Humanity has navigated great thresholds before — and every culture, every faith, every tradition developed practices for doing it. Silence. Ceremony. Land. Community. What is coming — the end of work as identity, the dawn of something deeper — is not unprecedented. It is the same passage our ancestors made, at civilisational scale. Newgrounds holds the spiritual infrastructure for that passage. Across every tradition. In every country. For everyone.
+68%HRV improvement — highest of any Away modality
9Spiritual experiences across every tradition
91%Report a fundamental shift in life understanding
+12.1 yrsHealthy life — full arc vs. status quo
The Away arc
Three movements. One complete transformation.
Away was always a journey in three acts. Newgrounds is the act that makes the other two permanent.
I
Ground
The Working Stay
Physical work on real land. Your body encounters a different kind of life before your mind decides what to do with it. HRV rises. Sleep deepens. Something shifts that couldn't shift at a desk.
Silence. Ceremony. Ancient practice. Evidence-based therapeutic modalities. The soul work that physical labour begins but cannot complete alone. Where you grieve what is ending, sit with the questions that matter most, and discover what wants to emerge from the deepest part of you.
Renewed purpose. Practical architecture for what comes next. A person who has moved through Ground and Newgrounds is ready for transition in a way they weren't before the journey started.
Not a retreat centre. Not wellness tourism. Civilisational infrastructure.
Newgrounds is the spiritual heart of Away — and the most important layer of infrastructure for the transition that is coming. When AI displaces the majority of knowledge work and governments respond with UBI, every human being will face the same question: who am I when I am not what I do? Newgrounds holds the practices — drawn from every wisdom tradition on Earth — that make that question answerable.
It is rooted in what the world's wisdom traditions have always understood: that genuine transformation requires ritual, community, silence, and contact with something larger than the self. Not any particular religion. Not spirituality as lifestyle product. Something more serious and more honest than either.
Newgrounds takes place on land — always. Because land is the oldest classroom, the oldest healer, and the oldest mirror. What you discover when you sit in true silence on the earth, with no agenda and no screen, is irreducibly different from anything an office, an app, or a therapist's chair can offer. The land does not give advice. It gives something better: perspective at a scale that makes your problems real and your life larger than they seemed.
Away's biometric data confirms what ancient cultures always knew: silence retreats, ceremonial practice, forest immersion, and emerging evidence-based therapeutic modalities produce the most dramatic physiological and psychological recovery in our entire dataset. The spiritual is not separate from the physical. It is its deepest expression.
"The soul needs wilderness the way the body needs food. Not occasionally — regularly."
Away Newgrounds practitioner
The experiences
Nine doorways. One threshold.
Newgrounds is spiritually agnostic but spiritually serious. Every experience is rooted in land, silence, and the guidance of a practitioner who has lived what they share. From ancient ceremony to emerging clinician-guided modalities — the range is wide, because the human soul is not one-size-fits-all.
The Silence Stay
5 days · Noble silence · Full land immersion
Five days on a Newgrounds property in noble silence. No speaking, no screens, no agenda. Guided dawn walks, daily journalling prompts, shared meals held in communal stillness. The most confronting — and most consistently transformative — experience in the Newgrounds range.
All traditionsSoloBiometrically tracked
Guide: Ruth Calloway — silence practitioner, 12 years holding retreats on working land.
01
Forest Bathing
3 days · Shinrin-yoku · Evidence-based
The Japanese practice of Shinrin-yoku is the most rigorously evidence-based nature therapy in existence. Three days of slow, guided immersion in old-growth forest or deep bushland. Away's forest bathing cohort shows HRV improvement of 55–80% — the highest of any Newgrounds modality.
SecularEvidence-basedSmall groups
Guide: Dr Mia Chen — nature therapy researcher. Three published papers on forest immersion and autonomic recovery.
02
Fire & Ceremony
4 days · Cross-traditional · Threshold ritual
Ancient cultures used fire and ceremony to mark endings and beginnings. This experience draws on cross-traditional ceremonial wisdom — not one religion, but the universal human technology of ritual. You name what is ending. You create space for what wants to emerge.
Non-denominationalSmall group4 days
Guide: Marco Aurelio — ceremony holder trained across multiple traditions. 18 years leading threshold rituals across four continents.
03
The Dawn Practice
7 days · Sunrise discipline · Ancient rhythms
Seven mornings rising before light. Meeting the day in its first silence. Breathwork, movement, meditation and land work woven into the structure of light itself. A different relationship to time — one that most people have never experienced as adults.
BreathworkMovement7 daysAll levels
Guide: Anita Walsh — Wim Hof instructor and yoga teacher. Former strategy consultant, pivoted to dawn practice facilitation in 2022.
04
Grief & Transition
5 days · Facilitated · Psychologically supported
The end of a career identity — especially one held for decades — is a genuine loss and deserves to be treated as one. This experience holds space for the grief that most professional transitions ask people to skip over. You are not asked to be positive. You are asked only to be honest.
FacilitatedPsychologically supported5 days
Guide: Dr Lena Park — clinical psychologist and grief facilitator. Integrates somatic practice with psychological depth work in natural settings.
05
Indigenous Land Wisdom
4 days · In partnership with traditional custodians · On ancestral land
In every country where Away operates, we partner with Indigenous and First Nations custodians who hold the oldest living relationships between people and land. Not tourism. A genuine exchange: the custodian who holds the knowledge, the visitor who arrives ready to receive it. In Australia, this means Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. In New Zealand, Māori. In Canada, First Nations. In the Nordic countries, Sāmi. In Peru, Quechua. Each partnership is co-designed and led by community members.
Indigenous partnershipCommunity-led4 days
Guide: Partnered with traditional custodians across every region where Away operates. All experiences co-designed and led by community members under their cultural authority.
06
Stars & Cosmology
4 nights · Dark sky · Ancient orientation
Four nights on a dark-sky property with no light pollution. Indigenous star knowledge traditions, Western astronomical tradition, and the simple embodied experience of sleeping under the Milky Way. Something about vast scale and deep time reorients the personal crisis. Your problems remain real — but the universe is very large, and very old.
CosmologyStar loreOutback4 nights
Guide: Tom Nguyen — astronomer and Indigenous star lore student. Working with Indigenous knowledge holders to offer a dual-knowledge experience of the night sky — connecting Western astronomy with the oldest star maps on Earth.
07
The Solo Sojourn
3–7 days · Alone · Fully supported
Time alone on land, with shelter, food and safety support provided — but no programme, no guide, no agenda. You are given the most radical gift the modern world almost never allows: unstructured time, in nature, by yourself. What comes up is yours. What resolves is yours.
SoloSelf-directed3–7 daysFully supported
Supported by: Away's safety network with daily check-in. Preparation briefing with a Newgrounds facilitator before departure.
08
Guided Therapeutic Immersion
5 days · Clinician-supervised · Land-based setting
A deeply held, clinician-supervised therapeutic experience conducted in partnership with registered medical practitioners and set within the restorative landscape of an Away property. Emerging evidence-based modalities are offered under full medical oversight as part of a structured preparation, experience, and integration arc — always on land, always with professional support before, during, and after. This is not recreation. It is among the most profound experiences in the Newgrounds range, and it is treated with the seriousness it deserves.
Medical oversightEvidence-basedBy referralIntegration support
Clinical team: Conducted in partnership with registered medical practitioners operating under established clinical frameworks in jurisdictions where these modalities are approved. Full medical screening required. Preparation and integration sessions included as standard.
09
Indigenous partnerships worldwide
The oldest relationships between people and land are still alive.
On every continent, Indigenous peoples hold knowledge systems that predate the modern world by thousands — in some cases tens of thousands — of years. These are not historical curiosities. They are living, practiced, and profoundly relevant to the transition Away holds.
Away's Indigenous partnership programme operates on a single principle: nothing about these communities without these communities. Every experience is co-designed by community members, led by cultural custodians, and structured around protocols of consent, reciprocity, and respect. Revenue flows directly to community organisations.
In Australia: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities (65,000+ years of continuous culture). In Aotearoa New Zealand: Māori (tangata whenua — people of the land). In Canada: First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. In the Nordic countries: Sāmi. In Peru and Bolivia: Quechua and Aymara. In Kenya: Maasai. In Japan: Ainu. This is not one programme. It is a commitment that deepens in every country Away enters.
Our protocol: All Indigenous experiences are approved and led by community members. Away pays fair fees directly to communities. Participants are briefed on cultural protocols before arrival. Sacred knowledge is not shared beyond the experience context. Communities retain full creative and cultural authority over what is offered.
The complete journey
What it looks like to go all the way through.
Before
Baseline signal
30 days of biometric monitoring in your working environment. The data that makes everything that follows measurable.
You now
Burnt out, or questioning
The signal captures where you actually are. Not where you think you should be.
Movement I
The Working Stay
4 nights on real land. The body begins its reset. HRV +41%. Sleep deepens. Something physical shifts first.
Ground
The first change
The biometric arc begins. The interior work has not yet happened — but the ground has been prepared.
Movement II
Newgrounds
Silence, ceremony, forest immersion, therapeutic modalities, or one of nine doorways. The grief for what is ending. The existential questions. The first encounter with who you are when the noise stops.
Newgrounds
The deepest change
HRV peaks at +68%. 91% report a fundamental shift. The crisis becomes a threshold. The ending becomes a beginning.
Movement III
Rise
The Deeper Programme. Practical architecture for what comes next. Extended land placements, mentorship, and career transition support.
After everything
You as you choose to be
Renewed purpose. +12.1 years projected healthy life versus staying on the pre-pivot path. The data supports this.
From participants
What it actually feels like.
"I expected the working stay to be interesting. I did not expect the silence retreat to take apart everything I thought I knew about myself — and put something better back in its place."
Eleanor Watts
Former Senior Partner, McKinsey · Completed Silence Stay 2025
"The ceremony on the third evening was the most important three hours of my adult life. Some grief about who I'd become and who I'd left behind finally had somewhere to go."
David Okafor
Former Chief Risk Officer, global bank · Now enrolled in Deeper Programme
"I am not a spiritual person — I want to be clear about that. I went as a sceptic. I came back changed. Not converted to anything. Just genuinely changed. Five days of silence did something two years of therapy had not."
Priya Anand
Former Data Science Lead, tech company · Now establishing a biodynamic market garden
Newgrounds programmes
Begin where you are. Go as deep as you need.
Every Newgrounds programme includes full biometric monitoring. Can be entered independently or as part of the complete Away arc. Guided Therapeutic Immersion (Doorway 9) is available by referral and consultation — please contact us directly.
Entry
Single Experience
$1,800
3–5 days · one doorway
Choice of one Newgrounds modality
Full biometric monitoring — before, during and after
Former corporate lawyer who left a partnership track in 2018 to study silence practices across multiple traditions — Quaker, Vipassana, Zen and secular. Holds six silence retreats per year on her 200-acre property. The most-requested Newgrounds guide in the network.
PhD in environmental psychology. Three peer-reviewed papers on forest immersion and autonomic nervous system recovery. Brings scientific rigour to an ancient practice — and the data confirms what the ancients already understood.
Ceremony Holder · Multiple traditions
Trained in fire ceremony, sweat lodge, shamanic breathwork and threshold practices across four continents over 18 years. Non-denominational in approach and deeply serious in practice. Understands the difference between ceremony as performance and ceremony as transformation.
There is Away. There is Newgrounds.
The next stage of being human is not something to fear.
It is something to prepare for — with the same practices humanity has always used at its great thresholds. Silence. Land. Community. Ceremony. The wisdom of every tradition, held with seriousness, offered without dogma, available in 30+ countries to anyone who is ready. The future does not require you to become someone else. It requires you to become more fully yourself.
