What a Thai Meditation Retreat & Histamine Detox Taught Me About Running a Business

Feeling fatigued, brain-fogged, or stuck by chronic histamine intolerance or burnout? Yep, me too!

Here’s what happens when you combine a strict diet for histamine intolerance with a 4-day silent meditation retreat in Thailand?

In this solo episode of The Remote CEO Life podcast, I share my personal journey through an intense meditation retreat, a gut-focused detox, and how both radically shifted my mindset, energy, and business.

I share my story about living with histamine intolerance, why I needed a total gut reset, and what I learned about myself - and business - by walking in silence for four hours a day whilst cutting out sugar, gluten, dairy, and processed foods.

Here’s what I unpack in this episode:

• How chronic stress and cortisol levels affected my health and work
• Why I chose a silent meditation retreat in Thailand and gut reset detox as part of my healing
• What walking in silence for four hours a day taught me about control, focus, and surrender
• Why taking space is essential for mental clarity, leadership, and sustainable productivity

If you’ve ever struggled with burnout, dietary restrictions, or felt misaligned in your business - this one will resonate. It’s about healing, reflection, and letting go of pressure so you can show up from a place of wholeness.

DM me on Instagram @itssophiebiggerstaff if you’ve got any questions about the retreat, histamine intolerance, or want to hear more about how I’ve embedded these lessons into my Freedom Model Method.

#mindfulness #entrepreneurship #productivity #healthandwellness #Thailand #personaldevelopment #meditationbenefits #holistichealth #selfimprovement #histamineintolerance #wellnessretreat #healthtips #businesslessons #travelexperiences #dietaryrestrictions #meditationretreat #mentalclarity #strictdiet #spiritualgrowth #lifestylechanges

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to the Meditation Retreat
• 5:42 The Journey to the Retreat: Health Struggles
• 10:41 Experiencing the Meditation Retreat
• 19:10 Lessons Learned from the Retreat
• 27:27 Implementing Changes in Daily Life

Transcript

Sophie (00:01) 

I have just finished a meditation retreat here in Thailand and I thought I would do an episode of the Remote Sea Air Life podcast to tell you all about it because I've been having quite a lot of questions. One about why I did the retreat, two about what came out of it and three about what the retreat entailed because it was quite intensive. So I thought I would just record a little podcast episode so that I can update everybody that's interested in hearing about it. And I thought it was about time I did another solo episode because a lot of my episodes have been

with some incredible guests lately, which I'm super, super excited about, but let's just do one for myself this little time. So I've got my notes here on my little remarkable because I can't even remember all of the things that happened on the retreat because it was a few weeks ago now, but let's rewind the story and let me tell you why I went on the retreat. So if we look back into May or June, I think it was,

I was in a yoga class. Let's paint the picture. I was in a yoga class and there was me and one other guy in this yoga class. Now I go to this yoga class pretty much every single week and it's a vinyasa yoga. It's in between slow and fast. It's not super power yoga. It's kind of somewhere in between. Now the other guy is brand new. I've never seen him before in the class. He rocks up to the class and he's like, okay, I don't want to work. don't want to do this class with the AC on. Now,

I've been to this class before. know it's quite a sweaty class, although it's not like power yoga. It is quite a sweaty class. So I was like, oh God, like the AC, that's going to be really annoying, but okay, fine. We can do it with fans, whatever. So the teacher turns off the AC, which is fine. Like it's the teacher's choice at the end of the day to turn the AC off. But anyway, halfway through the class, my body basically starts shutting down because it's overheating.

And when I've been shutting down, my sinuses close up, my body is finding it really hard to move, my nose is dripping because my sinuses have closed up and I just feel like someone has just gone, like punched me around the face. Now, this isn't an unusual thing for me because actually for the past few years, I have been struggling with histamine intolerance, which basically means that my body can't

breakdown histamine. So you hear things like, I've got hay fever. I'm going to take antihistamine medication. Mine is like next level. And it's over the years has got progressively worse. I think I've had it since my early twenties, maybe earlier, but I can't really remember. And I've always known that if I eat certain foods or if I'm in certain environments, this allergy activates now.

This year, particularly, this allergy has got super, super bad. And it's been impacting my work because when I have this allergy, it's almost like if I have it to its most extreme form, I get a very mild anaphylaxis reaction where my sinus is just shut down. I can only breathe through my mouth. And like I say, it's caused by certain foods, so foods with high histamine in, which include things like avocado, bananas, eggplant.

peanuts, shellfish. was actually, when I first realized I had this allergy really severely, I was actually here on Kao Pha Nhan in Thailand two years ago on Christmas Day, where I was out for a seafood barbecue. And actually my sister, her boyfriend, and then few of my friends from Bali were here. We all went to the villa for Christmas. We went out for Christmas dinner at this seafood restaurant and I had prawns, which I've been eating prawns for many years. And I suddenly just had this like...

mild anaphylaxis shock. It's not a shock to where I'm going to die, but I have very similar symptoms to it where my body just shuts down basically. And I had to take so much antihistamines and I have to take quercetin to bring it back down to a normal level. But then once I've had one of these reactions, I'm wiped out for a few days. And this has been happening on a more regular basis recently and not just from food. It's also if my body overheats or if I'm in certain environments that my body

senses like it's a threat basically. It's almost like, oh, you're overheating. That's a threat to your body. Boom, we're gonna shut it down so that it can't cause you the harm anymore. So basically that's what happened in this yoga class. And that was like a breaking point for me of being like, I can't go on like this anymore because from that yoga class, I was then in bed for two days. I couldn't work. I was absolutely exhausted. It literally felt like someone had knocked me to the floor and I was really struggling to pick myself back up.

And I have many ones of those on a really regular occasion, which means I have a lot of days where I wake up feeling really groggy and I don't really want to work because I can't function properly because it not only impacts me, my body, my sinuses, my breathing, it also impacts my balance, it impacts my focus, it impacts so many different things. And it also impacts me on a level of, where do I go and eat? Because I've got all of these allergies.

what am I going to do today because I don't want to overheat. I don't want to be in a busy environment and get too sweaty or hot because of what if this happens to me. So there's so many different layers. This has impacted me. And to be honest, I've been able to manage it. I'm 33. I've been able to manage it most of my life. I never really was treating the root cause of the problem. I was always treating the surface level symptoms. So anyway, the start of the story, going back to the start of the story, why I went on this meditation retreat was because I decided to do something about this allergy and

The allergy, I decided that I needed to reset my gut health after talking it through with Dr. Chachiputty and also a naturopath here on Copenhagen, the island. We decided to put me on a detox diet plan because we figured that the first step of healing the root cause of the problem is healing my gut health. The second step is stabilizing my nervous system. Now, because of many, many years of chronic stress and so many different things that I experienced in my nine to five life, in my personal life,

that has caused my nervous system to be a bit chaotic. My cortisol levels are traditionally very, very high and I've had that checked before and that is a fact for me. So I've had to do a lot of work to really try and lower those cortisol levels. But when you have chronic stress for such a long period of time, that really directly impacts your gut health. So naturally my gut microbiome is nowhere near as strong as it should be, which means that is then impacting all of these histamine intolerances, in which case my body is trying to fight itself.

with the naturopath, with Dr. Chatjee Pti, I decided that I was going on a detox. So that detox looked like the first week cutting out all inflammatory foods. Now bearing in mind, I already eat a quite low histamine diet because I already know that this is a problem for me, but even that isn't enough to cure these symptoms. So the detox diet, the first week, I decided to cut down on all of the inflammatory foods. So dairy, sugar, gluten,

and anything else that may cause inflammation in your highest immune foods. So I didn't have to cut it out completely. I just had to cut it back because if you cut something out completely, your body is going to be like, whoa, dude, what have you done here? Like why are you cutting all of these things out in such an extreme way? But then in the second week, that was a very extreme week. So the second week, I had to cut it back down to basics. I could only have rice and greens, basically green foods. So broccoli, green beans, morning glory, that kind of thing.

And I found that so hard and I knew I was gonna find that so hard because actually what I realized out of all of this is that I'm quite an emotional eater and I really love food and I loved processed food, I loved sugar, I was addicted to sugar. So long story short, the reason why I went on a meditation retreat here in Thailand is because I knew in that second week I had to have something that took my mind off.

the food situation because if I was just going to be eating rice and greens and the detox plan is recommended that you're not working whilst you're doing this detox because it obviously you're going to have like maybe some mood swings like reduced focus because your focus your body's doing some really deep healing work to heal your gut. I was recommended not to work. So I was like, well, what am going to do? Like, yeah, I could go to the beach bar after a few days of the beach at one minute. I'm going to get a bit bored, right?

So I was like, let me do something that's actually gonna take my mind completely off this food situation. So I decided to sign myself up to a meditation retreat. Whilst I was doing some inner work, I thought I'd also do some mind work as well. Now I've been a meditator at this point for at least the past three years and I love meditation. I think I have cracked the code of like how I can personally incorporate meditation into my personal life.

So I kind of thought this shouldn't be too hard. Like I know how to meditate. I've done a mini Vipassana before. I know the concept and I know that if I do this meditation retreat, it is going to give me something to take my mind off of this detox. So there is on Copenhagen a meditation retreat that runs on an ongoing basis at, it's a place called Inner Walk. Now Inner Walk is run by a company called Wonderland. Wonderland is a yoga teacher training center.

So basically they have this whole concept which is called Inner Walk. It was founded by a monk. And the concept is that you have a 15 meter long concrete platform and you walk back and forth that 15 meters for four hours across a span of four days. So you're doing four hours of walking every single day for four days. And...

To some people that doesn't sound that hard because they like walking, right? But obviously you're looking at a concrete floor. It is very boring. It's also quite physically difficult because you are just consistently walking. The idea is not to stop, but obviously you can stop if you want to. And imagine if you've just, if you've only got your thoughts to keep you company because it's silent, we're not engaging with anybody else. It can be a very, very intense process. Now,

As I say, I was doing this to keep my mind away from eating and it definitely, definitely did that. But obviously it took my mind onto other things. some of the things, so the concept is you go in on the first day, you are put in a group. Now, bear in mind, this is all free. This is run by volunteers. You don't have to pay for this. You can give a donation at the end if you feel like it.

But in general, this is all free because the concept is all based around Buddhist principles. So the first day was all based around Dharma, which is basically like energy and Dharma. We had like a Dharma talk at the beginning of the week and was telling us about the concept and how we can basically have those, have our thoughts.

and catch our thoughts and move on from our thoughts. So it's very similar to the concept that you would go through in a vipassana training. And then we did that for an hour. We had a little talk run by the volunteer about Dharma. And then we go and do our walk for four hours. And at the end of the walk, you have a sharing circle. So in total, you're there for about six hours. Now, it was me and eight Israelis doing this. There was no other nationalities.

in this and it was right in the middle of the time where Iran was dropping bombs into Israel. So it was quite an intense group because there was a lot of like big emotions coming up. So at the end of the day in the sharing circle there was a lot of things that people were referring back to war or things that happened in their personal lives and obviously I'm not from Israel so I couldn't, I could empathize but I couldn't necessarily.

relate in the way that some of the others were relating. So was very interesting for me to learn so much about their culture and things that had been happening in their country at that moment in time and really empathize with their situation. So there was nine of us on the first day. We all came to that Dharma talk. We all did the four hours. Now, about three hours into the program, at least two people had dropped off on that first day.

So by the end of the day, when we're doing the sharing circle, there were seven of us, I would say, more or less. And the first day wasn't too bad. Like we're walking, we're walking back and forth. Now I was using the strategy of like, let's count my steps. Now I started to realize that by counting my steps, I was trying to control the situation, trying to control.

how I, what I was doing in that moment in time. And actually I just needed to let it go. I just needed to be, I needed to catch my thoughts and move on from the thoughts. But then I started to go onto mantras and I started to think about like, well, what do, what kind of affirmations, what kind of mantras do I want to be telling myself in this moment in time? So I just repeated the same mantra over and over and over again as I was walking back.

And then every now and again, a new little thought stream would come up and I would follow the thoughts stream and I would maybe follow that or I would like try and release the thoughts depending on what it was about. But ultimately there was obviously naturally your thoughts come up over and over again. And it actually gives you so much space to focus on whatever it is that you need to think about. So like I had some business decisions that I needed to make and like some things that I was thinking about doing and.

in that session, it really helped me follow my thought patterns around those things and how I could come out of it. So even like, think by the end of the first day, I had some business stuff come up that I then quickly went and wrote down in my journal just so that I could have those reflections later on. Now, the second day was all about karma. So this is the concept of like our thought patterns are rolling through our brains.

And until we release that, until we let go, until we move through a situation, it is gonna constantly come back through, particularly if they're like negative thoughts. And again, the second day was actually very, very hard. I found it very physically difficult, more so than mentally challenging, because I'm not used to walking four hours a day. I'm actually used to sitting on my ass most of the day, to be honest with you. But.

Although I'm an active person, four hours of walking every day on a concrete platform is actually very challenging. So by the end of the week, end of the day, on the second day, my body was aching. I was in so much pain. I was like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to come back tomorrow. And by this point, we'd already dropped down to six people. So we start with nine, we're now on six by the end of the second day. I was finding it very challenging. So I went for a massage at the end of that second day. And then on the third day, I came back like a new person. Like I really, really felt like...

such a different person when I came back on that third day and I carried on walking. I can't remember. I think the third day was all about like gratitude. So we're doing like some gratitude exercises before we go into the walking meditation. And the whole concept of walking meditations, right, is to be more mindful about the things that coming into your head, about the way that you're moving your body so you can go really, really slow and you'll notice that your mind completely calms down.

or you can start walking a bit faster and you'll notice that your mind speeds up and your thoughts are coming way, way quicker. So what was interesting to me was like, we were doing this in the afternoon. So I think we started at 12 and we would finish around, we'd finish walking around 4.35 depending on what time we started actually walking. And I could notice because we're here in Thailand, right, we're on the side of the sunset. I could notice where the sun was hitting on the

the floor of the platform to know when the gong was going to go off to tell us when the meditation was finished. And every day it got to a certain point and the platform, I was like, come on, like we must nearly be finished. But every single day it was like, you've got another hour or whatever. Not that we knew the time. So it is boring, honestly, you're walking back and forth. It's so boring. But one thing I will say is it gave me so much space in my head to think about

so many different things and also think about nothing and do absolutely nothing. Like I was not bearing in mind I'm on this detox at the same time. I wasn't thinking about food at all, at all. I wasn't thinking about the fact that I could only eat green things for dinner and how boring that was gonna be. I was literally just thinking about right here, right now, I was so present and in tune with that moment in time and that is really, really wonderful. Then the fourth day, think we ended the fourth day with only, we started the day with five, we ended with four.

So from the nine that started on the first day, we actually only ended with four people, which gives you bit of an idea into how difficult this actually is to do and how not everybody actually makes it through the meditation retreat. So not only was my body obviously processing all of these things with the detox, my mind was having to process all of these things that were coming up through this meditation retreat as well.

So I'm going to share with you some of the things that actually came up for me in this meditation retreat, because a lot came up. Obviously you're creating a lot of space for yourself to think about things, right? And normally when we go about our day-to-day lives, we're so busy, we're so ingrained in thinking about the future or thinking about something that happened yesterday, never really thinking about what's happening in that present moment. And I'm so grateful for those four days because honestly, was so present. I was so present with everything.

it's surrounded by jungle, this platform that I'm walking on, right? And I'm just looking around at the birds, the trees, dragonflies, like all of this greenery, all of this nature. And it's incredible. And don't get me wrong, I did break a few times throughout the four days because it's hard. Like I said, it's physically hard, it's mentally challenging, but there were so many beautiful moments. And one of the things that I would say, like I really, really got out of this experience is the fact that life is meant to be shared because obviously,

We are all, we were all there on of our own accord, right? We're all there on our own agenda. But there was one moment on the last day where the four remaining people on the retreat, including myself, just starts walking in sync with each other. Now, even to the point where our feet were going one after the other in exactly the same speed and exactly the same pace.

And although we weren't even looking at each other, although we were doing it all very subconsciously, you can see that, like you can feel the energy just lift. Like we really lifted each other up. Like we're on the fourth day, we've been walking for three days at this point. It's quite hard. And one thing I really took away from that is like, wow, we are really meant to share experiences. There is so much power in numbers. And that was just something that I already knew.

But I think sometimes I forget, I'm a very independent person. I do so much by myself and sometimes I forget that I can actually experience these things with other people and it can be even better than me just doing it on my own. So that was the first thing that came out of it. The other thing that came out of it, which I loved and I'm actually incorporating this now in my Freedom Model Method group coaching program, is all around choices and the choices that we make in life and how they directly impact our circumstances. Now, as I told you,

We started with nine people on this retreat. Nine people chose to show up to this retreat. And like I told you as well, they're all from Israel. Everybody else there was from Israel. And one thing I took away, and this was actually on the first day this came up for me, was that we are all so different. Like bearing in mind, I'm from a completely different place. They were all from a similar place. And maybe they've got the same cultural expectations, same societal demands, all of those things, religion.

I'm completely different, right? Like I've come from the UK, I'm not religious, I'm a spiritual person, but like I was never grown up with religion or any particular like cultural practices. So I was like, we are so different. We have grown up in such different ways. We have experienced probably life in a very different dynamic, but yet we all chose to show up here on that first day. We all chose to do something today because we felt a certain way. We all chose to be here.

Now, obviously not everyone chose to show up every single day, but on that first day, this was my thought process. And what I realized is that regardless of whatever situation we've been given in life, we all have choices and how we go about those choices and how we take action off the back of those choices is what then determines our next steps, what determines our next future path.

And that was a really powerful realization for me. Again, not one that I didn't know already, but just reiterated it to me. And bearing in mind, everything that I do in my business these days is all around making choices that are really beneficial to you as a person and the lifestyle that you want to live. So if you want to start an online business,

thinking about exactly the lifestyle that you want to live and working backwards from that to build your business because so many people build businesses that don't work for their lifestyles and they resent them, they end up quitting because it doesn't actually give them the freedom they want. Whereas what would happen if we made the right choices, the right decisions that...

are guiding us closer to where we want to be rather than the decisions or the choices that we think we should be taking. So I actually came away on that first day and implemented something in my Freedom Model Method straight away, which is about making choices that work for you. So I've actually got that whole choice structure in the course now. And it's something that I teach in my ones ones. It's something that I teach in everything that I do through my Freedom Model Method, because we all have multiple decisions to make.

But if we start making choices that feel more aligned for us, that feel like they are fully authentic to us, and they feel like they're to be a good decision for us, they make us feel great, rather than like shit. They're the decisions that we want to be making. Now, don't get me wrong, there's all things in, sometimes things in life that we have to do, rather than things that we actually don't want to do. But if we can make 80 % of our decisions and our choices, things that we love doing, and then obviously we've got more space and tolerance for the 20 % that we don't really like doing. So.

I've got that whole choice structure in the Freedom Model Method. So if you are contemplating starting an online business and making sure that that works for you, that choice method is now ingrained in the course. And basically everything that I teach you in the course goes back to that choice making. If I tell you to take an action and it doesn't feel good for you, you're not taking it basically. And you're finding one that does feel good for you. So if you are ready to start an online business that works the lifestyle that you want to live,

then that course is there and available for you and you will get access to my choice and decision making template so that you can actually make choices that feel good and feel aligned for you. Because like I say, everyone joined that meditation retreat. We all made a choice to be there, but we all had different agendas. We were all walking our own paths. And that's a bit like business. We all choose to start a business, but ultimately we've all got our own goals and our own outcomes that we want to achieve. And if we can make those

goals feel really good for us along the process of getting there, that is the most important thing that we can do. So the other things that kind of came up for me were, let's see, again, it's powerful when you have shared experiences, you don't have to do everything alone. I also had a realization around boredom and repetitive tasks. So traditionally, like I found myself on this

particularly from the third day onwards, like we were getting into the afternoons, I found it so boring, like so deeply boring, that I was just trying to make it a bit more interesting. And one thing I realized off the back of that is that actually boredom shows us that something is easy and easy tasks should be easy for us to see rewards from, right? Like we don't have to struggle to get the things that we want. Actually, they can be very easy. Now...

If something's boring or repetitive, that means probably you're already really good at it, or you're already nailing it, or you can automate it, or you can outsource it. You don't need to be doing it anymore. So something that I'm applying to my business now is if a task feels boring to me, I'm looking at it like, well, how on earth do I make this quicker for myself? Because I've obviously already nailed it. If it's boring for me, I don't need to spend my time doing it. So how can I outsource that? How can I automate it? What can I do to make this?

even easier for myself. So there's lots of things in business I'm sure that we find boring, right? So you really need to have a think, look at like all of the things that you're doing. And if something is a boring task and you're procrastinating on it, look at how you can make that either more enjoyable, easier for yourself or automate it because that will be something that is going to be really helpful for you in your business. Something else that came up was that you have to give in order to receive. So I am naturally a giver.

actually, like I give a lot of energy to people, I definitely give a lot of energy to my clients. And sometimes I really struggle to receive like when some I'm the first person to offer you help. If I look you think if I think you need it. And what I don't do is ask for help when I need it. And what I don't do is receive help when I need it. Even if someone offers to help me, I'm always like, No, no, no, it's okay. I'm very independent. It's fine. can do it by myself. When actually

People want to help, so I need to learn how to receive that. And when I give, I should be able to receive as well. So that is definitely something that I'm now practicing in my day-to-day life.

Sophie (25:01) And then something else that I realized is that being a leader and showing up as a leader in your business, in your life really requires you to be able to take this space. So I recognized actually that my body was screaming at me. If I was having all of those food intolerances, if I was overheating in yoga, my body needed a break and I can never show up a hundred percent in my business if I'm not feeling a hundred percent. Right. So

me being a leader was actually me going on this meditation retreat and being like, I'm going to take four days off for myself and do this to create space and really start focusing on myself. So I did, I created that space and this was something that I recognized and followed a thought pattern whilst I was on the retreat that I had to create that space in order to receive some of the things that I needed to receive and nourish and replenish my cup so that I could

continue doing all of the work that I'm doing. And to then implement that and integrate that into my life, I came up with the fact of, said, where am I ready to take more leadership in my life? One, create an even more space, not just taking the chance on a meditation retreat, but doing that on a daily basis, doing more things for me on a daily basis. Being more generous and being able to receive the generosity back, feeling more gratitude.

Taking more digital detoxes because that was one of the things that I absolutely loved. I wasn't looking at my phone that whole week and if you know me, you know I hate my phone. So taking more digital detoxes because obviously we need to be on our phones sometimes but I want to be more conscious about the time that I spend on my phone and just not look at it on a regular basis. Showing up and taking up space when I deserve to.

I sometimes am really guilty of like shying away and being very humble about the things that I'm doing. But actually I've done some really cool stuff in my life. And part of the work that I do now is me sharing my story so can expand other people to take action and take control in their life. And I need to show up and take up that space and share the story if I'm going to be able to do that. So this definitely showed me that I have the abilities to do that. And

don't have any guilt about not working all the time. You're allowed to take the space for yourself. You're allowed to do the things that you want to do. And I think it's like so powerful when you can take a step back knowing that that step back is going to help propel you forward. So this has probably been a bit of a jumbled episode where I've told you so much information about the things that have come up for me. But I just wanted to share some of the things because I've been getting some messages about I've had a lot of people.

ask like what did you take away from this meditation retreat? And I think the overarching message for me was really that we have to take the space in order to get the space in our head, in order to think things through on a logical way, in order to replenish ourselves. And I think we should all be able to take time away from our businesses without feeling any guilt for it. And we're going to come back into our businesses feeling so much more motivated, refreshed, nourished.

And I really did like the week after when I, the detox then to fill you in on the back end of the detox, the week three and week four, you slowly reintroduce foods. So I didn't really need to do any more like meditation retreats to take my mind off it because I was slowly, slowly getting back to a more normal diet. I still am not able to eat any processed foods, sugars, gluten or dairy or anything inflammatory, but I can eat pretty much everything else. So my life is a little bit more interesting when it comes to food again.

basically.

The weeks after the retreat, I felt so much more motivated to do the things I've always wanted to do in my business because I just had so much more energy. I'd taken the time off and that gave me energy to keep going. So if I can give you one little takeaway from that meditation retreat that I did, it's like, take the space for yourself. Go and do something that you really want to do. That going and doing that inner walk has been on my list of things to do here in Kaipung Yang since I got here back in January. It's now July. So it's taken me six months to find...

four days out of my calendar to go and do this, which is absolutely crazy. But if you're feeling like you have lost motivation, you're demotivated, you can't concentrate, you're procrastinating, you've got no new ideas coming in, take the time off and allow yourself to take that time off so that you can replenish yourself, nourish yourself and come back feeling extra motivated when you have finished doing that. So that would be my one takeaway from you. And obviously you can take any of the other things I've mentioned.

and implement them in your business as well. But I think we should all be taking up more, taking more time for ourselves and filling our cup so that, especially if you're a service business, so that we can help fill other people's cups as well. So that was a little recap of my meditation retreat. The reasons why I did the meditation retreat, what I've done from that implementing into my business, particularly regarding the freedom model method and how I've implemented some of these things.

I feel right now, I'm now in week five or six of the detox and I feel so much better. I've got like barely any allergy symptoms anymore. There's definitely nowhere near as bad as it was. Am I perfect? No. I still have a bit of work to go, that plus the meditation retreat, plus all of the daily practices that I have in place in my life anyway, has really, really helped me. And I would highly recommend anybody that has been struggling with some kind of health issue or

is going through some kind of burnout or has like really high cortisol levels to really look at like the long-term impact that's having on your body because I go, I've gone from the extreme, right? Like I had this, I had very extreme chronic stress for a long period of time that has riddled my body with problems. And this is the extreme measures that I've had to take to fix those problems and reverse all of the things that have happened. So I really highly recommend if you are struggling with burnout stress,

high cortisol levels that you think about the repercussions on your body and take the space and take the time off so that it doesn't get you to this point where you literally have to take drastic actions in your life and make really big changes to fix the problems that have been ongoing for such a long time. So if nothing else, I hope it's inspired you to do that. Thank you so much for listening. I actually vlogged that whole week where I was on the detox. So I might...

post those little vlogs alongside this episode. So you can kind of get, this is obviously me talking about it a few weeks later, but then you'll get an actual real view of what was happening at that moment in time as well. So if you've got any questions about that retreat, if you'd like to hear more about it or have a chat about it, make sure you drop into my DMs on Instagram, it's at it'ssophiebiggastuff. And if you are interested in that choice model and creating a business.

that works for you, not one that you work for. Don't forget that you will get access to that in the Freedom Model Method, my signature program where there is a course, group coaching and one-on-one coaching as well. So if you have any questions about that, drop into my DMs. If not, I will see you for another episode very soon.