Could a night at this ‘sleep retreat’ cure my insomnia?

Years of sleep masks, lotions and potions and prescriptive sleeping aids – Helen Kirwan-Taylor hasn’t slept ‘naked’ or unaided for years. So could a night in a posh pub with a specialist sleep doctor – and 16 other insomniacs – be the answer to her dream of a good night’s sleep?

One of the rooms designed to encourage sleep at Bull in Burford (Freud Communications)

Everyone knows that the top wellness hack is sleep. It’s free and easy to organise, yet it eludes so many of us. A recent Aviva study of 13 countries revealed that Brits are the most exhausted of all, with more than a third (37 per cent) complaining that they do not get enough sleep. According to the BBC, it is estimated the global market for sleep aids will be worth $125.3bn by 2027. According to Dr Michael Stein, a physiological scientist and founder of Added Health in Oxford, lack of sleep interferes with the clearing out of metabolic waste in the brain, the consequences of which are scarily severe and include a heightened risk of dementia (not to forget premature ageing).

I am sitting with Dr Stein around an oak table alongside 16 other people (mostly 40-somethings) at Cotswolds’ smartest new inn, Bull in Burford. He’s busy explaining the complex physiological importance of sleep cycles. We have three restorative N3 (non-Rem) cycles where the brain cells shrink to make space for extracellular fluid to flow, and we have Rem. This is when you dream – a sort of filing system or processing centre for unresolved issues. These two cycles are essential for the elimination of harmful brain waste matter (bad news: wine interferes with this essential clearance).

This is the first time that Dr Stein is hosting a sleep retreat here. Dubbed the “bulldozing experience” (see what they did there) the idea is that every month customers struggling with their sleep can check in for expert advice as well as comfort to reset their shut-eye. Owned by PR guru Matthew Freud, the decor is as you might expect – hipsterish with dark walls, natural woods and oversized curvy furniture covered in sheepskin (think Soho House meets Hygge). My bedroom is painted dark blue with ink-black metal lights and thick-lined linen curtains. The perfect condition if you are in the market for a great night’s sleep.

A tired looking Helen checks into Bull for the full bulldozing experience (Helen Kirwan-Taylor)

And I really am the target market. I have not slept “naked” ie: unaided for over three years. I used to be a great sleeper (and I need lots of it to feel well), but now without the Drowsy eye mask (which I suggested they offer guests), ear plugs, CBD oil and/or prescription drugs, I wake up frequently.

Before we were allowed to lie down, Dr Stein and his two health coaches, made us download the Withings app that connects to a very high-tech sensor under our mattresses. Its job was to evaluate how well we sleep by monitoring both our movements and our pulse (but was so fiddly I had to throw myself at the mercy of a private wealth manager to set it up).

The one-night retreat began with an optional session in Japanese Kintsugi, the art of repairing broken plates with gold leaf glue. (The metaphor was not missed on us although I was the least able to glue my bits together, which may suggest further retreats are necessary). The idea was that this kind of focused mindfulness would wind down our over-wired brains.

Later, in our session with Dr Stein to explain both the science of sleep and the evolutionary reasons for why it has become so elusive for so many, I admitted that I had grown dependent on the mast cell stabiliser Ketotifen (one of the treatments for my long Covid, which still lingers,) which has the brilliant side-effect of making me sleep like a puppy.

A full luxe-soak: one of the en suite bathrooms at Bull in Burford (Freud Communications)

Dr Stein did not condemn them per se (“There is a lot of research on the damaging effects of long-term sleeping pill use though not of antihistamines... yet”, he said). He is also not big on that other go-to, melatonin, long-term because doctors still don’t know if it eventually means our glands produce less of the real thing. “All aids interfere with Rem, so should be avoided apart from emergencies,” he says.

And who wouldn’t want to fall asleep quickly and naturally by respecting our Circadian rhythm? It’s just that it’s so damn hard for so many of us. What, then, is the magical hack – that one elusive trick we’re all missing?

“Was there a place on Earth where people sleep like babies all the time,” I asked. “Tanzania,” he replied, “where people live alongside nature and where natural myths are respected.” Morning larks had their function in the cave, he explained, as did night owls (who guarded our ancestors at night). “Knowing which one you are obviously helps, too,” he said.

But we live in a highly industrialised society where we confront cortisol-raising events all day from horns, honking to the endless pinging of texts and WhatsApps. We don’t live in a natural “blue zone” part of our planet; instead, we bombard our eyes all day with blue light (which essentially tells you it’s 12 noon in Ibiza). We don’t exercise enough, we don’t connect to each other (which has major hormonal benefits) and we don’t spend time in nature. We also all know this.

The Bull dining room (Freud Communications)

On a practical level, he said, we need to sleep in rooms set at about 18C. Certain foods interfere with sleep (caffeine obviously but also raw foods that require digestion). Technically, we should all be in bed by 10pm, with screens banned from the bedroom. We should wind down at least an hour before we hit the mattress – a step that most of us skip. (Reading the news on our phones is of course the worst thing anyone could do, yet the group did just that.)

After a dinner of salmon and many large platters of gut-friendly vegetables, grains and a cherry dessert (no alcohol. That’s a big no-no for sleep), we did some wind-down breathing exercises before being dispatched to our rooms (the coach was so tired, she kept forgetting the sequence).

Just as I finally settled into my very cold bed (with all my clothes on which is not conducive to slumber), praying that my pineal glands (where melatonin is produced in response to darkness) would do their thing, out of nowhere came a giant helicopter. I thought it was depositing one of the Cotswold’s many millionaires, but no: it was a giant police search helicopter with beam lights looking for someone who I was later told was a risk to himself (the search went on until almost midnight).

In the morning (before the optional yoga and/or mindful walking session), Dr Stein looked at my sleep score, a paltry 71 per cent. Triggered by the helicopter, my pulse went sky high meaning rather than winding down I had returned to full fight/flight mode. All this was clearly visible on the app’s graph.

This was a one-off, of course, and plans are underway for more of the same. Unlike yoga retreats, however, I noticed this one over-indexed on single men. Why? Because sleep is the best productivity hack ever and these men wanted to figure out how to optimise their brains for when the markets open.

When I mentioned this in my Insta stories, my DMs filled up with comments like, “When’s the next one!!?”

Bulldozing experience starts from £400per night, which includes counselling, and sleep monitoring; pre-dinner drinks; dinner & drinks; snacks, breakfast and activities https://www.bullburford.com/