What is a retreat at Eha?
Integrated wellness, nature-rooted transformation - a conversation with our General Manager & Wellness Director Amber Gauci-Ward.
A retreat comes to life through the people who hold it.
Amber Gauci-Ward is the General Manager of Eha Retreat, where she also directs wellness programming. Her work bridges holistic wellness, regenerative design and leadership - guiding experiences that support nervous system recalibration and integrated wellbeing.
With an international background across luxury hospitality and wellness ventures, she brings both strategic clarity and depth of practice.
Here, she reflects on what a retreat at Eha truly means - how the five seasons of Hiiumaa shape the guest experience, why presence is the foundation of transformation unfolding, and what makes Eha distinct in the global wellness landscape.
Eha’s retreats are guided by Estonia’s unique five-season rhythm. How does this seasonal approach shape the guest experience and the kind of transformation you hope they’ll find here?
Seasons shape the environment as different energies emerge, each with its own rhythm and flow. Nature moves in patterns, yet remains inherently unpredictable. With space, we can reflect on our own nature and remember that we are part of it.
At Eha Retreat, we embrace the distinct qualities of each season within the untouched forests and Baltic Sea surrounding Hiiumaa Island, while recognising that each guest arrives in their own internal season. From treatments to wellness and movement sessions, culinary curation, and activities, everything is attuned to the seasons. At the same time, each experience is personalised to a guest’s needs and intentions, with all elements remaining optional.
Rather than prescribing a fixed outcome, Eha creates the conditions for presence, nervous system regulation, and reconnection. Guests are invited to slow down, recalibrate, and attune to both nature and their own inner guidance, allowing transformation to unfold in a way that is personal, grounded, and lasting.
At Eha Retreat, we embrace the distinct qualities of each season within the untouched forests and Baltic Sea surrounding Hiiumaa Island, while recognising that each guest arrives in their own internal season.
You’ve worked across the world in luxury wellness. What about Eha feels genuinely new or distinct in the global wellness space?
Eha is quiet, intentional, and regenerative - from the inside out. We act with transparency, responsibility, and deep care for both people and the natural world.
Having worked across the global wellness space, what feels distinct to me is the simplicity and integrity of the experience. Presence is felt more than it is spoken.
Eha’s offering is described as “slow, nature-honouring, deeply human” wellness. What does that mean in practice for someone attending their first retreat?
While Eha offers treatments, sessions, and activities as part of our retreats, we meet guests where they are, creating space for deep rest and renewal. We respect people’s agency - if someone wants to sleep, daydream over the views from the thermal suite, or wander the beach at their own pace, all of that is welcome.
We honour the rhythms of nature, and of each person’s nature. For someone attending their first retreat, this means being met with consideration by a team that co-creates a space grounded in care.
Through a pre-arrival process and consultation on arrival, we personalise treatments, wellness sessions, and nutrition to each guest’s needs and intentions. The team takes a deeply human approach, honouring each individual without dogma and offering practices as invitations rather than expectations.
Integrated wellness can mean different things to different people. How do you interpret it, and how is it woven into the daily rituals and rhythms at Eha?
At Eha, integrated wellness is multi-layered. Our programming is curated around circadian rhythm and nervous system regulation to support deep rest, longevity, and vitality. We work with fascia and lymphatic flow as a gateway to the body’s natural intelligence systems.
Our signature treatments and wellness sessions, along with traditional sauna rituals, workshops, and culinary experiences, create space for both reflection and genuine human connection. These experiences can be meaningfully integrated into daily life, supporting lasting wellbeing beyond the retreat.
Wellness is integrated through every layer of the experience, including the architecture, interior design, and organic kitchen garden. From our bedding to custom sound, natural scent, colours, and textures, everything is chosen with care and intention, drawing on principles of neuroaesthetics to support how people feel within the space. Nothing is there by accident.
While we take a low-tech approach to the guest experience - including a no tech, no cameras policy in shared spaces - we also offer a considered suite of high-tech wellness equipment. This is subtly integrated into the spatial design and introduced with intention, based on each guest’s needs and goals.
Eha sits within a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. How does the natural environment itself influence your approach to designing a restorative experience?
Eha honours nature. Through presence, we remember the essence of who we are - simplicity sits at the core of our approach.
Everything has been carefully considered to steward the land and the environment that allows Eha Retreat to exist. The forest, expansive coastal views, pristine water, starry skies untouched by light or noise pollution, stillness, and fresh air to breathe deeply - as rare as this is on Earth today, it’s all simply here, and guests are invited to experience it as it is.
The restorative experience woven throughout our retreats is a co-creation by many, with programming led between Kai Laus, myself and Peeter Pihel. Everyone involved in bringing Eha to the world is deeply committed to regenerative practices that support the environment, local community and each guest’s wellbeing.
