Reviews

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You can arrange a personalised Gift Voucher for the value of a retreat, workshop, wellness service or vacation rental, or for any value nominated by you. Here’s how it works…

• You contact us to select the value of your voucher and share details of who it is for, and pay in full by bank transfer or card (surcharge for card).

• We then create a voucher (sample here), customised with the recipient’s name and a personalised message (if you wish), and then send it to you as a PDF that you can print or deliver digitally to announce your gift.

• The lucky beneficiary then contacts us and we reserve a date that are convenient for them, and make all subsequent arrangements with them directly (…unless your gift includes you coming too, and you want to continue to be the organiser).

• Gift Vouchers are non-refundable, but can be transferred to another person or couple (for a retreat, we need a few days notice to process a new registration form and adjust dietary or medical considerations).

• Unless otherwise specified, a Gift Voucher expires in 6 months. For a longer expiry, please contact us. We are happy to be flexible within the constraints of our availability.

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• A 10% deposit is required to confirm your booking…
  • by bank transfer
  • by card over the phone, or we can send you a link (on request):
    • visa, mastercard, amex credit or debit cards
    • 3.0% surcharge to cover card processing fees

• Balance due 14 days before check-in:
  • We’ll send a reminder if need be.
    

• If you book within 14 days of your retreat, accommodation or other service, full payment is due at the time of booking.

All prices are on the website are in AUD. No GST is charged.

We have a flexible policy on changing your dates (you can do it once with a couple of weeks notice for no charge).

For more details and to see our cancellation policy, close this window and select the ‘Cancellations’ box.

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• We commit to keeping all details of your retreat confidential, including your name, the fact that you attended, who you came with and what was said and done.

• For us, confidentiality is a promise to not share information or story about you with anyone.

• We may seek permission to record your comments when leaving feedback, and that we may include an image, video or quote on our website and to use as marketing material. If you agree to be recorded, you agree to allow us use your image to describe our business. You are free to ask us to remove it at any time.

• So this confidentiality agreement does not limit your freedom to tell whoever you want about everything you experienced and what you learned about yourself and life. To the contrary we encourage you to share as much as possible to help anchor and stabilise new perspectives and life changes you may want to keep.

• To see our privacy policy, click here or click the ‘Privacy’ link at the bottom of each page on the GCIR website.

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• We are not doctors or health professionals in the academic sense, and make no claim to change anyone’s health. GCIR Wellness Retreats, Workshops and Services offer a humanistic support service for those who want to nourish their own wellbeing, limited to providing a context conducive to relaxation and self-healing.

• We take seriously the commitment to keep our clients and guests safe and free from harm, be it physical, mental or emotional. If you see anything that leads you to doubt that, please tell us immediately.

• You agree to take responsibility for your own experience, which means you agree to remain mindful and responsible for your own physical and emotional safety and to not project blame if you experience misfortune. In legal terms, it means you agree to indemnify Arisa and Terrence or any associated entity from all liability for your mental, emotional and physical experiences during your stay, including any injury, illness of angst after you leave.

• We ask that you respect the facilities as if you had to repair and clean them yourself, and take responsibility to cover the cost or replacing or repairing any damage done to the building, chattels, linen or artefacts as a result of your stay. 

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Our cancellation policy is designed to be flexible if a genuine emergency interferes with your plans, while protecting our capacity to stay in business by covering the costs to our business of unfulfilled reservations that block other customers from using our services.

If You Need to Change Your Booking:

• If you have an unexpected change of plan and give us 14 days or more notice before the start of your retreat, you can change your retreat dates (once only) for no charge.

• If you change your retreat dates within 14 days of your retreat (after full payment), a 20% surcharge of the total retreat fee is due to secure new dates.

• You cannot change your retreat dates more than once. If you cannot attend a second time, we consider it a cancellation.

Our Cancellation Policy

• If you cancel with more than 14 days notice, the retreat deposit (10%) is non-refundable (to cover our costs to plan your retreat).

• If you cancel within 14 days of your retreat (after full payment), that is usually too late to get a new booking which leaves us empty and without the possibility of income. Still we don’t want to claim more than is fair, so we still will give you a 50% refund (as a credit to a future retreat) even if you cancel at the last minute.

• If we need to cancel your retreat for any reason, you can opt for a full refund, or you can elect to transfer to alternate dates. If you elect to transfer, we will refund you 10% of the retreat fee as a way of saying sorry to mess with your plans.

• If either you or we need to postpone due to enforced COVID restrictions, we will reschedule your retreat to a mutually convenient time. 

We strongly recommend you take out travel insurance to cover yourself for any expenses in the event of a medical emergency or unavoidable last minute change in plans.

This policy (and all the others pertaining to retreats) are available to download from the General Information page of the GCIR website.

Retreats Include:

• Vegan organic lunch, snack, teas and filtered rainwater.
• A range of meditation, yoga and awareness sessions according to your program.
• Confidentiality, freedom from advice and dogma, respect for your freedom.

Fully Catered Accommodation Includes:

• Private cottage accommodation.
• Ready-to-eat breakfast(s) and evening meal(s) in your fridge for you to serve yourself at your leisure; all plant-based, organic, balanced in proteins, carbs, fibre and the nutrition of fresh home-grown herbs.

Self-Catered Accommodation Includes:

• Private cottage accommodation with full kitchen.
• We provide lunch and a snack during your retreat, and you self-cater your other meals.
• Included in the cottage kitchen are basic breakfast and dinner ingredients for you to serve or cook yourself (muesli, fruit, mylk, pasta and sauce base, all vegan and organic).
• Access to pick your own fresh organic herbs or greens from our garden.
• If you choose to eat in, we ask our guests to either bring only pre-cooked meat, or go vegetarian, during your stay to avoid the smell of cooked meat in the cottage decor. Thank you for your understanding.

Does Not Include: 

• You tell us before your retreat if you are allergic to any foods or if there are some things you just don’t like. Because the retreats are private, our capacity to change the menu mid-retreat is limited. We customise the menu to your preferences, but it is not an a la carte menu. 
  
• The cottage does not contain a microwave (because they kill all the micro-organisms in fresh food, destroying much of its nutritional value).
• We do not provide counselling for trauma or psychology issues and make no claim to remedies or specific health outcomes; we only encourage focus on the benefits and practices of gratitude and wholeness and support for choices of diet and exercise conducive to your feelings of wellness.

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We see that certain habits of perception and relating lead inevitably to discontent and disconnection from true self and others; like when genuine trauma triggers mental-emotional-behavioural loops of blame, drama, entitlement and obsession.

Part of our service to GCIR retreat guests is an experience of an environment free of all trace of those habits, supporting a measure of re-connection with true self.  

• At a mental-emotional level, the avoidance of the following core habits of unhappiness is the equivalent of avoiding toxic chemicals in our food and environment as a way to support better health

We do not facilitate drama – the cycle of persecutor-victim-rescuer has no end, so no matter how real and true it feels, we cannot work with those who manifest drama to disrupt or assert control. We do not intend to diminish the importance of those feelings and beliefs, we are just not qualified and don’t have enough time to work with them in retreats.

We do not engage in debate about what is more real or right; we don’t try and convince you that we know what is right for you; we work with an approach that protects the freedom of everyone to decide for themselves what is most real and true and valuable for them.

We will not waste your time. For us, time is precious. We promise to be on time with all our commitments to you, and to not invite your attention to distractions or irrelevant topics.

• Please note that our boundaries regarding some patterns of discourse are not personal, but rather intended to keep the flow of energy open and moving forward into more spacious and light-hearted aspects of ourselves.  

• Our preferred response to the everyday pain of human betrayal and loss, and the challenges we all have with emotional triggers and the pain of old wounds, is to bring attention into the present in search of beauty, appreciation and gratitude. We enjoy to have a laugh too, and keep the retreat flow light hearted and easy-going.

• We do not encourage the consumption of alcohol or recreational drugs while on the property, and reserve the right to cancel a program without refund if substances are abused during a retreat. This is not a moral judgement so much as a safety measure to ensure that we do not get entangled in binge or crash impulses that are beyond our skills to engage. We do not object to you smoking (outside) or having a tipple over lunch, but if you get stoned or drunk, we reserve the right to end your retreat to keep us all safe.

Trust Credentials

We appreciate that not everyone can be trusted these days, and until you meet us you won’t know for sure about us.

One of the many benefits of the internet is the opportunity to read what others who have met us say about us…

• As rental hosts of our cottage prior to running retreats, our reviews are consistently very positive…
  
  
  • on Airbnb we rate 4.9 out of 5 after 51 reviews (view listing and read reviews),
  • on Booking.Com, guests rank us at 9.8 out of 10 after 58 reviews (view listing and read reviews).

• Check our Facebook and Instagram accounts to learn about our history and see how we flow. 

• Deposit payments are through Paypal, with a buyer-protection guarantee against fraud for you. To retain our status as a merchant, we need to sustain impeccable record with our customers. Of course, we do.

• If you elect to arrange a payment plan through automatic billing of your debit or credit card, you card details are stored by Square card services, a well-established and secure global card services provider. We do not store or even see your card details.

If any question remains, please feel welcome to call us and hear for yourself the integrity in our voices and responses.