A physician-led sleep retreat in the foothills of the Magaliesberg. Ten participants. Five nights. A protocol built around your biology — and your data. You leave with a written plan that works for the rest of your life.
Sleep is the single biggest lever on cognitive performance, executive function and physical recovery — and almost no high-performer is using it. The Sleep Retreat is five days with a sleep physician who has spent thirty years understanding sleep, and who will use that time to build you a personalised protocol that you take home and use for the rest of your life.
Dr Alison Bentley, South Africa's foremost sleep specialist with thirty years of clinical and research experience — the doctor who trains the sleep doctors. Not a wellness facilitator. Not a sleep coach.
Wake time, bedtime, exercise window, meal timing, wind-down — every element of the programme is set around your chronotype and your sleep data. Not a group programme with your name on it.
Within seven days of departure you receive a comprehensive personalised report — sleep data summary, chronotype profile, written protocol, beliefs reframed, and the pathway for follow-up.
The chalet is the operating theatre of the retreat. Warm-spectrum lighting only after wind-down. A phone bed on the far side of the room, with a charging point. A clinical tablet that handles your alarm, your wind-down activity, and emergency calls — and nothing else. Temperature calibrated to your sleep curve, room by room.
Your nervous system cannot distinguish between a WhatsApp notification and a threat. Every buzz is cortisol. We remove that from your sleep environment for five nights so you can feel the difference.
Each cohort takes exclusive use of La Joya's ten luxury chalets in the foothills of the Magaliesberg — forty-five minutes from Johannesburg and Pretoria, moments from Hartbeespoort Dam. Bushveld mountain views, outdoor fire, open skies, and the wellness centre, infinity pool and fine-dining kitchen of a working luxury lodge.
We do not wait for the gate at La Joya. By the time you check in, the clinical team already knows your chronotype, your sleep history, your prescribed wake and sleep times, and the five sleep questions you most want answered.
Your actigraphy watch and clinical tablet are couriered out. You wear the watch continuously and complete the questionnaire on the tablet — sleep history, chronotype, preferences, the five questions you want answered.
A telemedicine consult with Dr Bentley or Dr Ozynski. They review your questionnaire and your two weeks of actigraphy data. Your prescribed wake time, bedtime, exercise window and CBT-I starting point are confirmed before you leave home.
A daily 30-minute consult with the clinical team. A morning group session. An evening masterclass. Communal lunch and dinner. Free time in your peak cognitive window. The personalised protocol, tuned every day against last night's data.
Within seven days you receive a comprehensive personalised report. A two-week follow-up consult is scheduled. If you screened positive for a sleep disorder, you have a direct pathway into the Sleep Health Centre clinic. The work continues.
The clinical programme — morning group session, daily personalised consult, evening masterclass — is identical across all three retreats. What changes is the company you keep during the day, and the angle from which the week approaches your sleep.
The flagship programme. Sleep is the headline; the day is yours, chosen from a curated menu of on-site wellness, leisure, work and adventure. For the people who came here for one reason: sleep.
Sleep plus nature, movement, mindfulness and longevity. The day is structured by our wellness facilitator alongside the clinical team — a deeper-immersion variant for the longevity-minded.
Sleep, stress recovery and mental health — co-led with a clinical psychologist. For the people whose sleep has collapsed under the weight of everything else, and who need to put it back together carefully.
Sleep Retreats is the in-facility programme of Sleep Health Centre — South Africa's leading sleep medicine practice, based in Parktown, Johannesburg. Every retreat participant who screens positive for a sleep disorder during the week has a direct pathway into the clinic for ongoing care. No other retreat in the country offers this.
A small set of partners whose products live in our chalets — chosen because the science holds up, and because we'd send them home with our own families.
Climate and thermal regulation for the sleep environment. Calibrated to the clinical sleep temperature curve — cooler at sleep onset, warmer through the dawn window.
South African-designed sleep essentials — silk pillowcases, contoured sleep masks, Bluetooth sleep headphones. Quiet upgrades to the small things you touch every night.
The clinical practice behind the retreat. Diagnostics, treatment programmes, follow-up care, and the doctors who designed everything you'll experience.
Ten. The cohort is intentionally small — large enough for genuine peer exchange in the morning group sessions and evening masterclasses, small enough that every participant has a daily thirty-minute one-to-one with the clinical team.
Three things. It is led by physicians, not coaches — Dr Alison Bentley has thirty years of clinical and research experience in sleep medicine. The programme is personalised to your sleep biology and your data, not delivered as a group template. And you leave with a written, evidence-based protocol — backed by your actual sleep data from the week — that you keep for life.
Executives, founders, partners and operators. People who already invest heavily in their health and performance, who have not yet addressed sleep at a clinical level, and who want the same standard of care for their sleep as they would expect for any other dimension of their health.
The programme is by application. We share pricing after a brief conversation — partly because we want to be sure the retreat is right for you before we discuss numbers, and partly because the retreat is priced as an outcome, not a feature list.
Within seven days you receive a comprehensive personalised report. A two-week telemedicine follow-up is scheduled. If your sleep data screened any underlying clinical issue, you have a direct pathway into the Sleep Health Centre clinic for ongoing care. The retreat is the start.