Furnas · São Miguel · Azores

You’ve hit success.
What’s next?

A private five-day reset for founders, CEOs and executive leaders carrying sustained responsibility. Eight guests. One closed cohort. Held in the geothermal sanctuary of Furnas.

Enquire about future experiences Discover the reset

Step away from the noise. Return with clarity.

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37°46′N 25°18′W

Pressure doesn’t announce itselfIt doesn’t arrive as one bad call.

It arrives as a slow drift of slightly worse ones, repeated daily.

And the sharper your mind, the better it defends them.

The place that made the problem cannot solve it.

The Neighbours Hub

A private reset in the volcanic valley of Furnas — built for the one decision you’ve been avoiding.

We built The Neighbours Hub from direct experience of that drift: five days on the island, eight people, and a programme designed around what the highest performers actually do to sustain clarity.

Not a holiday from your business. A better environment to see it clearly.

How the reset works

Steam rising from the geothermal riverbanks of the Furnas valley — Furnas valleyThe earth, breathing

EightGuests per cohort

Five^*Days on the island

OneCohort per season

48^hPersonal reply to every enquiry

*Each experience is tailored to each cohort.

Our philosophy

Clarity isn’t random.
It is designed.

The programme is built around three simple conditions that create the physical and mental space required for clearer thinking. Body first. Then movement. Then the room.

Steam rising from a thermal stream at night in Furnas, lit low beneath a willow and broad leaves

01/

Breathe

Wim Hof Method breathwork and cold exposure.

The foundation of everything. Regulation at the body level before anything else.

“You can’t think your way to clarity in a stressed body. The body gets there first.”

A ridge trail above a crater lake in morning mist

02/

Move

Somatic movement, yoga, and raw nature.

Restore the body's capacity to regulate. Movement that slows thinking, not accelerates it.

“Your best decision will not happen at your desk.”

A platter of cozido das Furnas: cabbage, greens, carrot and slow-cooked meats from the underground pots

03/

Connect

Eight people with the earned right to have an honest conversation.

Anchored by cozido das Furnas — a meal slow-cooked underground by geothermal heat. The most unhurried table you will ever sit at.

“Your next decision is only as good as the room you make it in.”

Try it now · about a minute

Before you read on,
breathe with us.

The protocol is called cyclic sighing: two inhales through the nose, one long exhale through the mouth. In a 2023 study, five minutes a day of it improved mood and reduced physiological arousal more than mindfulness meditation.

It isn’t the Wim Hof Method — that is taught in person, in Furnas, with Samir. But it makes the same point: regulate the body first, and the thinking sharpens on its own.

Balban, Spiegel, Huberman et al., Cell Reports Medicine, 2023.

Press begin when you are ready

Not a retreat

A retreatsends you home relaxed.
A mastermindsends you home with notes.
The Neighbours Hubsends you home knowing exactly what to do next — and fully behind it.

The coach brings the method. The room pressure-tests your thinking. You do the deciding.

A 35-year review of research on goals found that they change behaviour when people are committed to them — and that commitment grows when the goal truly matters to you and you believe you can deliver it. That is why the decision stays yours.

Locke & Latham, American Psychologist, 2002.

The container

No cameras. No audience. No record.

Participant faces are never shown in anything we publish. The week stays personal and confidential.

One closed cohort of eight. No observers, no audience — only the people in the room.

Honest conversation requires no audience. The moment a room can be recorded, people perform instead of reset. Privacy is not a courtesy here. It is the condition that makes the work possible.

How it works

It begins before you arrive — and continues after you leave.

“I have been to retreats before. I left inspired, made promises to myself, and then returned home to the same noise.” — Founder Series, Episode 03

Today
01 The conversation

Tell us where you are. Every enquiry is read personally by the founders and reviewed with Rob Paynter, our executive coach. We reply within 48 hours — this is not a booking form.
7–14 days before
02 Calibration

A private session with Rob to name the decision you are carrying and set your intention — so you arrive already pointed at what matters.
Five days in Furnas
03 The reset

Breathe, move, connect. Body first, then movement in raw nature, then an honest room of eight. The coach brings the method. The room pressure-tests your thinking. You do the deciding.
After you leave
04 Integration

A private calibration after the reset, so the clarity survives contact with your calendar. You only need to come once.

The full programme

Why Furnas

A place that has been doing this for centuries.

The Forest01 / 05

Terra Nostra Gardens

Ancient thermal pools in a subtropical forest. Mineral-rich water heated by the earth below. The air is different here. The light is different. Everything slows down by design.

Thermal water steaming at night, lit low among the ferns

The Water02 / 05

Thermal Hot Springs

Geothermally heated water rising from deep below the earth’s surface. You immerse. Your nervous system stops negotiating. This is where the physiological reset begins — before the breathwork, before the cold.

The geothermal ground at Lagoa das Furnas where pots are buried to cook

The Cooking03 / 05

Cooked Underground

Pots lowered into the earth. Six hours of geothermal heat. No chef, no kitchen, no flame. The earth does the cooking. This is where cozido das Furnas has been prepared for centuries — a ritual before it became a meal.

The Table04 / 05

Cozido das Furnas

The most unhurried meal you will ever sit at. Slow-cooked underground for six hours, served at a table with eight people who have earned the right to an honest conversation. Food as metaphor for the entire week.

Low timber cabins set against the forest at Furnas Lake

The Stay05 / 05

Private Cabins

Tucked into the landscape. No hotel corridors, no lobby noise. Just the sound of the forest and the earth below. Your base for five days of genuine reset.

The island Explore Furnas & São Miguel

Is this for you?

For those who know something is slightly off — and refuse to ignore it.

This is for you if

Founder or senior leader, 35–60
Making 6-figure+ decisions
High-performing but mentally saturated
You know your decision quality has quietly declined
Willing to step away from control for the full programme

This is not for you if

You are looking for relaxation or a traditional holiday
You are avoiding difficult decisions, not facing them
You are unwilling to engage in physical activities

The programme team

Every facilitator holds a specialism.

The programme was built by the founders for themselves first. Breath, movement, sound and the decision itself — each has its own guide.

Meet the programme team

The research behind the week

The research came first.

Intelligence was never the bottleneck. The conditions were. The week rests on published research into breath, movement, nature and how groups decide.

Method

6×

Across more than 1,000 major business decisions, the decision process mattered roughly six times more than the quality of the analysis.

Lovallo & Sibony, McKinsey Quarterly, 2010 (opens in a new tab)

Move

60%

Walking boosted creative output by around sixty per cent compared with sitting still.

Oppezzo & Schwartz, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2014 (opens in a new tab)

Move

90minutes

A ninety-minute walk in nature measurably reduced rumination — the loop your brain runs when a decision won’t resolve.

Bratman et al., PNAS, 2015 (opens in a new tab)

Place

50%

Four days immersed in nature, disconnected from devices, improved creative problem-solving by fifty per cent.

Atchley, Strayer & Atchley, PLoS ONE, 2012 (opens in a new tab)

Read the science Field notes & protocols

Who we are

Built from direct experience.

After senior roles at Google, Burton and other global consumer brands, we researched what the highest performers of this generation actually do to sustain clarity — and built a programme around it.

The result is a private reset in Furnas, our hometown in the Azores. Remote enough to force a genuine break. Familiar enough that we know every steaming corner of it.