because their life has become too demanding, and we immediately give them another schedule.

There may be meditation, breathwork, yoga, consultations, treatments, cold exposure, workshops, fitness and carefully timed meals. Each activity may have value independently, but collectively we can end up recreating the very dynamic the guest came to escape: someplace to be, something to accomplish and another standard against which to measure themselves.

Restoration does not need to work like this.

A genuinely depleted person may arrive and sleep for the first three days.

They may not want to attend anything.

They may not want to socialize.

They may spend an entire afternoon sitting beside a river doing absolutely nothing.

That is not a failure to engage with the program.

In a restorative environment, that may be the program working perfectly.

Restoration requires time

We have also compressed recovery into the timetable of tourism.

Two nights. Three nights. A long weekend.

But the body does not know the checkout time.

Sometimes the first several days of stopping simply reveal how exhausted someone has become. Restlessness may appear before calm does. Sleep may deepen before energy returns. The desire to fill every hour can take time to disappear.

This is why longer stays were part of my original vision for restorative hospitality.

A week allows someone to settle.

Two weeks begins to change the rhythm of life.

A month allows someone to stop experiencing a place purely as a tourist and begin living according to its rhythm.

That is a fundamentally different kind of travel.

And I think we need far more places designed to accommodate it.

Restoration doesn’t need to look like wellness

Perhaps this is the most encouraging part.

Restorative hospitality does not require an enormous capital investment in technology.

The property may be a farmhouse, an old inn, a lodge, a handful of cabins or a simple guesthouse beside a forest.

Its greatest assets might already be there.

Land.

Trees.

Darkness.

Silence.

Water.

Space.

What hospitality can do is stop getting in the way of them.

Design still matters enormously. We can choose natural materials, create visual softness and variation, bring daylight deep into rooms, make it easy to open windows, protect darkness at night and design interiors that take cues from the irregularity and complexity of the natural world instead of treating every surface like a commercial box.

But the building should support the relationship with place rather than attempt to become the place.

The room gives the guest somewhere deeply comfortable to sleep.

The land does something the room never can.

What restoration is not

After years of working around wellness, I no longer believe restoration is something we can simply package into another treatment.

It isn’t a biohack.

It isn’t an itinerary.

It isn’t a room full of technology designed to reproduce individual pieces of the natural environment.

And it isn’t another task for an exhausted person to perform correctly.

Restorative hospitality begins much further upstream.

It asks what happens when we change the conditions around a person.

When they can sleep.

When they can breathe clean air.

When natural light organizes the day and darkness organizes the night.

When the sensory environment stops demanding constant attention.

When food becomes simple.

When nobody expects productivity.

When there is enough time.

And, above all, when the human body is returned to an environment it recognizes.

After years spent studying how to improve wellness interventions, I keep arriving at something increasingly uncomplicated.

We do not need to do nature better than nature.

We need to create places where people can return to it.

References

1. Yin J, et al. “Effects of biophilic indoor environment on stress and anxiety recovery: A between-subjects experiment in virtual reality.” Environment International. 2020;136:105427. The study found greater stress and anxiety recovery in simulated indoor environments incorporating biophilic elements compared with a non-biophilic office environment.

2. Pérez-Urrestarazu L, et al. “Nature in the Office: A Systematic Review of Nature Elements and Their Effects on Worker Stress Response.” Healthcare. 2023;11(21):2838. This systematic review found evidence supporting outdoor access and natural elements as strategies associated with reduced workplace stress, while noting limitations in the existing research.

3. Taylor RP, et al. “Relaxing Floors: Fractal Fluency in the Built Environment.” Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences. 2020. The authors discuss experimental research associating exposure to certain fractal patterns with reduced physiological stress and improved cognitive outcomes.

4. Li Q, et al. “Visiting a forest, but not a city, increases human natural killer activity and expression of anti-cancer proteins.” International Journal of Immunopathology and Pharmacology. 2008;21(1):117–127. In this small controlled comparison, forest exposure was associated with increased NK-cell activity and decreased urinary adrenaline, effects not observed during a comparable city trip.

5. Li Q, et al. “A forest bathing trip increases human natural killer activity and expression of anti-cancer proteins in female subjects.” Journal of Biological Regulators & Homeostatic Agents. 2008;22(1):45–55. Researchers detected tree-derived phytoncides including alpha- and beta-pinene and reported changes in NK-cell activity and stress-hormone measurements following forest exposure.

6. Kassavou A, et al. “Effect of nature exposure on perceived and physiologic stress: A systematic review.” Complementary Therapies in Medicine. 2020;53:102514. The review evaluated controlled research examining nature exposure and physiological or perceived measures of stress.

7. Cheng C-W, et al. “Prolonged fasting reduces IGF-1/PKA to promote hematopoietic-stem-cell-based regeneration and reverse immunosuppression.” Cell Stem Cell. 2014;14(6):810–823. The strongest regenerative stem-cell findings were demonstrated in mice; the study also included preliminary human chemotherapy data.

8. Abdel Hadi L, et al. “Intermittent Fasting During Ramadan Increases the Absolute Number of Circulating Progenitor Stem Cells in Healthy Subjects.” Stem Cells and Development. 2025. In ten healthy men, researchers reported increases in circulating hematopoietic stem/progenitor cell populations during Ramadan fasting.

9. Espinoza SE, et al. “Effect of fasting-mimicking diet on markers of autophagy and metabolic health in human subjects.” GeroScience. 2025. This randomized pilot study measured autophagic flux directly in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells and found changes during a six-day fasting-mimicking intervention.

10. Lauc G, et al. “Systemic metabolic, hormonal, and glycomic remodeling during a 72-hour fast in healthy adults: a pilot study.” Croatian Medical Journal. 2026;67(3):226–237. Five healthy adults completed a 72-hour water-only fast, producing substantial changes across metabolic, inflammatory, hormonal and glycomic markers.

I grew up as the daughter of a swimming-pool and spa builder.

My dad was so recognized in the early Southern California swimming-pool industry that, when I was a child, the state flew him to Sacramento to help write the Contractors State License Board test for pool contractors.

He understood pools.

He understood construction, filtration, circulation, sanitation and the complicated chemistry required to keep a small artificial body of water clear enough for people to believe it was clean.

And he would never get into a public jacuzzi.

This was a man who spent his entire adult life handling swimming-pool chemicals. He regularly worked around chlorine, muriatic acid, algaecides, clarifiers, stain treatments and all the other products used to control water that was never designed to remain heated, recirculating and full of human bodies.

Yet a public jacuzzi was not something he would do.

I learned why very early.

My dad used to call me the son he never had. Technically, he did have a son—my older brother—but my brother did not take an interest in the family business.

I did.

By the time I was twelve, I was a regular employee in our family pool store. One of my main jobs was testing the water samples customers brought in. Over the years, I tested thousands of samples of swimming-pool and spa water.

People arrived carrying jars and plastic bottles filled with water that had turned cloudy, green, brown, yellow or strangely milky. Sometimes it foamed. Sometimes it smelled. Sometimes it left spots on the plaster or stains along the tile. Sometimes the problem was obvious algae. Sometimes the water looked perfectly clear while the chemistry was completely out of balance.

We tested sanitizer levels, pH, alkalinity, hardness and stabilizer. We asked how many people had been using the water, how often the filters were cleaned, what products had recently been added and whether someone had mixed two chemicals that should never have been combined.

Then we prescribed more chemicals to correct the effects of the water source, the bathers, the weather and the other chemicals already in the water.

This was simply normal to me.

Now, after years of working as a wellness guide and becoming increasingly critical of the many harmful things modern culture has normalized, I see jacuzzi water very differently.

And honestly, I find it disgusting.

Not because warm water is bad. Warm water can be profoundly therapeutic.

Not because soaking is bad. Humans have sought out natural bathing places for thousands of years.

The problem is that we have taken one of the oldest and most restorative human experiences—immersing ourselves in water—and replaced living water with a small, artificially heated, continuously recirculating container filled with human residue and chemical disinfectants.

Then we called it wellness.

What Is Actually in a Jacuzzi?

A jacuzzi contains whatever every person using it has introduced into the water.

Sweat. Skin cells. Body oils. Hair products. Cosmetics. Lotions. Sunscreen. Deodorant. Laundry residue from swimsuits. Dirt. Urine. Microscopic fecal material.

The jets do not make those things disappear.

Clear water does not prove they were never there.

Instead, filtration and sanitation systems attempt to manage them.

That task is particularly complicated in a hot tub because the water volume is relatively small, the temperature is high and multiple bodies may enter the same water. The warm temperature can support the growth of organisms such as Legionella, while the jets produce aerosols that can carry contaminated water into the air.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that hot tubs have been associated with outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease and require continuous attention to disinfectant residuals, pH, filters, surfaces, circulation and water-management procedures. In 2026, the CDC also reported Legionnaires’ disease associated with a private-use hot tub at a short-term rental—not merely a crowded public facility.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa can cause the familiar condition known as hot-tub rash. Legionella can cause Pontiac fever or Legionnaires’ disease, a potentially serious form of pneumonia, when contaminated mist is inhaled.

This does not mean microorganisms are present at dangerous levels in every jacuzzi at every moment. It means the water is only kept usable through constant monitoring and chemical control of an environment that naturally favors microbial growth.

The average hotel guest has no idea when the water was last tested, whether the disinfectant feeder is functioning correctly, when the filter was last cleaned, whether biofilm is present inside the plumbing, whether the bather load exceeded the system’s capacity or whether the person responsible for maintenance genuinely understands water chemistry.

A beautiful photograph of steam rising at sunset tells us none of that.

The Chemical Catch-22

A jacuzzi must be disinfected.

That is not optional. Heated, shared, recirculating water without adequate sanitation can become a microbial hazard.

But the chemical treatment introduces another problem.

Chlorine and bromine do not simply float harmlessly in the water while waiting to kill bacteria. They react with organic and inorganic material already present in the water—much of it introduced by bathers.

These reactions create new compounds collectively known as disinfection by-products.

Researchers have identified numerous disinfection by-products in chlorinated and brominated recreational water, including trihalomethanes, haloacetic acids, haloacetonitriles and other compounds. The exact mixture depends on the source water, type of disinfectant, temperature, pH, ventilation, bather load and the amount of organic material in the water.

Research reviews have found that several disinfection by-products detected in pools and spas demonstrate cytotoxicity, genotoxicity, mutagenicity or other concerning effects in laboratory testing. Epidemiological studies are more complex and do not establish that an occasional exposure will produce a particular chronic illness. Dose, frequency, individual compounds and routes of exposure all matter.

But the fact that the evidence does not allow us to predict an exact illness from one soak does not turn the chemical mixture into wellness.

Exposure is also not limited to accidentally swallowing the water.

Depending on the compound, exposure can occur through inhalation and skin contact. Heated, agitated water encourages volatile compounds to enter the air, while the jets create mist directly around the guest’s face.

The conditions that make a jacuzzi feel luxurious—heat, steam, bubbles and an enclosed atmosphere—are also the conditions that make chemical control, aerosol exposure and ventilation especially relevant.

This is the jacuzzi’s fundamental contradiction:

The water needs chemicals because it is warm, communal and recirculated.

The chemicals then react with everything the bathers introduce into it.

More bodies contribute more organic material.

More organic material provides more material for disinfectants to react with.

The higher temperature increases the volatility of certain compounds.

The jets move water and mist into the air.

And the guest sits immersed in the entire system.

That “Clean Chlorine Smell”

People often interpret a strong swimming-pool smell as evidence that the water has recently been cleaned or contains plenty of chlorine.

That smell can mean something quite different.

When chlorine reacts with nitrogen-containing substances introduced by bathers—including sweat and urine—it can form chloramines. Chloramines contribute to the familiar sharp odor associated with pools and spas and can irritate the eyes and respiratory tract, particularly when they accumulate in the air of an inadequately ventilated indoor facility.

In other words, the smell many guests associate with cleanliness may actually reflect the interaction between disinfectant and human contamination.

The water can look crystal clear and still contain a complex mixture of sanitizer, organic material and chemical reaction products.

Clear is not the same thing as clean.

And chemically controlled is not the same thing as restorative.

Indulgence Is Not Restoration

Hospitality has developed a very loose definition of wellness.

Anything warm, pleasurable, expensive or photographed beside a white robe can be presented as a wellness amenity.

A jacuzzi may temporarily feel relaxing.

That does not make it restorative.

A cocktail can make someone temporarily feel relaxed. That does not make it medicine.

A sugary dessert can create pleasure. That does not make it nourishment.

A heavily fragranced room can produce an immediate sensory impression. That does not mean the air supports health.

A restorative property must learn to distinguish between something that creates a pleasant sensation and something that actually reduces the burdens being placed on the guest.

The question is not simply:

Does this feel good for twenty minutes?

The better questions are:

What is the guest actually being exposed to?

What is required to keep this water usable?

How many people have contributed to it?

Is the water fresh, or is it continuously filtered and recirculated?

What chemicals are being used?

What do those chemicals become when they react with human waste and personal-care products?

What is being inhaled in the mist above the water?

Is the experience reducing the guest’s environmental burden—or adding another layer to it?

When we ask those questions honestly, the jacuzzi begins looking less like an obvious wellness feature and more like a complicated industrial system designed to imitate something nature already provides.

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Hospitality has become very good at giving guests more. More meals, more treatments, more programming, more entertainment, more amenities and more reasons to remain occupied from the moment they wake until the moment they fall asleep.

Even the modern wellness retreat can become another place where guests are asked to perform. They wake for yoga, attend the workshop, drink the tonic, join the hike, book the treatment, participate in the circle and attempt to complete some form of transformation before checkout.

A fasting retreat begins with an entirely different proposition.

Food falls away. The schedule empties. The guest sleeps. The host steps back. Without the ordinary rhythm of meals, snacks, coffee, restaurant reservations and decisions about what to consume next, the environment itself becomes the experience.

The room matters more. The temperature matters more. The comfort of the bed, the silence outside the window, the quality of the water, the softness of the evening light and the emotional presence of the host all become more noticeable. So does everything arising within the guest.

Hosting a fasting guest is not simply hospitality without food. It is a distinct form of hospitality, one that requires restraint, discernment and a very clear understanding of where hospitality ends and medical care begins.

Fasting Before the Wellness Industry

Fasting is often discussed today as a method for losing weight, improving metabolic health or extending longevity. It has been absorbed into the modern wellness marketplace and repackaged as a strategy for personal optimization.

But fasting is far older and far more profound than this.

Across religious traditions, people have abstained from food as an act of prayer, repentance, mourning, purification, devotion and preparation. Fasting interrupted ordinary life. It redirected attention away from appetite and toward God, spirit, truth or some deeper order that could not be reached through constant consumption.

In the biblical tradition, fasting repeatedly appears at moments when human beings are grieving, seeking direction, confronting wrongdoing or preparing to meet what is being asked of them. Jesus fasted in the wilderness before beginning his public ministry. Moses fasted during his encounter with God. Communities fasted together in times of danger, repentance and discernment.

Some of the early texts that grew around the story of Adam and Eve make this connection even more explicit. In versions of the ancient Life of Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve respond to their exile from Eden through prolonged fasting and repentance. In one manuscript tradition, Adam enters the Jordan River and fasts for forty days, while Eve enters the Tigris and fasts for thirty-seven. The details vary among Greek, Latin, Armenian, Georgian and Slavonic versions, but fasting appears again and again as a response to separation from God and as an attempt to return through humility, devotion and repentance.

These texts are not part of the standard biblical canon, and they should be identified honestly as early extra-biblical traditions. Yet they preserve an extraordinary idea: after eating becomes the act associated with humanity’s departure from paradise, fasting becomes one of the first acts through which Adam and Eve seek restoration.

Seen through this lens, fasting is not originally a diet. It is an act of devotion.

It is the decision to stop reaching outward long enough to turn inward and upward. It is a willingness to become empty, not for the sake of emptiness itself, but to make room for communion, repentance, truth and a return to right relationship with God.

Fasting has also appeared throughout history as medicine. Long before intermittent fasting became a popular phrase, physicians, natural-health practitioners, monasteries, sanitariums and health houses were experimenting with periods of abstinence, simplified diets and residential rest.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, health resorts began offering experiences built around fresh air, sunlight, bathing, sleep, simple food and relief from industrial life. Some of these institutions focused primarily on diet and rest, while others developed more formal fasting programs.

In Europe, the physician Otto Buchinger opened his first fasting clinic in 1920. His approach combined therapeutic fasting with medical observation, rest, nature, movement, art, music and spiritual reflection. The modern Buchinger clinics still operate as medically supervised institutions, not simply as hotels that happen to withhold food.

Other fasting houses emerged through the Natural Hygiene movement, particularly in the United States. Their history contains both insight and caution. They understood that the environment around a person could participate in recovery and that sleep, quiet, clean air and freedom from ordinary demands mattered. But some operators also made sweeping medical claims, worked outside legitimate professional boundaries or treated every difficult symptom as evidence that the body was healing.

The history leaves us with an inheritance and a warning.

The inheritance is the recognition that removing someone from ordinary demands and placing them in a quiet, protected environment can profoundly change their experience of their body and their life.

The warning is that belief, personal experience and even genuine spiritual conviction do not replace medical competence, legal responsibility or appropriate care.

Medical, Spiritual and Transformational

Fasting may be medical, spiritual and transformational, but those dimensions should not be carelessly blended together.

As a medical intervention, fasting creates real physiological changes. The nature of those changes depends on the length and type of fast, the health and nutritional state of the person, their recent diet, their medications and their previous fasting experience.

A medical fasting clinic may assess underlying conditions, order laboratory testing, monitor vital signs, manage medication and make clinical decisions. A hospitality property cannot simply borrow the language of therapeutic fasting while declining the responsibilities that come with it.

A host should never promise that a fasting stay will cure disease, reverse a diagnosis, eliminate the need for medication, correct a hormonal condition or treat a psychiatric illness. The existence of research into fasting does not give a property owner permission to practice medicine.

The spiritual dimension is different. A person may fast to pray, seek discernment, move through grief, prepare for a life transition or come closer to God. A property can support this intention without becoming the guest’s spiritual authority. The guest may need little more than privacy, a journal, sacred text, candlelight, access to nature and enough uninterrupted time to listen.

Transformation does not have to be medical or explicitly religious. Food is woven into nearly every part of modern life. It is nourishment, but it is also routine, comfort, reward, entertainment, identity and social structure.

When food is removed, time changes. The guest no longer organizes the day around breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee, snacks or the question of where to eat next. The absence creates space.

Sometimes what enters that space is clarity. Sometimes it is exhaustion. Sometimes it is grief, boredom, anger, fear or the realization that much of daily life has been designed to avoid stillness.

Fasting has rarely been only about the absence of food. It has been about what the absence of food allows us to encounter.

Not Every Depleted Person Needs a Fast

The wellness world often presents fasting as a universal reset for anyone who feels tired, inflamed, overwhelmed or disconnected.

I do not believe that everyone who longs for a reset is ready for a fast.

Some people are not burdened by too much nourishment. They are depleted of it. They may have been sleeping poorly for years, moving through chronic stress, skipping meals, overriding exhaustion and holding themselves together through caffeine, adrenaline and sheer will.

Their nervous systems may already experience life as a prolonged emergency.

For these guests, removing food may become one more demand placed on a body that is already struggling to feel safe. What they need first may be consistent nourishment, warmth, sleep, morning light, quiet evenings and the experience of knowing that they do not have to keep performing.

Before the body is asked to abstain, it may need time to trust that nourishment is reliable. It may need to settle out of vigilance. It may need to learn that rest will not be interrupted and that food will continue to be available.

This is one of the most important distinctions a fasting program must make. A person may be mentally determined to fast while being physically or emotionally unprepared for it. The question is not whether the guest has enough willpower. The question is whether the guest has enough internal resources to meet what the fast will ask of them.

A body living in survival mode may need nourishment before it is ready to surrender.

The Restorative Alternative

Turning someone away from a prolonged fast should not mean turning them away from restoration. In many cases, the more appropriate beginning may be a nourishing restorative stay with two simple meals served within a consistent daytime eating window.

Instead of eating continuously from early morning until late at night, the guest begins to rediscover a rhythm between eating and not eating. There is a period for nourishment, followed by a long period of overnight digestive rest.

The purpose is not to force as little food as possible into the smallest number of hours. It is to create consistency and to allow the body to experience nourishment and abstinence as a predictable rhythm rather than as cycles of restriction, urgency and compensation.

A preparatory stay might include two nourishing meals, no late-night eating, early darkness, long sleep, morning light, gentle walks and very few decisions. It may look almost uneventful from the outside, but for someone who has been living in a constant state of urgency, this rhythm can be deeply restorative.

The eating window can gradually become smaller as the guest becomes more stable and prepared. This process may unfold over days, weeks or months. For some guests, intermittent fasting will be preparation for a longer fast. For others, it may be the most appropriate practice in itself.

A complete fast is not automatically the superior outcome.

Sometimes restoration means eating less frequently. Sometimes it means eating more consistently. Discernment matters more than ideology.

The Fast Begins Before Arrival

A fasting retreat should not begin the moment the guest checks into the property. The approach to the fast is part of the fast itself.

For a nourished and appropriate candidate, the pre-fast period gradually simplifies the diet and narrows the daily eating window. Late-night food disappears first. Grazing is reduced. Meals become simpler, while remaining adequately nourishing. Caffeine, alcohol, highly processed food and overstimulation are addressed before arrival rather than all being withdrawn at once during the guest’s first difficult days at the property.

The guest may gradually move toward two intentional meals served within a smaller daytime window. This allows the body to become familiar with longer periods without food while the person is still being nourished.

The preparation should also extend beyond diet. A guest should begin clearing unnecessary obligations, reducing digital stimulation and observing the emotional role that eating plays in their life.

When do they reach for food without physical hunger? Does eating mark the end of work? Does it soothe loneliness, postpone grief or interrupt boredom? Does the guest experience hunger as a simple physical signal, or does it immediately produce panic and a feeling of deprivation?

The pre-fast period reveals whether the guest is moving toward fasting through care and devotion or through punishment and control.

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Long before I had language for restorative hospitality, I spent years living between Costa Rica and Guatemala, paying attention to the places that changed people.

Some properties offered yoga, massage, elaborate menus, and carefully programmed retreats. Others offered little more than an open-air room, a mosquito net, a communal table, and a path leading through the jungle to the sea.

Yet it was often the place—not the programming—that did the deepest work.

Nowhere have I experienced this more clearly than on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula.

The Osa helped teach me that restoration does not always need to be manufactured. Sometimes the environment has already created the conditions. The role of hospitality is simply to protect them.

What Is a Restoration Destination?

A restoration destination is a place where the surrounding environment begins relieving the body of modern inputs before the hospitality offering does anything at all.

The journey creates a threshold between ordinary life and the place you are entering. The landscape changes your sensory field. Artificial noise recedes. Natural darkness returns. The horizon opens. The temperature brings you back into your body. Your days begin reorganizing themselves around light, weather, food, water, and sleep.

The Osa Peninsula does all of this almost effortlessly.

It is remote enough that arriving requires intention. You do not simply exit a freeway and pull into a resort. You may arrive by small plane, boat, four-wheel-drive vehicle, or a long journey overland. Even the trip begins interrupting the speed and convenience of modern life.

Then the jungle takes over.

Scarlet macaws fly overhead. Monkeys move through the canopy. Rain lands heavily on the roof. Insects, birds, ocean waves, and wind replace the constant mechanical hum of cities and conditioned buildings.

You have not come to observe nature from behind glass.

You are living in it.

Living Almost Entirely Outside

Much of the Osa is off-grid and powered by solar energy.

Because electricity is precious and the tropical climate is warm, closed, air-conditioned environments have historically been rare. Buildings were designed to work with their surroundings instead: deep shade, open walls, screened windows, high roofs, covered terraces, ceiling fans, and layouts positioned to capture the breeze.

The architecture does not attempt to seal the guest away from the environment.

Air moves through the room. Humidity is felt. Rain becomes part of the soundscape. Daylight changes naturally. Night becomes truly dark.

Even while sleeping, bathing, eating, or resting beneath a roof, you remain connected to the weather and the living world around you.

In practical terms, you are almost completely outside.

This is radically different from the way most people now live. We spend our days in sealed buildings, beneath artificial light, breathing mechanically conditioned air and moving between climate-controlled rooms and vehicles. Weather becomes an inconvenience viewed through a window.

On the Osa, the body returns to the environment.

You feel when morning arrives. You notice when the sun becomes too strong. You understand why the afternoon slows down. You hear the jungle change as evening approaches.

No one needs to program a circadian-reset workshop. The place itself begins returning you to natural rhythm.

The Ocean Is Warm and Inviting

Water is not simply scenery on the Osa.

The warm ocean invites you to enter it.

There is little hesitation or bracing against cold. Swimming becomes easy and instinctive. You can move from the heat of the jungle into the sea, back into shade, through a rainstorm, and beneath the breeze of an open-air structure.

The body is not only looking at nature. It is participating in it.

The peninsula is held between the Pacific Ocean and the Golfo Dulce, with beaches, rivers, waterfalls, tropical rain, tidal pools, and warm coastal water shaping daily life. In Cabo Matapalo, the rainforest reaches directly toward rocky coves, surf breaks, and open beaches.

Water becomes part of the rhythm of the stay rather than a scheduled activity.

You swim because the water is there. You walk to the beach because there is little reason not to. You rinse off beneath an outdoor shower. You listen to rain while falling asleep.

The simplicity of this contact matters.

Simple, Local Nourishment

Food on the Osa is often uncomplicated, local, and built into the stay.

Guest lodges such as Ojo del Mar and Encanta La Vida provide three meals a day within their packages. Guests do not need to repeatedly decide where to eat, navigate roads, make reservations, or spend the day studying menus.

Someone has already considered the meal.

You gather at the table, eat what has been prepared, and return to the rhythm of the place.

Meals may center around tropical fruit, rice, beans, vegetables, eggs, fresh juices, local ingredients, and straightforward home-style cooking. The restorative quality does not come from elaborate “wellness cuisine.” It comes from freshness, simplicity, nourishment, shared tables, and the removal of constant decision-making.

Food does not need to perform wellness to be restorative.

Sometimes it only needs to be grown nearby, prepared with care, served at the right time, and enjoyed in the open air.

The Osa Does Not Need More Wellness Programming

The Osa Peninsula does not need to be transformed into a wellness destination.

It already contains many of the conditions that wellness properties attempt to reproduce:

• Natural light and darkness

• Fresh moving air

• Warm water

• Living sound

• Daily movement

• Reduced technology

• Local food

• Contact with the ground

• Immersion in biodiversity

• Distance from normal routines

• Space for rest and reflection

The danger is not that the Osa lacks restorative potential.

The danger is that hospitality can interrupt it.

A property can flood the jungle with artificial light. It can replace natural sound with amplified music. It can overprogram every day. It can import synthetic fragrance into an environment already overflowing with scent. It can seal guests into air-conditioned rooms, make them dependent on screens, or distract them from the very place they traveled so far to experience.

A restoration destination asks something different of the operator:

Do not manufacture what the land is already providing. Learn how to host without interfering with it.

Several properties on the Osa represent different ways of answering that question.

Casa La Luz: Where the Osa Began for Me

Casa La Luz was my introduction to Costa Rica. For me, it became a doorway into another way of living.

The house was not a sealed object placed beside nature. It belonged to the conditions around it. Open-air living, solar power, ocean breezes, jungle sounds, and the daily rhythms of the coast were not amenities. They were simply life.

The distinction between inside and outside softened.

The ocean was in front of you. The jungle was behind and around you. Wildlife moved through the property. Surf, rain, heat, food, and darkness organized the day.

There was no need for an app reminding you to go outside.

You were already there.

Casa La Luz planted one of the earliest seeds of what I now call restorative hospitality: the understanding that a building does not always need to control the environment. It can help people reenter it.

Ojo del Mar: Intimacy, Community and Elemental Hospitality

Ojo del Mar sits on four beachfront acres along the Golfo Dulce, between tropical rainforest and the sea. The lodge describes itself as an intimate, eco-friendly retreat and centers its communal life around the Casa Grande—an open kitchen, library, gathering place, and shared table.

What makes Ojo memorable is not simply its location.

It is the intimacy of the experience.

Meals, conversation, music, rest, nature, and community are held within a setting that still feels elemental. Guests can practice yoga, walk the trails, spend time on the beach, gather around the table, or choose to do very little at all.

Three meals a day create a natural rhythm and remove the need to keep leaving the property in search of the next thing.

The hospitality becomes part of the restoration because it reduces decisions rather than adding more of them.

Ojo del Mar is not a resort attempting to overpower the peninsula. It remains human in scale—an example of how communal hospitality, simple nourishment, and immersion in place can work together.

Encanta La Vida: The Social Heart of Matapalo

Encanta La Vida sits at the edge of the ocean in Cabo Matapalo, surrounded by rainforest, surf, wildlife, and warm coastal water. The property combines accommodations and meals with yoga, surfing, jungle experiences, and a spa and yoga space overlooking Pan Dulce Bay.

It is one of the places where the adventurous, communal character of Matapalo becomes especially visible.

People come for surf, yoga, wildlife, movement, friendship, and the experience of living close to the elements. Three meals a day give the stay structure without requiring guests to constantly plan around food.

Encanta offers activity, but the setting remains the central experience.

You may wake to howler monkeys, walk to the water, practice yoga beneath the rainforest canopy, eat with other guests, and fall asleep to waves and jungle sound. The property describes its current model as an all-inclusive eco-lodge with meals and nature-based experiences integrated into the stay.

It is not formal perfection that gives places like Encanta their life.

It is the combination of land, water, people, movement, and a sense that everyday life has moved outdoors.

Luna Lodge: A Pioneer of Restoration in the Rainforest

If there is a pioneer in this space, it is Lana Wedmore.

Lana is the founder and owner of Luna Lodge, as well as the founder of the White Hawk Foundation. Long before “wellness travel” became an industry category, she understood that the rainforest itself could become a setting for healing, transformation, spiritual growth, and reconnection.

Luna Lodge rises from the rainforest near Corcovado, offering bungalows, hacienda rooms, and safari-style accommodations alongside yoga, meditation, nourishing meals, nature immersion, and retreat experiences.

But listing the offerings does not fully communicate what Lana created.

Luna feels intentional without feeling disconnected from the wildness around it. It demonstrates that a property can provide comfort, beauty, and care while allowing the natural environment to remain the most powerful presence.

Lana did not simply build a lodge in the rainforest.

She recognized the rainforest as an active participant in the guest’s experience.

That distinction places Luna Lodge at the heart of this conversation. It represents an early and deeply embodied form of restorative hospitality—one developed through lived relationship with the land rather than through market research.

Bosque del Cabo: Comfort Deep Inside the Wild

Bosque del Cabo occupies more than 700 acres at the tip of the peninsula, with private bungalows and houses positioned above the coastline and surrounded by rainforest. The owner-operated lodge opened in 1990 and is one of the Osa’s longest-running nature lodges.

Bosque sits somewhere between the rustic intimacy of properties such as Encanta La Vida and the more polished luxury of Lapa Rios.

It offers privacy, spacious accommodations, ocean views, tropical breezes, trails, wildlife, gardens, and substantial comfort while preserving direct contact with the forest.

This middle ground matters.

Not every guest is ready for the most elemental version of off-grid living. Restoration does not require discomfort, and comfort does not necessarily require separation from nature.

Bosque del Cabo shows how thoughtful hospitality can ease someone into the wild without removing them from it.

Lapa Rios: Restoration for the Guest Who Needs Luxury

Lapa Rios offers another important interpretation of the Osa.

Set within a protected 1,000-acre rainforest reserve, it combines conservation, guided nature experiences, expansive views, sophisticated accommodations, and a much higher level of luxury.

This is the property for the guest who wants to encounter the wild but needs a stronger sense of refinement and conventional comfort in order to relax into it.

That does not make the experience less legitimate.

For some people, discomfort creates enough vigilance that they cannot surrender to the destination. A beautiful room, attentive service, privacy, and familiar comforts may provide the sense of safety that allows them to finally look outward.

Lapa Rios demonstrates that luxury can coexist with ecological immersion when the luxury serves connection rather than replacing it.

Its newer accommodations now include air conditioning, making it an exception to the peninsula’s traditionally open-air lodging model. Yet the property still emphasizes rainforest views, wildlife, conservation, terraces, and longer stays intended to allow guests to experience the place more fully.

This creates a valuable question for restorative hospitality:

How much comfort helps a guest surrender—and at what point does comfort begin insulating them from the very environment they came to experience?

Lapa Rios occupies that edge.

Osa Clandestina: Regenerative Hospitality Off the Grid

Osa Clandestina is an intimate, off-grid lodge within a 90-acre private rainforest reserve near the beaches and surf of Cabo Matapalo. The property traces its beginnings to a 1998 surf trip and describes its purpose as connecting guests with raw nature without entirely sacrificing the comforts of home.

Its inclusion matters because it represents a more contemporary expression of the Osa’s original spirit.

It combines off-grid living, rainforest protection, beach access, food, comfort, and regenerative intentions without attempting to turn the jungle into a conventional resort environment.

Osa Clandestina suggests one possible future for restorative hospitality: small-scale properties that understand both the ecological responsibility of operating in a wild place and the human desire to feel cared for within it.

The Property Still Matters

The Osa carries so much inherent restorative power that it can be tempting to believe any property there will automatically restore its guests.

The environment provides an extraordinary foundation, but hospitality still determines whether that foundation is protected.

A beautiful landscape cannot compensate indefinitely for:

• Poor stewardship

• Unresolved conflict among owners or staff

• Synthetic fragrance

• Harsh artificial light

• Constant amplified music

• Inadequate maintenance

• Uncomfortable beds

• Disorganized food service

• Mold or poor sanitation

• Intrusive hosting

• Overprogramming

• A guest experience that feels chaotic rather than freeing

The land can invite surrender. The ocean can regulate the body. The jungle can restore natural sensory rhythm.

But the people holding the property still shape whether guests feel safe enough to receive what the environment is offering.

This is why restorative hospitality is not simply nature tourism.

It is the relationship between place, property, and stewardship.

The Responsibility of Hospitality in a Powerful Place

The Osa Peninsula does not need hospitality operators to manufacture transformation. The land, water, climate, darkness, and biodiversity are already creating the conditions for it. The role of the property is not to compete with those forces, but to protect the guest’s access to them.

That means designing buildings around natural airflow instead of automatically sealing every room and conditioning the air. It means allowing darkness to return at night rather than illuminating every pathway, tree, and exterior wall. It means letting the sound of rain, waves, insects, birds, and monkeys remain the soundtrack instead of covering it with amplified music.

It means serving food that belongs to the place rather than importing an elaborate identity that has little relationship to the region. It means providing enough comfort for guests to settle into the experience without insulating them so completely that the living environment disappears.

Most of all, it means leaving room in the day.

The impulse within modern hospitality is often to add more: more amenities, more activities, more treatments, more entertainment, and more reasons for the guest to feel that the price of the stay has been justified. Yet places such as the Osa reveal that the most powerful experience may come from removing distractions and allowing the destination to do what it already does.

The property does not need to be the loudest part of the experience. In a destination this alive, it should know when to become quiet.

The People Who Hold the Place

Even in a destination with enormous restorative power, the people caring for the property still shape the guest’s experience.

Casa La Luz was my introduction to Costa Rica. The oceanfront, off-grid home was one of the first built in the Matapalo subdivision and is owned by my former business partner and friend Charlie Miller and the late Phil Becker, the legendary surfboard shaper with whom Charlie shared the property.

Today, Casa La Luz is managed by a local couple who provide extraordinary hospitality there and at other homes throughout the neighborhood. Their presence illustrates something that cannot be reduced to architecture or amenities: the quality of care offered by people who understand the place, know the community, and make guests feel genuinely looked after.

Hospitality at its best is not performance. It is stewardship.

It is knowing how to prepare a home for someone’s arrival, how to provide what is needed without hovering, how to introduce guests to the rhythms of an unfamiliar place, and how to create comfort without separating them from the environment they came to experience.

That human layer matters throughout the Osa. A beautiful property can offer open-air architecture, warm ocean water, extraordinary wildlife, and nourishing food, but the emotional atmosphere created by the owners, managers, cooks, guides, and staff determines whether guests can fully settle into it.

The destination may begin the restorative process, but good stewardship allows it to continue.

Recognizing Where Restoration Is Already Happening

Perhaps the future of restorative hospitality is not about building more elaborate wellness resorts.

Perhaps it begins by recognizing the destinations where restoration is already happening and learning how to host without interrupting it.

The Osa Peninsula is one of those places.

Its restorative power is not contained in a spa menu or a retreat schedule. It is in the warm ocean, the moving air, the heavy rain, and the return of true darkness. It is in shared meals prepared from simple local ingredients and eaten without the need to decide where to go next. It is in waking to the sound of monkeys and watching scarlet macaws cross the sky. It is in the experience of sleeping beneath a roof while remaining entirely surrounded by life.

It is also in the people who have spent decades learning how to live and host within that environment.

Properties such as Casa La Luz, Ojo del Mar, Encanta La Vida, Luna Lodge, Bosque del Cabo, Lapa Rios, and Osa Clandestina offer very different ways of entering the Osa.

Some guests will want the intimate communal experience of a small lodge where three meals a day are prepared, the table becomes a gathering place, and much of daily life is gently held by the property. Others may be restored by the privacy and independence of an off-grid home such as Casa La Luz, where they bring their own food, prepare meals in an open-air kitchen, and allow the days to unfold without a schedule or service structure.

That kind of self-catered stay can be restorative in an entirely different way. The guest chooses when to eat, when to swim, when to sleep, and whether to see anyone at all. Preparing simple food can become part of the rhythm of the place rather than another task to escape. Privacy creates room for families, couples, friends, or solo travelers to settle into their own natural pace.

Still others may need the privacy, polish, and refinement of a property such as Lapa Rios before they feel comfortable enough to relax into the wildness around them.

No single hospitality model is inherently more restorative. A fully hosted lodge, an intimate retreat, and a private self-catered home can all provide access to the same living environment. The question is whether the property gives the guest an appropriate level of support, freedom, comfort, and connection to place.

The most successful properties on the Osa understand that the jungle is not a backdrop. The ocean is not an amenity. Nature is not part of the décor.

The place itself is the experience.

The Osa does not need to promise transformation. It simply asks you to travel far enough, stay long enough, and become quiet enough for the jungle, the water, the people, and the living world to begin working on you.

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When people imagine restorative travel, they often picture the beautiful parts first: a quiet room, soft natural light, nourishing food, a comfortable bed, time in nature and perhaps a few gentle wellness rituals. They imagine finally being able to relax.

What they may not anticipate is how uncomfortable true restoration can feel in the beginning.

A genuinely restorative stay removes many of the things modern people unconsciously use to avoid themselves. The constant sound disappears. The screens are put away. The artificial light dims. The schedule loosens. There is no endless stream of entertainment, information, urgency or novelty waiting to fill every open moment.

There is silence.

There is darkness.

There is time.

And, for many people, that is where the discomfort begins.

The people who need restoration most are often the ones who have become the least comfortable with stillness. Their nervous systems have adapted to constant stimulation. Their minds expect another message, another task, another video, another podcast or another reason to stay occupied. Even when they say they are exhausted and desperate for a break, the absence of stimulation can initially feel unbearable.

They may reach for their phones without even realizing it. They may suddenly remember emails that feel urgent, conversations they need to have or work they could be completing. They may feel restless, irritable, emotional or strangely energized when they expected to feel calm. They may decide the experience is boring. They may even want to leave.

This does not necessarily mean the stay is failing.

It may mean it has begun.

The Freak-Out Stage

There is often a period during a restorative stay when the guest’s usual coping mechanisms are no longer available, but their system has not yet settled into a different rhythm.

They are tired, but they cannot sleep.

They are surrounded by quiet, but their minds feel louder than ever.

They finally have permission to do nothing, but doing nothing feels almost impossible.

This is the wired-but-tired stage. The body is asking for rest while the mind continues scanning for stimulation, responsibility and threat. Once the background noise of modern life is removed, everything that noise was helping suppress can begin to surface.

That may include grief, loneliness, anger, fear, creative ideas, forgotten desires or the simple realization of how exhausted they actually are.

True restoration is not always immediately soothing. Sometimes it begins by showing us what we have been outrunning.

That is why a restorative property cannot be designed only around aesthetics. It must be designed to support the guest through the transition from stimulation into stillness. The environment needs to communicate safety without demanding performance. The staff must understand that restlessness is not always dissatisfaction. Guests may need reassurance, gentle orientation and permission to experience discomfort without immediately trying to fix it.

Fasting From the Modern World

A restorative stay does not need to be a formal fasting retreat to contain an element of fasting.

The guest may still be eating, but they are fasting from constant consumption.

They are fasting from screens.

They are fasting from artificial light late into the evening.

They are fasting from notifications, news, advertising and the pressure to respond.

They are fasting from being continually observed, entertained, sold to and asked to make decisions.

They are fasting from the modern world.

Like any fast, this absence reveals attachment. It shows the guest what they automatically reach for when they feel bored, uncomfortable, uncertain or alone. It reveals how difficult it has become to sit inside an unfilled moment.

The first response may be resistance. Eventually, however, something begins to soften.

The eyes adjust to darkness. The body starts following natural light. Hunger becomes clearer. Fatigue becomes honest. Time begins to feel slower and more spacious. A walk no longer needs to be tracked. A meal no longer needs to be photographed. Silence stops feeling empty.

The guest begins returning to their own senses.

The Medicine Begins With the Commitment

In some ways, the restorative stay is akin to a medicine ceremony—not because a substance is required, but because the process begins the moment the person commits to entering it.

Before arrival, they have already decided to interrupt their normal life. They have admitted, at least to themselves, that something needs to change. They have stepped away from their routines, responsibilities and familiar distractions. The decision itself begins working on them.

They may arrive believing they are simply booking rest. What they are actually entering is a confrontation with the ways they have been living.

Like any meaningful transformational experience, the stay may not give them exactly what they expected. It may show them how deeply tired they are. It may reveal that the pace of their life is no longer sustainable. It may bring forward a decision they have been avoiding. It may remind them of who they were before their lives became organized entirely around productivity, caretaking or survival.

The property does not create the transformation for them. It creates the conditions in which transformation becomes possible.

That distinction matters.

Restorative hospitality is not about programming every hour or manufacturing emotional breakthroughs. It is not about forcing guests into vulnerability or promising that a weekend will heal their lives. It is about removing interference. It is about creating enough safety, quiet, darkness, nourishment, beauty and space that the guest can finally hear what their own body and life have been trying to tell them.

Transformational Travel

Perhaps this is the real guest experience of restorative hospitality: transformational travel.

Transformational travel is not simply travel that feels meaningful or looks beautiful in photographs. It is travel that changes the person’s relationship with themselves and with the life they return to.

The transformation may be dramatic, but it is often subtle.

A guest may sleep through the night for the first time in years. They may rediscover that they enjoy silence. They may realize they no longer want to eat in front of a screen. They may begin dimming the lights at home in the evening. They may decide to change their schedule, leave a draining relationship, return to a creative practice or spend more time outside.

The purpose of the stay is not to provide an escape from ordinary life. It is to give the guest enough distance from ordinary life to see it clearly.

That is why the experience cannot be judged only by how entertained, pampered or constantly pleased the guest felt while they were there. Transformation is not always comfortable. Restoration is not always immediately relaxing. A deeply restorative property may create moments of boredom, resistance and emotional discomfort before the guest reaches genuine rest.

This requires a different understanding of hospitality.

Traditional hospitality asks, “How do we keep the guest happy?”

Restorative hospitality also asks, “What does this person’s system need in order to come back into relationship with itself?”

Sometimes the answer is less.

Less light. Less noise. Less food. Less talking. Less programming. Less access to the outside world.

At first, that emptiness may feel like deprivation.

Eventually, it may feel like freedom.

The boredom is not a flaw in the experience. It is the threshold.

And for the people who are willing to stay with it, what waits on the other side may be the first real rest they have had in years.

I woke up on June 1 with the clearest message from God, Source, the universe—whatever language you prefer—that I have ever received.

Go to Sweden.

What? Sweden?

When?

July.

August too?

The answer felt almost like a shrug. You can, but it is not necessary.

July it was.

July is one of the hottest months on my property in Idaho. Most days are spent trying to escape the heat, sitting beside the Salmon River, and accomplishing very little beyond berry picking and keeping everything alive. I had always wanted to visit Europe, and I am not one to ignore an adventure, especially one that arrives with that much clarity.

So I got to work planning the trip that morning.

After checking my bank account, I decided a work exchange was the most realistic way to make it happen. I signed up for WWOOF, knowing that wherever I stayed would at least have fresh organic food. I had also always wanted to experience a work trade from the worker’s side. Years ago, I hosted Workawayers at my guesthouse in Costa Rica, but I had never been the person arriving in an unfamiliar place and exchanging my time and labor for a bed, meals and an experience.

The mystery of the following month was exciting. I did not really know why I was going to Sweden. I did not have a clear professional objective, a carefully mapped itinerary or a logical explanation for why this country, at this exact moment.

I just knew I was supposed to go.

It already felt familiar in the strangest way. Years ago, when I committed to traveling to Peru for a twelve-day intensive ayahuasca retreat, the medicine began working on me the moment I made the decision and sent the money. The ceremony had not started, but the process had.

This trip felt the same.

The transformation began with the commitment.

Tomorrow, I fly back to the United States. As I write this, it feels as though I have undergone a complete career makeover. I did not come to Sweden looking for a new professional identity, but somewhere between the farms, guesthouses, trains, forests, lakes, conversations, disappointments, unexpected upgrades and long stretches of solitude, I rediscovered my purpose.

Or perhaps I finally found the language for something I have been doing my entire life.

Restorative hospitality.

Creating places and experiences that help people rest, recover, reconnect and return to themselves.

For years, my work has moved across design, construction, wellness, hospitality, food, healing environments, business strategy and the creation of sanctuary. From the outside, these interests may have looked disconnected. Here, they finally came together.

I began seeing hospitality differently.

I saw how profoundly an environment can support restoration, and how quickly it can interfere with it. I noticed the lighting, the food, the materials, the noise, the smells, the pacing, the hospitality, the silence and the absence—or presence—of genuine care.

I began to understand that restorative hospitality is not simply about beautiful hotels in nature. It is not wellness-themed décor, a yoga class on the schedule or a spa menu.

It is the deliberate creation of conditions that allow the human system to soften.

It is darkness at night. Natural light during the day. Nourishing food. Clean air. Silence. Unhurried time. Simplicity. Safety. Nature. Beauty without overstimulation. Hospitality without performance.

And sometimes, it is boredom.

The kind of boredom that arrives when there is no screen to reach for, nowhere to rush and nothing left to distract you from yourself.

That is where transformational travel begins.

A transformational journey is not simply a vacation that leaves you with beautiful memories. It changes the person who returns home. It interrupts your patterns, removes you from the life you have normalized and gives you enough distance to see yourself clearly.

That is what Sweden has done for me.

It has been less like a trip and more like a month-long ceremony.

There were moments of beauty, discomfort, loneliness, wonder, exhaustion, confirmation and complete redirection. There were places I thought I was meant to stay that were only meant to teach me something. There were opportunities that initially looked disappointing but ultimately sharpened my standards. There were conversations that reflected parts of my work back to me before I fully knew how to name them.

The trip did not unfold according to a plan. It unfolded according to a pattern I could only recognize in retrospect.

Each stop revealed another piece.

Each experience clarified what restoration is—and what it is not.

Each yes led somewhere unexpected.

Each no became part of the practice.

Tomorrow, I will board a plane and return to the same land, home and life I left one month ago, but I am not returning as the same person.

I am returning with Sanctuary Found.

I am returning with a clearer body of work.

I am returning with language for the category I believe I am here to help define.

And I am returning with an even deeper trust in the kind of guidance that rarely arrives with a detailed explanation.

Sometimes the message is simply:

Go.

The understanding comes later.

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I’m creating a Restorative Hospitality Environment Checklist, looking closely at the conditions that either allow the body to restore or quietly continue asking something from it.

The deeper I get into this work, the clearer it becomes that restorative hospitality is very different from wellness or luxury hospitality.

Wellness hospitality often adds things to the guest experience: yoga, treatments, saunas, healthy meals, meditation, supplements, and programming. Luxury hospitality adds beautiful design, attentive service, technology, comfort, and amenities.

Restorative hospitality asks a much more fundamental question: What needs to be removed from the environment so the body can stop receiving signals that it should remain alert?

That question takes us far beyond beautiful interiors, expensive bedding, or whether a room looks peaceful in photographs. It asks us to examine what the guest’s body is actually experiencing.

One of the strongest signals the body receives is light.

Light is not decoration

In hospitality, lighting is usually treated as a functional or aesthetic decision. We consider whether guests can see, whether the fixtures are attractive, whether the light is flattering, and whether it supports the visual identity of the property.

But light is not simply something that allows us to see a room. It is one of the primary ways the body understands where it is within the rhythm of the day.

Natural daylight signals that it is time to wake, move, orient, eat, and engage with the world. The softening light of evening tells us that the active portion of the day is ending. Darkness signals that it is time to rest.

A genuinely restorative environment works with this natural rhythm instead of overriding it.

That means daylight during the day, a noticeable softening as the sun begins to set, and actual darkness for sleep. This sounds simple because it is natural, yet it is almost entirely absent from modern hospitality.

Ordinary room light changes the body’s preparation for sleep

A controlled study published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism compared ordinary room light with dim light during the hours before sleep. The participants exposed to room light experienced a later onset of melatonin in 99 percent of cases. Room light also shortened the body’s period of melatonin production by approximately 90 minutes. When the exposure continued during usual sleeping hours, it suppressed melatonin by more than 50 percent in most of the trials.[1]

What is important here is that the researchers were not studying only glaring commercial lights or screens held inches from the face. They were examining ordinary electrical room lighting below 200 lux—the kind routinely used in homes and hotels after dark.

A room can look peaceful while still communicating daytime to the body.

Modern hospitality has turned nighttime into more daytime

Most hotels remain fully illuminated long after sunset. Lobbies blaze with overhead lights. Hallways are lit like offices. Bathroom mirrors shine bright white light directly into the eyes. Televisions glow from walls, and small electronic lights remain visible on clocks, thermostats, switches, appliances, chargers, and controls.

Even many properties described as wellness-focused are filled with recessed LED lighting and screens.

We have lived with artificial light for so long that we rarely stop to ask whether it belongs there. We assume darkness is a problem to solve and that every occupied room must be fully illuminated.

But restorative hospitality cannot accept every modern convention, soften the color palette, add a spa treatment, and call the result healing.

If the intention is restoration, we have to ask whether the property allows the body to recognize that night has arrived.

Once the sun goes down, we should be moving toward sleep. We may talk, pray, bathe, sit beside a fire, or spend quiet time together, but we do not need to reproduce daylight inside a building to do those things.

The evening should not be an extension of the working day. It should be a transition out of it.

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Three days into my walk through the forests of Sweden and I was already growing tired of surviving on cheese and crackers. They’d done the job, but I was craving something warm, something green, and something that felt like an actual meal.

Rummaging through the communal food shelf at the hostel, I found half a bag of Italian pasta that someone had left behind. Perfect. I’ve always trusted Italy when it comes to wheat and dairy, so dinner suddenly had a foundation.

Now all I needed was something fresh.

The forest offered no shortage of possibilities. Dandelion, clover, and plantain were everywhere, but none of them sounded particularly exciting tossed with pasta. I found plenty of nettles too, but every patch had already gone to flower, and without gloves I wasn’t eager to wrestle with them anyway.

So I pulled out my trusty AI assistant, Ari.

After a bit of back and forth, Ari suggested a few other wild greens to keep an eye out for. As luck would have it, I was already standing in the middle of one of them snacking on wild cherries.

Ground elder.

It’s funny how quickly a plant changes once you learn its name. A minute earlier it had simply been part of the scenery. Now I noticed it everywhere, carpeting the forest floor beneath the beech trees. A few more photographs, another careful look at the leaves, and even a cautious taste convinced me I had finally found dinner.

Ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria) has a long history in northern Europe. Long before grocery stores and imported vegetables, it was gathered as one of the first fresh greens of spring after a long winter. Monks cultivated it in monastery gardens, and over the centuries it escaped into the surrounding countryside, where it now grows abundantly throughout much of Sweden. Today many gardeners curse it as one of the most persistent weeds they’ll ever encounter, yet for generations it was valued precisely because it appeared reliably, spread generously, and provided a welcome source of vitamins and minerals when little else was growing.

The young leaves have a flavour somewhere between parsley, celery, and spinach. Lightly sautéed, they soften beautifully and lose much of their sharper edge, making them surprisingly well suited to pasta.

Dinner that evening wasn’t complicated. Pasta, a handful of wild greens, a good chunk of butter, and a generous sprinkle of the fancy cheese I packed for crackers. Yet sitting outside the hostel, eating something I had gathered only an hour earlier from the forest around me, it felt far more satisfying and nutritious than any restaurant meal could have.

It reminded me that sometimes the abundance we’re searching for isn’t hidden at all. Sometimes it’s growing quietly under our feet, dismissed as a weed simply because we’ve forgotten what it is.

Over the years, I have noticed a pattern that appears again and again when people are struggling with their health, and I have experienced it myself. When the body is suffering, our natural response is to search for the thing that will finally allow healing to happen. We look for the missing piece — a new diet, a supplement, a treatment, a practitioner, or a protocol that might explain what is happening and show us the way forward.

What I have come to understand is that there is a foundation underneath all of those things that is often overlooked. Before the body can respond to support, it has to be in a state where it has the capacity to receive it.

The human body is not a machine that simply breaks down and needs the correct repair. It is a living system constantly adapting to the conditions around it. Every moment, the body is receiving information from the environment, from our thoughts, from our relationships, from our physical surroundings, and from everything we put into it. It is continuously making decisions about what resources are needed and where those resources should be directed.

The nervous system plays a central role in that process because it helps determine whether the body is experiencing enough safety to devote energy toward restoration or whether it needs to remain prepared for threat.

This response is one of the reasons humans have survived. When danger is present, the body does not waste energy on functions that are not immediately necessary for survival. It increases alertness, mobilizes energy, changes hormone production, and prepares the body to respond. Once the danger passes, the nervous system is designed to return to a calmer state where digestion, repair, immune function, and regeneration can take place.

The challenge is that many people today are living in environments where the nervous system rarely receives the signal that the threat has passed.

The body does not only respond to obvious danger. It responds to the accumulation of signals it receives throughout the day. A constant stream of notifications, exposure to artificial light late into the evening, poor sleep, processed foods, environmental chemicals, unresolved emotional stress, relationship tension, financial pressure, and the constant demand to be available all communicate something to the body.

Stay alert.

Stay prepared.

Keep going.

Individually, many of these things may seem manageable. The difficulty comes from the accumulation. A person may not have one overwhelming stressor, but instead hundreds of smaller inputs that prevent the nervous system from fully settling.

This is one reason so many people feel exhausted but still struggle to rest. They may have time away from work but find that their mind continues racing. They may understand that slowing down would help, yet feel unable to stop. They may sleep but wake up feeling as though their body never fully recovered.

The body can become accustomed to a state of activation. When that happens, being stressed begins to feel normal. People often do not recognize that their baseline has shifted because they are still functioning. They continue meeting responsibilities, caring for others, and moving through their daily lives.

Functioning, however, is not always the same thing as being well.

A body can continue operating under stress for a long time. The question is what resources it is using to maintain that state and what processes are being deprioritized in the process.

Research into chronic stress has demonstrated that prolonged activation of stress pathways can influence many systems throughout the body, including immune function, inflammation, metabolism, sleep, and cognition. Scientists studying stress physiology, including Robert Sapolsky and Bruce McEwen, have shown that the same biological mechanisms that protect us during short-term challenges can become harmful when the body remains in a prolonged state of activation.

The body is designed to adapt. That ability is essential for survival. But adaptation always requires energy.

When the nervous system is continually prioritizing protection, the body has fewer resources available for deeper restoration.

This is why someone can be making many positive changes and still feel as though they are not healing. They may be improving their nutrition, exercising, taking supplements, working with practitioners, and doing everything they have been told should support health. Those things can be valuable, but they depend on the body’s ability to respond.

If the nervous system remains in a state of ongoing stress, the body may continue prioritizing survival over repair.

This is something I have witnessed repeatedly, both through my own experience and through observing others. When people feel unwell, the natural response is often to search for what else they can add. Another test. Another treatment. Another protocol. Another piece of information that might finally explain what is happening.

Sometimes additional support is exactly what the body needs. There are many situations where the right intervention can be meaningful and important.

But there are also times when the body is overwhelmed by the amount of input it is receiving and needs the opposite approach. It needs fewer demands, fewer stressors, and more space to return to balance.

This is where the idea of creating the right conditions becomes so important.

A seed does not grow because we force it to grow. It grows because the environment around it provides what it needs: healthy soil, water, light, and the right conditions for its own intelligence to unfold.

The body works in a similar way. Healing is not something we impose on it. It is something we support by creating the conditions where the body’s natural processes can function more effectively.

This does not mean eliminating every challenge from life. A regulated nervous system is not one that never experiences stress. It is one that can move through stress and return to balance afterward.

That ability to return is what allows the body to remain resilient.

The first step in healing is not always finding the next thing to do. Sometimes it is recognizing what is keeping the body from entering the state where healing can occur.

Before we ask what the body needs, we have to understand what state the body is operating from.

Because a body that is constantly protecting itself has limited capacity for repair.

Creating safety, reducing unnecessary stress, and supporting regulation are not the entire story of healing, but they create the foundation that allows everything else to work more effectively.

When the nervous system begins to settle, the body has more resources available for the processes it was designed to carry out every day: maintaining balance, adapting, repairing, and restoring itself.

Research & Further Reading

Sapolsky, Robert M. Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers

McEwen, Bruce S. “Protective and Damaging Effects of Stress Mediators.” New England Journal of Medicine (1998)

Chrousos, George P. “Stress and Disorders of the Stress System.” Nature Reviews Endocrinology (2009)

Ulrich, Roger S. “View Through a Window May Influence Recovery from Surgery.” Science (1984)