The water is colder than I expected.
Every instinct tells me to step back out of the plunge pool. My breath catches, my shoulders tense, and I grimace. For a split second, I question why I voluntarily agreed to this. Three minutes suddenly feels very long.
But around me, the other women cheer, laugh, and make jokes. They offer to distract me from sitting in the cold water.
And somewhere between the initial shock and the steady rhythm of my breathing, I realize this weekend at Living Skies Lodge isn’t really about cold plunges, yoga, or wellness trends. It’s about learning how to sit with discomfort and knowing that you don’t have to do it alone.
Just outside Carlyle, Saskatchewan, Deb and Blair Andrew have created something unexpected: a Grounded Wellness Retreat hosted not in a resort or retreat centre, but inside their own log home, surrounded by a prairie landscape that somehow feels worlds away from everyday life.
**This article was created in partnership with Living Skies Lodge, but all thoughts and opinions are my own.
Staying at Living Skies Lodge
Living Skies Lodge operates as a traditional Airbnb & bed and breakfast. While guests can book one of two private rooms that share the common spaces with Deb and Blair, there’s a private suite with a sunken tub and its own spacious living area. There is also a three-bedroom cabin on the property, complete with its own outdoor hot tub.
In 2021, I discovered Living Skies Lodge on a work trip down to the area and immediately booked a room for several nights. While I distinctly recall the warmth and beauty of the space, what I remember most was how easy it was to get to know Deb and Blair. They are the kind of people who don’t just host you, they truly make you feel a part of their home.
The Beginning of the Grounded Wellness Retreat
Five years later, when Deb reached out to me about her first Grounded Wellness Retreat in 2026, I was curious.
But I wasn’t sure what to expect from a wellness retreat. There’s a lot of noise in the health and wellness world: optimization culture, buzzwords, and expensive supplements and promises. I wondered who retreats are really for. The ultra-disciplined? The already-converted? The chronically self-improving?
By the end of the weekend, I realized this wasn’t about the next health fad. It was about genuine introspection and personal growth, all while gathering and connecting with others in a safe and supportive space.
Why a Wellness Retreat in Saskatchewan
The retreat was inspired by Deb’s personal growth journey, the positive impact it has had on her life, and the desire to share the transformative power of mindfulness, yoga, and self-discovery with others.
“Once I started stepping into growth, once I started practicing it and actually seeing the change in myself,” she explains, “I just wanted to share that.”
The retreat offers a comprehensive experience of mental, emotional, and physical activities and aims to foster self-love, self-reflection, and a deeper understanding of individual wellness
We all arrived late in the afternoon and gathered under the vaulted A-frame beams of the home. We were six women coming from a variety of backgrounds, ages, and life experiences. While the retreat space can accommodate up to a dozen individuals, this group size felt just right. It was small enough that everyone had the opportunity to connect, with space and time for every voice to be heard.
Local Food and Shared Meals
Meals throughout the weekend were thoughtful, nutritious, and focused around local ingredients. Breakfasts included overnight oats made with coconut yogurt and maple protein, smoothies, and fresh fruit. Lunches leaned toward fresh veggies and salads paired with locally harvested wild game, while supper featured dishes like lentil soup and goose lasagna alongside a tempeh alternative. The meals were shared around the table in the same way conversations were: slowly and together.
That first night, there were British Columbia wines — both alcoholic and non-alcoholic — and easy laughter that happens when someone makes a slightly inappropriate comment at exactly the right moment.
The ice had officially been broken.
While Deb had planned icebreakers, our group of women didn’t need them.
Learning How We’re Wired: the Kolbe Assessment
Before the retreat, we completed an online Kolbe assessment. It’s a tool that explores conative strengths, or how we naturally take action. This isn’t a personality test in the typical sense, but about our instincts, who we are, and how it remains the same over the course of our entire lives.
Deb guided us downstairs to the lower-level entertainment space — sauna and cold plunge nearby — and walked through our results and what they meant.
There are four pillars to the Kolbe model: fact finder, follow through, quick start, and implementor. I am an 8274. This means I have an uncanny talent for coming up with unique strategies, prioritizing opportunities, and dealing with the unknowns in complex problems. I thrive when quantifying an opportunity and prospecting for ways to enhance it.
Looking back, it explains why I’ve gravitated toward building a career in digital storytelling, which is an industry that has evolved in real time and requires comfort with uncertainty and constant change.
Over several sessions throughout the weekend, we talked about attachment styles, choice, and the one thing we actually control: how we respond.
Those themes carried throughout our casual conversations. As did the fact that there is no right way to be. Over the two and a half days, we shared stories about relationships, family, and uncertainty. About leaving or staying. About the ways we’ve been told we’re not enough or we’re too much. How we feel in our own bodies and how that doesn’t always match who we want to be.
These conversations were the kind you usually only have with the one or two most trusted people in your life. But this space held it all respectfully and openly. None of us were there to judge. We were there to listen, to share, to support and to hold space for one another.
Grounding in the Greenhouse: Yoga, Soil and Sustainable Living
If there was a heartbeat to the weekend, it was the greenhouse.
Seventeen feet wide and 112 feet long, the greenhouse stretches behind the shelterbelt of trees that encircle the yard. Inside, it was warm, earthy, and alive. This was a treat in our cold and dormant Saskatchewan winters.
Deb told us right off that she’s not a gardener. “I kill houseplants,” she laughed. “I don’t know soil health or germination rates. But I’m learning.”
As she talked about building the greenhouse and her hopes for sustainability and permaculture, she described how people have begun showing up. Neighbours and community members have offered shared knowledge on topics like vermiculture. Conversations have evolved organically as Deb continues to trust her ability to learn and to create something new and valued for herself and others.
In the greenhouse, we walked barefoot through the soil and physically connected with the earth. Research suggests this practice of grounding can help regulate stress, calm the nervous system, and bring awareness back into the body.
Deb showed us the plants she’s been growing and a bin of seeds we could choose from to plant our own. I chose eucalyptus and sunflowers, pushing the seeds beneath the soil and sprinkling them with water. The experience of planting new life was also grounding in the most literal sense.
Later that morning, we rolled out beach towel yoga mats between the raised beds and tomato vines. Hot yoga in a greenhouse in the middle of a Saskatchewan winter? This was a new experience I’ve never tried before but happily participated in. The heaters hummed, and a row of lights twinkled overhead as we stretched our bodies and minds and breathed in the warm, humid air.
After lunch, massages were offered in the same space that afternoon. There were DIY scrub stations to create our own coffee body scrub, lavender lip balm, and headache rollers to take home with us. Free time allowed people to journal, nap, connect with one another, or sit and have quiet time. Choice – and the power of it – was the undercurrent of the entire weekend.
Cold Plunging and Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone
As one last opportunity to stretch our comfort zones, Deb set up a Kyro Cold Water Therapy plunge pool. This combined the experience of an infrared sauna and then immersing our bodies in cold water.
Alternating between heat and cold places the body under controlled (hormetic) stress. This can improve circulation, reduce inflammation, and build mental resilience. More than anything, stepping into cold water becomes a psychological exercise. Your instinct is to step out immediately. Staying requires breath, focus, and trust in your own capability.
Having the other women there to cheer me on and offer words of encouragement made the 3-minute timer pass more quickly than I expected.
Reflections from the Weekend
I left Living Skies Lodge not transformed overnight or suddenly optimized, but more aware of my choices, my capacity for growth, and the importance of community.
Wellness isn’t something you achieve in a weekend. But sometimes a weekend is enough to remind you what it feels like to reconnect with yourself, with others, and with the land beneath your feet.
And I’m really glad I said yes.
READ MORE: 5 Unusual Activities to Experience in Nearby Estevan
What to Expect at a Grounded Wellness Retreat Weekend
If you’re considering a Grounded Wellness Retreat Weekend, here’s what you can expect to experience:
- Guided learning around Kolbe strengths, attachment styles, and personal agency
- Thoughtful, locally sourced, and prepared meals
- Sauna, cold plunge, and movement
- Time in the greenhouse planting, harvesting, learning about permaculture, as well as yoga and an optional massage
- Held conversations in a small, safe group
- Space to rest without being rushed
Accommodations include two nights in the lodge or guest cabin, with all meals and facilitation included.
Deb and Blair are keeping group sizes intentionally small to preserve that sense of intimacy.
Details and intake applications are available from Living Skies Lodge.
