THE HEALING POWER OF NATURE: INSIDE THE SYNERGY 2026 PROGRAMME
For its fifth edition, Synergy – The Retreat Show arrives in Croatia with a theme that feels both instinctive and increasingly relevant to the future of wellness travel: The Healing Power of Nature.
Across the 2026 programme, nature is explored not simply as the beautiful backdrop against which retreats take place, but as something far more integral to the experience itself. Through science, movement, water, adventure, forest wisdom, breath, sound and sensory experience, speakers and practitioners will examine the many ways our relationship with the natural world can influence how we feel, heal and transform.
It is a theme that runs through the programme in different ways. Some sessions investigate the physiological effects of being in nature; others explore our emotional and sensory relationship with the natural world. Elsewhere, the conversation moves into retreat design, sustainability and the responsibility of the wellness industry to reconsider its relationship with the land and places upon which it depends.
For Synergy Founder Laura Montesanti, that breadth was important.
“When we chose The Healing Power of Nature as this year’s theme, we wanted to explore nature beyond the idea of a beautiful setting. Nature influences how we move, breathe, rest, connect and heal, and you can see that reflected throughout the programme. What I love is that our speakers are approaching the theme from so many different perspectives – from science and adventure to water, forests, somatics, sustainability and retreat design.”
WHAT HAPPENS TO US IN NATURE?
Few sessions address the central theme as directly as Nature Neurons: How Being Outdoors Changes Us, led by award-winning journalist and bestselling author Florence Williams.
Author of The Nature Fix, Williams has spent years investigating the relationship between the natural environment and human health. At Synergy, she will look at the latest evidence for why nature is good for us, exploring its influence on everything from cognition to mental health and physiology.
Drawing on research and reporting from around the world – including Japan, Scotland, Singapore and Utah – Williams will examine some of the questions increasingly relevant to retreat creators: What actually constitutes meaningful exposure to nature? How much do we need? And how can wellness programmes make better use of what we now understand about the relationship between human beings and the natural world?
It is a subject that sits at the heart of contemporary wellness travel. Nature has long been intuitively associated with restoration, yet research is giving the industry an increasingly sophisticated understanding of why our surroundings matter – and how they might be incorporated more intentionally into the guest experience.
That relationship between traditional understanding and modern evidence continues with naturopathic physician and clinical researcher Dr. Erica Oberg.
Her session, Vis Medicatrix Naturae: The Science and Biology of Nature-Led Healing, takes its name from the naturopathic principle of the healing power of nature. Oberg’s premise is that nature should not be treated as a scenic luxury, but as a biological input capable of influencing the nervous system and supporting human vitality.
Using local Croatian botanicals alongside her Vitality Wheel framework, she will explore the physiology behind nature-led healing and consider how retreat programmes can move beyond passive wellbeing towards experiences that actively support regulation, play, flow and restoration.
Together, Williams and Oberg bring an important scientific dimension to this year’s theme: a reminder that our relationship with nature is not simply philosophical. It is embodied.
FROM EPIC ADVENTURE TO THE EVERYDAY WILD
Nature does not always need to be remote or spectacular to change us.
Few people illustrate that better than adventurer, bestselling author and National Geographic Adventurer of the Year Alastair Humphreys.
Humphreys has cycled around the world, rowed the Atlantic and crossed wild landscapes on foot. Yet his session, The Adventure of a Lifetime... or a Lifetime of Adventure, turns attention towards something much closer to home.
Through his concept of “microadventures”, Humphreys has spent years encouraging people to rediscover curiosity and wildness within everyday life. A meaningful encounter with nature might involve an expedition across a continent – but it might equally mean sitting beneath a tree for fifteen minutes and listening to birdsong.
It is a particularly pertinent idea for wellness travel as the industry considers not only transformation, but sustainability. Adventure becomes less about distance and more about attention: slowing down, noticing the familiar and recognising that meaningful experiences do not necessarily depend upon travelling further.
Dr. Rebecca Sutherns expands that idea in Awe and Adventure, asking what actually creates change once somebody arrives on retreat.
Nature can be a powerful pathway to awe, but Sutherns argues that it is one of several ways to move people beyond passive consumption and towards genuine aliveness. Human connection, novelty, shared experience and challenge can all play a part. Her session explores how these ingredients might be intentionally incorporated into retreats to build adaptability, courage and renewed possibility that continue beyond the experience itself.
WHEN NATURE BECOMES PART OF THE PROGRAMME
Elsewhere at Synergy, the theme moves from discussion into direct experience.
The Forest Within, created by Slovenian forest medicine guide Lado Rot, internationally known as Dr. Fungi, brings the forest itself into the room.
Through mushrooms, medicinal plants, herbs, aromas, textures, tastes and stories, participants will be invited to experience nature through all five senses. At its centre is the extraordinary hidden world of fungi and mycelium – an ecosystem built upon interconnection, adaptation and communication.
Rather than learning about nature at a distance, the session asks participants to slow down enough to encounter it.
Water becomes another pathway through Fabian Atlantis’ Oceanic Flow: A Somatic Water Therapy Experience. Working in pairs, participants will explore floating, breath awareness, gentle movement and therapeutic touch, experiencing how water can support relaxation, trust, connection and nervous system regulation.
The elemental thread continues throughout a series of yoga practices led by Gea Krajcar, moving through Earth, Air, Water, Ether and Fire across the event. Beginning with grounding and progressing through breath, fluidity, stillness and transformation, the series reflects the natural rhythms woven throughout the wider programme.
Other experiential sessions explore the body’s own capacity for regulation and restoration. Jen Palmer’s Wisdom of the Body introduces grounding, breath, mindful movement and TRE®, while Inês Gonçalves’ RE combines Yin Yoga with crystal sound. Dr. Rob Williams brings cold into the programme through an interactive cold plunge workshop, while Kornelia Schwitzer combines rhythmic breathwork, immersive sound and 150-million-year-old SilverQuartzite® stone.
Collectively, they reflect an evolution within retreat programming towards experiences that are increasingly embodied, sensory and participatory.
DESIGNING FOR TRANSFORMATION
But experiencing something powerful on retreat is only one part of the equation. What happens afterwards?
That question sits at the centre of several important conversations at Synergy 2026.
In Designing for Transformation: How Retreats Can Create Lasting Change, bestselling author B. Joseph Pine II builds on the thinking behind The Experience Economy and his latest work, The Transformation Economy.
Pine argues that experiences alone are no longer the ultimate source of value. The next evolution is transformation: helping people achieve meaningful aspirations and become who they want to become.
For the retreat industry, it is a powerful distinction. A beautiful location, exceptional treatment or memorable programme can create an extraordinary experience. But designing for transformation requires something more: understanding the change a guest is seeking and considering how an experience can support them towards it.
Dušan Waldhütter picks up this question in From Programme to Passage: Designing Truly Transformative Retreats. Drawing on transformative travel, experience design, storytelling and Japanese concepts including Ichigo Ichie and Mono no aware, he explores why one person might leave a retreat profoundly changed while another finds their inspiration disappearing within days.
Crucially for this year’s theme, Waldhütter asks retreat creators to stop treating nature simply as the setting and consider how it can become an active part of a participant’s inner journey.
It is a shift that brings together many of the ideas running throughout this year’s programme: transformation is not necessarily something that can be delivered to a guest. Instead, retreat creators can design the conditions in which it becomes possible.
A MORE RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE
That thinking also raises a wider question for the industry. If nature plays such an important role in the experiences wellness travel creates, what responsibility do we have towards it?
Nature as a Partner: Rethinking the Relationship Between Wellness, Business & the Land will bring together perspectives from hospitality, regeneration and retreat practice to consider exactly that.
Led by Richard Naha, founder of Costa Rican surf and wellness retreat Surf Synergy, the conversation asks what might happen if businesses stopped viewing nature primarily as a setting or resource and began thinking of it as a partner.
How can properties contribute positively to the ecosystems and communities surrounding them? How can the experiences we create encourage a more reciprocal relationship between guests and place? And what does genuine regeneration look like when translated from aspiration into practice?
It is an important evolution of the sustainability conversation – away from simply minimising negative impact and towards considering what travel might actively give back.
Throughout the wider programme, those questions will sit alongside conversations around the commercial future of retreats and wellness travel, including Andrew Gibson’s From Interest to Itinerary: How to Sell Wellness Travel.
Synergy will also unveil the findings of its inaugural Global Retreat Report 2026, bringing new research into the conversation around where the retreat industry is heading. Presented by Synergy Founder Laura Montesanti, researcher Dr. Ivana Damnjanović and xchange facilitator Leah Lovelight Michael, the session will explore what retreat travellers are really looking for and how closely that aligns with what the industry believes they want. Drawing on insights from both consumers and wellness travel professionals, the research will look at the changing expectations, motivations and priorities shaping retreats today, while identifying some of the opportunities for the industry as it looks ahead.
Practitioners including Chen Lizra, Rajesh Ramani, Damian Chaparro, Larissa Giers and Cecilia Cortes will bring further perspectives spanning somatic intelligence, mindfulness, inner transformation and sound, while voices from across wellness hospitality, retreat creation and travel will contribute to the wider conversation.
For Montesanti, it is this meeting of perspectives that defines the programme:
“Nature has always been fundamental to retreats, but I think our relationship with it is becoming more intentional. The question now is not only how nature can support our wellbeing, but how we create experiences that deepen our connection to it and, importantly, what we give back in return. For me, that reciprocity is a really important part of where wellness travel needs to go next.”
Perhaps that is ultimately where The Healing Power of Nature leads. Not simply towards more time outdoors, or more retreats in extraordinary landscapes, but towards a different understanding of our place within them.
Across three days in Croatia, Synergy 2026 will explore nature as teacher, regulator, playground, medicine, design partner and source of awe – while asking the retreat industry to consider how the experiences it creates can help people reconnect with something increasingly easy to lose sight of. That healing does not happen separately from the natural world. We are part of it.