The Rest Test: What a Day at Brinkburn Taught Me About Changing Gear

A day of Pilates, breathwork and woodland at Brinkburn reminded me that running a business doesn't always require slowing down. Sometimes it just requires knowing which gear you're supposed to be in.

By Tricia Scott.

A few weeks ago I did something I hadn't done in about twenty years.

I sat down and breathed, on purpose, for ten minutes, before I'd had my coffee.

Before. My. Coffee. Who even am I?

Listen, coffee isn't a drink in my house, it's infrastructure. It has been the first decision of every day for two decades.

So how did we get here?

The previous day I'd spent a Sunday in Northumberland with Create Retreats, doing Pilates, walking through woodland, eating ridiculously good food, stretching, talking and, even though it sounds odd, the bit I had been slightly dreading — breathing.

And something had shifted.

Not in a sell-the-business-and-move-to-a-yurt way. I was still me (and still not a tent girl). But I'd remembered something I keep forgetting.

When the Place Helps You Slow Down

Brinkburn sits beside the River Coquet, near Morpeth in the North East of England, and it's one of those beautiful places that seems to do half the work before anyone says a word.

Old stone buildings tucked into a wooded valley. An open fire in the Pilates studio (perfection). A warm hug at the door, freshly pressed juice, and the most amazing plant-based lunch I am still not over.

The day unfolded gently: Pilates, a guided walk through the woods, breathwork, stretching and restoration, with food and conversation threaded throughout.

I went with the lovely Elaine Parker, founder of Exaltis and my retreat buddy for the day. Everyone else in the room was a stranger to me.

Every one of them, without exception, was brilliant. And that's worth mentioning because there is something a little terrifying about booking a wellness day when you don't consider yourself particularly good at wellness.

Maybe you're imagining a room full of people who can touch their toes without making involuntary noises.

I bet everyone else meditates.

I bet they own matching activewear.

I bet they know where their core is.

Meanwhile, you've turned up wondering whether leggings count as appropriate attire and how long it'll be before someone asks you to put your leg somewhere your leg hasn't been since ballet school when you were 14.

If any of that sounds familiar, welcome, you are my people.

Why the People Holding the Space Matter

Create Retreats is run by Gillian Bennison-Souri and Andreas Souris, and between them they led us through the day: Gillian on Pilates and Andreas on breathwork.

On paper, they're formidable.

Gillian is a former gymnast with more than forty years' experience in movement, Pilates, yoga and breathwork. Andreas is a physical therapist, born and raised in Athens, with a quarter of a century of practice behind him.

In the room, though, you don't notice the CV.

You notice the warmth.

There is a very particular skill in holding a room full of strangers so that no one feels as though they're performing. Nobody is being watched. Nobody is being graded. Everybody is well looked after.

Gillian and Andreas have that skill in spades.

It's something I've noticed in the best communities too: the moment people stop feeling as though they have to prove themselves, they start being themselves.

What if You’re Not Very Good at Wellness?

If you're anything like me, you'll need to hear this part.

I hadn't taken a Pilates class in approximately a hundred years.

And for the last eighteen months, anxiety breathing — air hunger, that horrible feeling that you can't get a full breath in — has been one of the perimenopause symptoms that hit me hardest.

So I went in expecting to wobble.

I did.

I expected to giggle.

I did.

And I was genuinely worried I might have a panic attack somewhere in the breathwork.

I didn't.

Before we started, I told Gillian and Andreas what I was worried about and they were nothing short of wonderful. No fuss. No treating me as fragile. No making me feel like I was now The Person We Need To Keep An Eye On.

They made it fun and they made it feel safe.

Pilates isn't easy, and anyone who tells you otherwise is fibbing, but it was manageable for every single person there, whatever their fitness level. Or lack thereof, in my case.

And my breathing? Much improved.

That's the part that surprised me most. It's also why, the very next morning, I sat down and breathed before I went anywhere near the coffee.

If you're carrying something similar — a 45+ year old body that has rewritten the rules on you, a symptom that makes you wary of the very things that might help, or simply the fear that you'll be the one person in the room who can't do it — say so.

The good people will meet you where you are.

Gillian and Andreas did exactly that.

Rest Doesn’t Mean Losing Your Momentum

Five days before Brinkburn, I was doing something entirely different.

I'd given a keynote at the North Tyneside Business Forum about how The Female CEO started and why I believe community is one of the most underrated business assets there is.

Fantastic room. Adrenaline. Full throttle.

I loved every second of it.

Wednesday: fast. Sunday: on the floor, breathing.

And somewhere between the woodland walk and the meditation, a question arrived: Shouldn't we be able to have both?

The answer came on the mat.

We can. Just not in the same gear.

Over these past few months of The Rest Test, I've started to realise something: I don't have a speed problem (except when I'm typing).

I have a gear problem.

One gear, almost permanently engaged. Foot down whether the road needs it or not. And a car with one gear isn't fast.

It's broken.

The point of a gearbox was never to make you go slower. It's to give you the right amount of power for the stretch of road you're actually on.

The keynote needed fifth. Standing in front of that room, telling that story and giving it everything I had was exactly what that moment required. I'd do it again tomorrow.

Sunday needed first. Not as a reward for Wednesday and not because I'd worked hard enough to earn it. Because that's what Sunday required.

Both of those were the business. Not the business and then the recovery from it.

Same week. Different jobs.

Knowing This Doesn’t Mean I Always Do It

I'm not writing this column because I've cracked rest. Quite the opposite.

This isn't me standing on the other side telling you how wonderfully balanced my life is now that I've discovered breathing and woodland.

I forget. Regularly.

This isn't a column telling you to slow your business down either.

Sometimes business needs pace. Launch dates exist. Deadlines exist. Opportunities appear that need an answer today. And the good kind of momentum is one of the best feelings going.

I love that gear.

The problem is when full throttle becomes the permanent setting.

The magazine. The community. The podcast. The content. The commercial side of the business. All live. All moving. All with their own deadlines.

When that much is happening, fifth gear can stop being something you choose and become the setting you're simply left in. And that's what I keep catching myself doing.

I started this whole Rest Test experiment by leaving the desk. I've written about rest for months. I spent a gorgeous day at Brinkburn. And I can still find myself with my foot welded to the floor on an ordinary afternoon that requires absolutely nothing of the sort.

I see it everywhere in business too.

We mistake motion for progress. We promise ourselves we'll ease off after this one thing.

Then we find another one thing. And another.

We wait for something to start creaking before we consider changing anything.

So this chapter of The Rest Test hasn't taught me to do less. Trust me, I'm still doing plenty.

It's taught me to ask which gear the thing in front of me actually requires — instead of discovering afterwards which one I've been stuck in, usually when my body or my business starts shouting at me.

Rest isn't something you get right once. It's something you keep choosing.

And forgetting. And choosing again.

Your Rest Test This Month

So try this with me.

Look at the week ahead and ask one question of every part of it: What does this actually need from me?

Some things will need pace. The launch. The deadline. The conversation you've been circling for weeks on end.

Those things want your foot down. Give it to them.

Some things need something slower. The thinking. The decision you can't rush. The walk you keep not taking. The friend you keep meaning to ring.

And some of it (this is the uncomfortable one) is running fast for absolutely no reason other than no one has touched the gearstick in a while.

You don't have to redesign your life. Start by choosing one thing and changing the gear on it deliberately. Mine was ten minutes of breathwork before coffee.

What will yours be?

Next Stop, Crete?

If Brinkburn sounds like exactly the kind of day you've been promising yourself you'll make time for eventually, Gillian and Andreas run regular wellness days there through Create Retreats.

But there is another option I've discovered.

Crete.

Obviously, for research purposes, I investigated.

Gillian and Andreas also run four- and seven-day retreats in Elounda, combining Pilates, breathwork, Cretan food, history and, rather inconveniently for my bank balance, views across Elounda Bay.

I have looked at the page more times than is strictly sensible for a woman with a magazine to run.

Which might be the clearest sign yet that Crete should be another chapter of The Rest Test.

But for now, my breathing is better, I'm remembering to change gear more often, and I have a brand new vision board full of Cretan sunshine and sparkling sea to work on.

Progress, I'd say.

Explore Create Retreats at createretreats.co.uk