cocoon is the incubator where you get closer to your vision.
It sounds fluffy or even empty until you actually think about it in your own life. So let's look at what it would mean for you, personally:
Imagine we give you seven days to invest in what is most important to you.
We design the perfect environment for your intentions and needs, based on the latest research: neuroscience, psychology, physiology, etc.
It sounds fluffy or even empty until you actually think about it in your own life. So let's look at what it would mean for you, personally:
Imagine we give you seven days to invest in what is most important to you.
- What would it be? What specific goals would you want to set for yourself? (examples)
- What support would you need?
We design the perfect environment for your intentions and needs, based on the latest research: neuroscience, psychology, physiology, etc.
Past examples from our guests
Write a chapter of your book, Product Research, Business Planning, Self-Care, Play the Piano, Make a big life decision, Finish a Research Paper, etc.
Technology has freed us from time & location to produce, play & connect. At every moment of every day, we're presented with infinite choices. Each choice can bring us closer to our dreams or move us further away. The way to our dream may not be tempting, easy, or instantly gratifying, and willpower is a finite resource. So we are stretching it thin. Until one day, we can see clearly what really matters to us. Because we are clear, we commit, we retreat in action. Action manifests our dream and ultimately, we realize: we are becoming who we are through what we do
A retreat just for you
No two retreats are the same. Your experience is tailored to your intentions & needs.
Yet, we observe recurring themes:
Yet, we observe recurring themes:
Find clarity & purpose
Intention setting is at the heart of cocoon. Connect with your passion (or curiosity). Maybe, who are you doing it for? What is needed? A retreat to go deep within and explore.
Discover
Get started
You are clear on what you want to do, now you kick it off. You want to make space for this new project. Give it the best conditions for it to flourish. Start delivering and initiate movement.
Kickstart
Accelerate
Clear purpose and you got started, but you feel it could go faster... if only...
Let's give it a boost. Focusing all your energy on a single purpose might do it, and we'll provide the right support.
Let's give it a boost. Focusing all your energy on a single purpose might do it, and we'll provide the right support.
Boost
Enrich
Come plug into a community of visionaries, creators, change-makers & nourish each other. You open to new perspectives and make your project more awesome, relevant, and valuable.
Enrich
What is your intention?
Share with us your intentions and we will share recommended next steps for you.
A retreat might come up at some point.
A retreat might come up at some point.
Yours
Research-based
Scientists have identified the conditions that boost energy, focus, and creativity. Are you leveraging the latest research? Our retreats are. Below are the top levers we help you use. We share resources from our research on this dedicated research page.
The mind can be a fertile ground
State Hacking
Modulate your energetic and tense arousal as well as your hedonic tone. (1) Focus on aspects of your experience that generate the state you want, (2) Tell yourself the right story (watch your language), and (3) Use your body: parasympathetic & sympathetic.
Joy & play promote divergent (creative) thinking and low spirits favor your convergent (analytical) mind.
Joy & play promote divergent (creative) thinking and low spirits favor your convergent (analytical) mind.
Flow
Flow is the key to the ‘more’ you seek. Time flies, we forget ourselves, and performance is maximized, yet effortless. Whether we watch a movie, a concert, or a football game, we're actually paying to observe people in a flow state. Engage in activities that support you at each of the 4 stages of the cycle of Flow: Struggle > Release > Flow > Recover.
Identity Design
Our identity is the patchwork we weave with our beliefs and storytelling threads. We wear our identity as glasses, filtering reality, and shaping our actions. We do not do what we can, we live what we believe we are. Identity opens up experiences, and prevents others. Are you living your life in service of your identity? Or is your identity in service of your life?
Habits & Micro-Rituals
Biased towards dramatic heroic stories, we overestimate the importance of once-in-a-lifetime transformations. Success is actually the product of daily practices, like compound interests. Habits also structure your day. Design your own rituals to embed your values and intentions into your day. Random, intermittent and short rests & rewards are powerful.
Intrinsic Drivers
We can use our needs to motivate ourselves to start and sustain our efforts. Although terminology varies, Kotler, Pink, and Robbins agree on these three:
- Autonomy: the desire to direct your own life,
- Mastery: the desire to learn, explore, be creative,
- Purpose: the desire to matter, to contribute to the world.
The Unconscious
The unconscious is often associated with trauma and cognitive & emotional biases we compensate for. The Unconscious is also the source of magic you tap into when you're in the zone. Break your thinking patterns with practices like breathwork, and connect with the Unconscious (yours and the collective) for breakthrough creativity.
Empowered by the Body, and its wisdom
Human Cycles
Humans are subject to various cycles. The 2017 Nobel prize recognized the Circadian rhythm and its impact on health. Bodily functions — nourishment, growth, maintenance, waste management — are best performed at specific hours. The same applies to your ability to be creative, analytical, and empathetic. Leverage these cycles or push against them.
Chronotypes
Lions rise up before the sun but run low on energy by late afternoon whereas wolves would be the life of the party, and can dance until early morning.
The Circadian rhythm describes the general concept. Your chronotype helps you figure out the perfect schedule for you: when to sleep, do your taxes, exercise, be social, etc. Know your clock, and sync.
The Circadian rhythm describes the general concept. Your chronotype helps you figure out the perfect schedule for you: when to sleep, do your taxes, exercise, be social, etc. Know your clock, and sync.
Beyond the health benefits of the Sauna and the Ice Bath (heard of Heat/Cold Shock Proteins?), a potent psychoactive effect gets you out of your head and back into the body.
The single best way to break patterns is to use the body whether it is through temperature modulation, exercise, or breathwork.
The single best way to break patterns is to use the body whether it is through temperature modulation, exercise, or breathwork.
Toxin Free
Enjoy your body and use it as a stepping stone for higher purpose. Or use it to process toxins. Dioxin, glyphosate, PFAs are agreed upon toxins but more substances are considered toxic based on the dose, your body and the expert you talk to. The key is to remove all the agreed upon toxins you can and reduce what is not helpful to the minimum.
Nutrition
Cognitive enhancing (Nootropics) & psychoactive (yes, talking about nutrition, not plant medicine) effects can be found in food. Diet can alter blood and brain concentrations of neurotransmitter precursors, with implications for the synthesis and release of brain neurotransmitters. Carbohydrates are in the psychoactive category.
Fasting
It takes energy to pass a meal through the GI tract, process what is useful, and eliminate waste: 10-15% of your total energy expenditure. It is concentrated after your meals, imposing daily ups and downs. Fasting has profound effects on our emotional state and cognitive capabilities: it stabilizes us and offers access to altered states of consciousness.
People are distracting empowering.
Body Double
We body double when we go to the café to work alongside strangers or work out in the gym instead of alone at home. The underlying mechanism is not clear yet but people struggling with executive functioning skills, like starting & staying on task, report benefits from the practice.
The Observer Effect
The presence of an observer causes short-term improvements in performance, especially (1) when goals and values are made clear, (2) there is novelty involved: the observer stays top of mind, (3) feedback is offered. Made famous by the Hawthorne study whose results were actually overstated.
Peer Support
Participation in services with a hierarchical structure can engender passivity. Conversely, accountability partnership and peer coaching empower through self-determination and the helper-therapy effect, without reducing the benefit of social support. Peers combining information get benchmarks, see the core and ultimately resolution & role models emerge.
Promote "no"
From birth, most are trained to say "yes" and comply with Authority, more than to say "no". To belong, we tend to perpetuate this bias to yes. It can cost us our dreams: our ability to manifest what we truly want. Focus by saying no and make space with fewer & slower yeses. Learn to go where no one will ask you.
Psychological Safety
Identified as #1 characteristic of successful high-performing teams at Google, it is the confidence that the group will not embarrass, reject, or punish one for being oneself. It stems from mutual respect & trust among members. Comfortable to show yourself without fear of negative consequences, safe to take interpersonal risk and challenge each other, lovingly.
Sensemaking
Together, we learn to recognize the signal within the noise. This requires a certain attunement and generosity towards the other, especially those who think differently than we do. Engage in a different game and work with each other in good faith. Each of us hold pieces of truth, our unique perspective.
What we design designs us back
Biophilia
Being immersed in nature, seeing it through the window or incorporating natural elements and life in our spaces help us heal better, improve our mood and overall health, refresh our attention and psyche overall. It even boosts our creativity. Biophilic design regenerate nature, our spaces and rehumanize us.
Beauty in Patterns
Our 5 senses and our minds are trained for pattern recognition. They are used to a certain richness in our experience: patterns layered at different scales, specific ratios between scales, and symmetries. While sensory deprivation can be helpful for some practices, our well-being depends on this richness.
Ergonomy
Being sedentary negatively affects mood, stress, and sleep. Our posture and our movements also affect our cognitive process, including creativity. Choose spaces and furniture that enable the level of movement and the posture right for your health, emotional and cognitive intentions.
Worlds Colliding
Creativity often comes from juxtaposing old ideas in original ways. People we perceive as creative are intellectual middlemen, they transfer knowledge between disciplines. Opinion and behavior are more homogeneous within than between groups, so get connected outside your area, and open up.
Separate
One space, one use. Because each space supports a specific type of activity. The office of tomorrow is a form of Eudaimonia Machine, not the open-plan office. When you start mixing activities and spaces , performance goes down. Worse, habits are mixed too, and the easier ones tend to win out.
The Passage
Our process of becoming depends on the devices we use, and particularly the spaces we live in. Our overall journey is guided by the lobbies and rooms we enter. What processes - separation, liminality, and incorporation - do we engage in when we choose the spaces we live in?