Place · The evidence
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)
Why Furnas · Azores
Where the earth breathes first.
A geothermal volcanic valley in the east of São Miguel. Steam rises from the riverbanks, warm mineral water runs through the forest, and the noise you brought with you has nowhere to land.
Why here
A place that has been doing this for centuries.
Furnas creates physical and mental distance from the environments where daily pressure is built. It also happens to be home.
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Geothermal, by nature
A volcanic valley where the ground breathes and the water comes up warm from below. Heat, water, forest — the conditions for a physical reset are already here before anyone designs a session.
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Our hometown
Both founders are from São Miguel. The programme was built by the founders for themselves first — and it lives in the valley they know best.
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Remote enough to force a genuine break
An island in the mid-Atlantic, a valley in the east of it, ringed by forested slopes. The usual noise has a very long way to travel.
Tiago Cordeiro · Co-founder
After more than eight years away from São Miguel, returning made one thing clear.
No place makes him feel the way the Azores do.
The place
The problem was made at your desk, in your calendar, between your meetings. You will not solve it there.
The place that made the problem cannot solve it.
Attention, restored
Cities spend attention. Nature restores it.
The focus you burn through at a desk runs down. Somewhere that asks nothing of it, it comes back.
Kaplan, Attention Restoration Theory · Journal of Environmental Psychology, 1995 (opens in a new tab)
Distance, enlarged
Distance changes the size of the questions you can think about.
Up close, you see tasks. From far enough away, you start to see direction — which is often what the decision was really about.
Trope & Liberman, Psychological Review, 2010 (opens in a new tab)
That is why the experience is held here — on an island, in a valley, a long way from the room where the problem was made.
The valley · Five places
Where you sleep, soak, walk, wait and sit down to eat.
Five places in and around the valley. Each one slows something down — and by the end of the week, the slowness is the point.
Furnas Lake Forest LivingThe Stay The Stay
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.
Thermal water, after darkFurnas The Water
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.
Terra Nostra GardensFurnas The Forest
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.
The caldeiras by Lagoa das FurnasWhere the pots go down The Cooking
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.
Cozido das FurnasThe Table The Table
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.
Beyond the valley
Then the island opens out.
Furnas is the base. Around it, São Miguel — the largest of the nine Azorean islands — holds crater lakes, ridge trails and waterfalls. Movement here happens in raw nature, not on a treadmill.
Crater lakes
Water held in the craters of old volcanoes, often under a lid of mist. Scale like this quietly resizes whatever you brought with you.
Ridge trails
Paths like the ridge above Lagoa do Fogo. Long, quiet walking, with nothing to do but put one foot in front of the other.
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)
Waterfalls
Some of the island is best understood with your eyes closed.
Waterfalls like the one at Lombadas, where the forest closes in and the only thing left to listen to is the water.
Natural sounds lower stress and lift positive feelings. Water sounds showed the strongest effect on health outcomes. Buxton et al., PNAS, 2021 (opens in a new tab)
Where the week takes you on the island is shaped around the group. Each experience is tailored to each cohort.
Getting here
Welcome to the neighbourhood.
Furnas sits in the east of São Miguel, in the middle of the North Atlantic. Far enough from your desk to change how you think.
São Miguel · Azores
Coordinates: 37 degrees 46 minutes north, 25 degrees 18 minutes west.
Mid-Atlantic, on purpose.
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Once your place is confirmed
01 Logistics, personally
Travel details are shared once your place is confirmed. Until then, the only thing to plan is the conversation.
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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.
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Arrival
03 Fly into Ponta Delgada
São Miguel’s airport is Ponta Delgada (PDL), on the south coast of the island.
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About 45 minutes
04 East, to Furnas
Furnas is in the east of the island, about forty-five minutes by road — down into the valley, where the steam starts.
October 2026 · Fully bookedLimited places each year
Step away from the noise. Return with clarity.
We respond to every enquiry personally within 48 hours. This is not a booking form — let’s have a conversation.
Or write to us directly — reset@theneighbourshub.com