The Salt
and the Light.

Salt is the sea, the food, the tears. Light is what happens when you stop pretending. Seven days in Salento, deep and light, all at once.

A group journey · 25 October – 1 November 2026

The invitation

A journey for three people.

I asked myself a simple question. What would bring me the most joy to do?

This was the answer. Complete joy, culture, food, a glass of good wine. And then one of the deepest conversations you have ever had in your life, with lightness.

Because what if all of that could just go together?

The week

Seven days of letting
yourself be fully here.

Long slow lunches that turn into afternoons. Hikes along the cliffs with the whole coast underneath you. A day on the boat with my friend Giuseppe of Nerea Escursioni, who has been taking people along this coast for years. Making pasta with your hands. Dancing the pizzica. I don't know if you know what that is, but I will show you, and if you want we can even take a lesson together. Ceramics. Live music. Painting. Eating too much and not apologising for it.

One afternoon we go for lunch at the most authentic masseria I know. It is full of antiques, collected over a lifetime by the man who lives there. We sit down and only get up hours later, and somewhere in between we talk about the meaning of life.

And I want you to laugh. Really laugh, the kind where you cannot breathe and your eyes are streaming and you have no idea any more whether you are laughing or crying. That happens here. It happens a lot.

Giuseppe of Nerea Escursioni opening the wine on the boat below the Salento cliffs — The day on the boat

A narrow inlet on the Salento coast with steps cut into the rock and people swimming — The water, still warm in October

Stone steps rising from the rocks on the Salento coast — The paths along the coast

The cliff top above the sea at Tricase Porto, Salento

This is a week of saying yes. To the food, to the wine, to the music, to the people of this land — a culture that still knows how to live slowly and loudly at the same time.

Nikita standing on the rocks at the edge of the sea in Salento

Deep and light

The laughter and the tears
live in the same week.

My deepest work happens in private retreats, one person at a time. People come to me when they are stuck. When they are ready to look into a real mirror. When something big in their life has to change and they are finally ready for it.

That is a different journey and a different week. This is not that week. This one begins with pleasure. Culture, food, laughter, the sea, the land.

But I am still who I am. I have been guiding people for years, and there is nothing I love more than bringing someone closer to themselves. So when something opens up at the table, or on a walk, or at two in the morning, I know what to do with it.

There is room for all of it.

The Salento coast at dusk seen from Tricase Porto

Il Sentiero means the path. The path back to yourself.

Nikita standing with her arms open, laughing, among the trees

About me

Who I am in this.

I am a sociotherapist. I have been guiding people for years, one on one and in groups. And I laugh a lot during my sessions. I catch myself doing it all the time. Why not laugh at our own stupid patterns? We humans can be so complicated. Let's laugh at ourselves, and at the same time make room for the tears.

I know both sides because I have lived both of them. I travelled the world. I have known heartbreak. I went through depression. I have had my share of difficult years. I am thirty now and I have built a life I can hardly believe is mine.

I live here. My father is from Amsterdam, my mother is from Genova, and I found my roots in Salento. This is not a touristic thing. I walk a piece of your path with you, and show you this beautiful land while we do it.

And for those who know that language: I am a generator. When the light goes on in me, it goes on in the people around me too.

More about Nikita

Who this is for

You are welcome, with
everything you bring.

Someone who wants to experience something completely different for once. Maybe you need inspiration. Maybe there is something to process. Maybe you are grieving, or you have lost your way for a while. Maybe everything is going well and you simply want to live fully for a week.

All of it is welcome. It is deep and it is light, both at once.

Before

One week before

A video call, the four of us

We look at what everyone is bringing and what you want from this week. So you already know each other's faces before you arrive. And if two of you want to travel here together, you will have found each other by then.

The week

25 Oct – 1 Nov 2026

Seven nights in Salento

In Tricase Porto and along the coast. You fly into Brindisi and I collect you there and bring you back. All transport once you are here is mine to arrange. The week runs in Dutch or English, whichever suits the group. Arrival day is the Sunday the clocks go back in Europe, so you gain an hour — worth checking your flight times twice.

After

In the weeks that follow

One group call, and one that is only yours

A week like this often wakes something up in you. Sometimes you only feel what it really was two weeks later, standing in your own kitchen. I want to hold space for that too.

The practical part

Three spots.
Including me, four of us.

25 October – 1 November 2026

Everything the week holds

Seven nights in Tricase Porto and along the Salento coast. Three spots — with me, we are four. That is exactly the point.

Included

7 nights of accommodation in a private room
All meals, lunches and dinners out
All drinks
A day on the boat
All workshops and activities
My presence and my guidance
All transport once you are here
Group call before, group call after, and your own call with me

Investment

€4,500 per person, all inclusive

Not included: your flight and your travel insurance.

Booking

How it works

Write to me. We have a short call, twenty minutes or so, just to feel whether this is right. It goes both ways. You want to know who you are travelling with, and I want to know who I am bringing into a group of four.

If it is a yes on both sides, you receive a payment link. Your place is held once 30% has come in, €1,350. The rest, €3,150, is due by 15 October 2026.

The deposit is not refundable, because the moment you book I reserve your room, the boat and the workshops. After 15 October that applies to the full amount. This is why I ask you to take travel insurance with cancellation cover — if something happens in your life I want you properly covered, not negotiating with me. If fewer than two people book, the journey does not run and you get everything back.

Write to me

The first step

Is this a yes in your body,
before your head
has caught up?

Then write to me. That is usually the right kind of yes. Come find me in Salento, and let me show you how you can liberate yourself. The way I liberated myself.

Write to me See all retreats

The Saltand the Light.