New Zealand Nature Retreat
Reset your mind, rebuild your foundation and ignite lasting change.
March 1st–7th, 2026
Can you imagine a life where you no longer feel suffocated by the weight of your grief?
New Zealand Nature Retreat
Reset your mind, rebuild your foundation and ignite lasting change.
March 1st–7th, 2026
Here, you will find a retreat like no other.
Because true relaxation and healing happen in nature.
The earth regulates your nervous system.
The sky softens your mind.
The fire awakens your strength.
The simplicity around you invites you to breathe again.
It is a myth that you can only rest in comfort.
Out here, under open skies, you rediscover how good simplicity feels.
How deeply the body relaxes without noise, screens, or pressure.
How quickly you feel safe, held, warm, and alive.
This retreat is a transformational journey...
from scattered to centred,
from stressed to grounded,
from disconnected to fully alive,
from tired to powerful.
You will arrive as you are...
and leave with more clarity, more confidence, and a deeper sense of who you truly are.
You will remember your strength, your intuition, and your place in the great web of life.
This experience is not just a break...
this is a return
to your body,
to your truth,
to your joy,
to the Earth.
Join us if you’re ready for a retreat that balances you from the inside out.
A retreat that empowers you, strengthens you,
and reminds you what it feels like to be vibrantly, beautifully, imperfectly human.
Do you?
Wake up tired, go to bed exhausted, and spend your days trying to keep up with a life that never slows down.
Your schedule is packed.
Your mind is overloaded.
Your body hasn’t fully relaxed in years.
You’re holding everything together, pushing through the fatigue,
ignoring the tightness in your chest,
telling yourself you’ll take care of it “later”
but later never comes.
You know this isn’t sustainable.
You’re smart.
You’re capable.
You’ve handled more than most people ever will.
But you also know that something fundamental is slipping:
Your energy.
Your clarity.
Your enthusiasm.
Your sense of direction.
You feel yourself getting pulled into routines that shrink you.
You feel your days filling with things that don’t matter.
You feel your inner fire dimming because the world around you keeps taking and never giving back.
You’re not broken.
You’re not lost.
You’re not behind.
You’re just living in a system that works against your nature.
And your nature is tired of being ignored.
Imagine stepping away long enough to feel yourself again
Imagine waking up in a place where nothing demands anything from you.
No screens.
No deadlines.
No pressure to perform.
Just space.
Just sky.
Just the steady rhythm of the Earth bringing your nervous system back into balance without you having to do anything.
Imagine feeling your breath deepen on its own.
Imagine your mind slowing without effort.
Imagine a strength rising in you that doesn’t come from pushing harder,
but from remembering who you actually are beneath all the noise.
Imagine looking at your life from the outside: clearly, honestly, and calmly.
To finally seeing what needs to change
and what kind of life you truly want to live.
This is not recharging.
This is rewiring.
Something Ancient in You Is Asking to Wake Up
Underneath your habits, your stress, your responsibilities,
there is a deeper intelligence inside you.
A natural navigation system.
A set of “original instructions” you were born with,
before school, society, expectations, and exhaustion buried them.
They tell you:
what matters,
what doesn’t,
where you belong,
why you’re here,
and who you’re meant to be.
You’ve felt glimpses of it before...
a moment of clarity in the mountains,
a sense of truth by a fire,
a deep calm after stepping into nature.
That system isn’t lost.
It’s dormant.
And once it wakes up,
it becomes a lifelong compass.
It keeps you from slipping back into old patterns.
It protects you from the unhealthy ruts you keep getting caught in.
It guides you toward a life that actually feels right, naturally, quietly, consistently.
This retreat is where that awakening happens.
This retreat is more than a getaway.
This Is your turning point.
When you step into the wild landscape of New Zealand, your system begins to shift on its own:
Your stress drops.
Your mind opens.
Your body remembers.
Your instincts re-engage.
Your clarity returns.
Your strength rebuilds itself from the inside.
You feel it the moment it happens,
The point where something inside you clicks back into place.
From there, everything changes:
You see your life differently.
You make decisions differently.
You carry yourself differently.
You stop tolerating the things that drain you.
You start moving toward the things that grow you.
This is not a temporary escape.
This is the beginning of the rest of your life.
Your environment shapes you
So step into one that builds you up
You don’t need another self-help book.
You don’t need more discipline.
You don’t need to “try harder.”
You need a different environment.
One that restores your natural rhythm.
One that brings you back to honesty.
One that gives your inner compass space to reawaken.
New Zealand’s wild nature does exactly that.
Not through effort... through presence.
Not through theory... through experience.
You step out of the world that burns you out,
and into the world that builds you back up.
You Will Be Guided by Those Who Walk This Path
You are not doing this alone.
You will be led by teachers trained through Tom Brown Jr.’s lineage
and who have lived these principles in the real world,
not as concepts, but as a way of life.
Among them:
Franziska & Karina Gerzabek
A wonderful mother daughter team with more than 33 combined years of guiding humans back to themselves,
their strength, their purpose, their natural intelligence.
Carleigh Fairchild
Healer, homesteader, and Featured on Alone, surviving weeks in Patagonia
with nothing but skill, mindset, and deep connection to the land.
When you learn from people who live this truth,
you become the kind of person who can live it too.
Meet Your Retreat Guides
Karina Gerzabek
Karina is an earth-based instructor, storyteller, and natural fiber artist who grew up immersed in a life shaped entirely by nature. Born beside the fire and raised in the wilderness, she has never known a separation between learning, living, and the natural world. Her childhood was one of freedom, guided not by classrooms but by seasons, landscapes, and the rhythms and songs of the Earth.
Karina wrote her first book at the age of nine, a children’s story honoring the natural world, and by thirteen she was already teaching through the camera, creating her first instructional videos on weaving with plant fibers. She began her formal training at the Tracker School with Tom Brown Jr. and continued learning from mentors, experts, and Indigenous knowledge holders across the globe. Her journeys have taken her through the rainforests of Asia, across North America’s gatherings and festivals, and into diverse ecosystems where she deepened her understanding of natural materials and ancient skills.
Today, Karina is an international Survival Mastery teacher and trainer, sharing both practical earth skills and the deeper awareness that comes from a life lived in direct relationship with the land. She has been part of Earth Living Mastery since the day she could walk, not as an observer but as someone who lived the teachings long before she taught them. Over the years, she has led live and online seminars, trained students in multi-year initiation programs, and supported countless people on their path of reconnection and resilience.
Karina is also a dedicated natural fiber artist, working especially with flax. Her weaving, from bags to baskets to intricate functional pieces, reflects her quiet precision and the deep bond she holds with the land. She teaches weaving both in New Zealand and internationally, helping people rediscover the beauty and usefulness of traditional craft in a modern world.
As a member of the next generation of earth-connected mentors, Karina brings a fresh, grounded, and deeply lived perspective to every class she teaches, embodying a life where Earth, skill, and spirit are inseparable.
Franziska Gerzabek
Franziska is a wilderness teacher, healer, and earth-based mentor whose life’s work is rooted in restoring the ancient bond between humans and the natural world. Trained directly by Tom Brown Jr. and certified as a Survival Mastery instructor, she carries forward a lineage of deep nature connection, spiritual awareness, and practical earth skills that guide people back into belonging.
For more than 25 years, Franziska has been teaching live seminars, online programs, festivals, and multi-year initiation paths. Her experience spans 1:1 coaching, community intensives, and the long-term mentoring of individuals who chose to live in nature for one to three years—supporting them through profound personal, emotional, and spiritual transformations. Known for her clarity, empathy, and grounded presence, she leads people toward their inner strength while helping them reconnect with the Earth and with their own soul.
Together with her husband, she co-authored the book Erdverbunden (Earth Connected), a heartfelt and practical guide to returning to a life in harmony with the natural world. In 2000, they also founded and hosted Europe’s first German-speaking Guardians of the Earth Festival, creating a gathering that continues to inspire earth stewardship, community, and a renewed sense of responsibility for Mother Earth.
Today, Franziska teaches in New Zealand and across Europe, guiding people worldwide to rediscover a connection that is older than culture itself: the connection between Earth, spirit, and the living breath that moves through all things.
Carleigh Fairchild
Carleigh is a healer, an earth-based instructor, and storyteller whose life has been shaped by a deep, lifelong relationship with the land. From early experiences on farms and in wild places to solo backpacking 500 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail, she has devoted herself to learning how humans can live in respectful, collaborative relationship with the more‑than‑human world. Over the last 25 years, her love of homesteading, gardening, basket weaving, and fire-making has evolved into a path of teaching and healing that helps others remember that nature is not separate, but home.
At 13, Carleigh began formal earth-skill studies at the Tracker School, founded by Tom Brown Jr., and later apprenticed in Washington State in survival skills, ethnobotany, basketry, and hunting. Her dedication led her to one of the most challenging survival experiences on the planet: 86 days alone in the wilds of Patagonia on the survival series ALONE (an experience she repeated twice as a participant on Seasons 3 and 5). There, with no camera crew and only what she could source from the land, she relied on her skills, intuition, and connection with Earth to meet every basic need, deepening her understanding of resilience, belonging, and what it truly means to be in relationship with the natural world.
Alongside her wilderness training, Carleigh has spent years studying NIASZIIH healing, a lineage that weaves body, spirit, and earth into an intuitive approach to transformation. As a certified NIASZIIH bodywork healer and long-time student and teacher with wildernessFusion, she brings a healer’s perspective into everything she offers, seeing survival, skills, and nervous system regulation as inseparable threads in the same tapestry. Her work supports people in finding quiet stillness in a fast-paced world, tending their nervous systems, and building inner and outer resilience through direct connection with the land.
Carleigh is the founder of Human Nature Connection LLC, where she offers retreats, mentorships, basketry workshops, and nature-based programs that blend earth skills, community, and healing. Living and teaching in Western North Carolina, she works with individuals, families, and groups both online and in person. Helping outdoorsy, heart-led people deepen their relationship with themselves, each other, and the Earth so they can grow into the humans their hearts know are possible.
Meet The Land
Our Retreat Land is in the Far South of New Zealand's South Island
Hidden in one of the most remote corners of New Zealand’s South Island, our land lies near Tuatapere, the gateway to the Fiordland National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage area known for its vast, untouched wilderness. Here, the natural world still feels raw and unrestrained, shaped by wind, ocean, forest, and time itself.
Surrounded by native bush and far from any modern infrastructure, this place offers a purity that is increasingly rare. There is no mobile reception, no internet, no electricity, only the quiet presence of the land. This natural radiation-free environment allows the body and mind to settle, to breathe, and to enter into resonance with the living world in a way that is almost impjossible elsewhere.
For countless generations, coastal Māori lived and gathered in this region, harvesting the rich offerings of the sea and moving inland to rest, work, and prepare food. Their presence is still felt in the land, in its silence, its stories, and its deep sense of continuity.
The landscape itself holds a gentle power. Small rivers flow through the bush, bird calls echo through the valley, and the forest seems to breathe with you. The isolation creates a cocoon of clarity where distractions fall away and the senses open. It is a place where inner and outer stillness meet, where the noise of the world fades, and where something ancient comes alive again.
This land is not just a course location, it is an ally, a teacher, and a sanctuary.
A place where you cannot help but arrive in yourself.
A place where the Earth remembers you and where you remember the Earth.
What Awaits You Each Day
This retreat does not follow the usual rhythm of modern life.
There are no to-do lists.
No tasks to complete.
No race against time.
Instead, each day is shaped by ancient practices that have guided humans for thousands of years, teachings that were passed to us through oral tradition, never written down, because they were never meant to be “studied.”
They were meant to be experienced.
We share skills that our ancestors lived every day.
Simple on the surface, yet carrying layers of meaning that work on different levels at once,
your mind, your spirit, and the quiet language of your soul.
These teachings survived for millennia because they work.
They sharpen your awareness.
They ground your emotions.
They rebuild your confidence.
They reconnect you to the natural intelligence inside you.
Each day is full, not with pressure, but with life.
Fire, movement, nature, stillness, reflection, community.
Experiences that reveal what has always been inside you but buried under modern noise.
Nothing here is random.
Everything has purpose.
Every moment has a teaching woven into it,
some you will notice immediately,
others will unfold slowly long after you return home.
This is not just an agenda.
This is a living curriculum shaped by the Earth herself,
and you are stepping into a lineage of knowledge that has kept humans strong, capable, and connected for generations.
The time here is dedicated entirely to you, to your wellbeing, your clarity, your strength, and your return to a life that feels true.
If Something in You Is Stirring… Listen.
You’ve been waiting for life to get easier.
For clarity to appear on its own.
For something to shift so you can finally breathe again.
But that moment doesn’t happen by accident.
It happens when you step toward it.
When you choose to leave the noise.
When you choose a different environment.
When you choose to give yourself the space
to become who you were meant to be.
This is your invitation.
Not just for a vacation,
but for a new beginning.
Apply for Your Spot
This retreat is not for everyone and it isn’t meant to be.
The work we do is deep, personal, and rooted in traditions that require commitment, openness, and readiness for real change.
For that reason, we don’t offer instant sign-ups.
Instead, you begin with a 1:1 conversation,
a simple, honest call where we learn about you, your life right now, and what you’re hoping to step into.
And just as importantly, you get a chance to ask your questions and feel whether this experience is truly right for you.
Only if it is a good match, for you and for the group, will we offer you a place.
This ensures that the retreat remains a safe, strong, aligned environment for everyone who joins.
If you feel a pull toward this journey…
if something in you knows it’s time for a real beginning…
Apply now and book your discovery call below.
Your new chapter starts with this conversation.
Retreat pricing is $2,000-$3,000 (depending on accommodation choice)
All options include:
Transportation from nearby airport,
All delicious nourishing meals during the retreat,
All activities, teachings, and experiences,
1:1 preparation call before retreat,
Integration support group call after the retreat.
Book Your Free Discovery Call Now
Choose your date and time below.
We look forward to connecting with you!
Human Nature Connection LLC | All Rights Reserved | © Copyright 2023
