SACRED FIRE & WATER OF BALI · 23–26 OCTOBER 2026
You built the thing. It worked.
And the arrival never arrived.
Four days in Bali's eastern highlands with seven other people who know exactly what that sentence means.
"I came thinking I was going on a retreat, but I left feeling like I'd been taken on a pilgrimage through another side of Bali — and honestly, through parts of myself I hadn't really been looking at either."
Emma Smith · Perth, Australia
We've done this before, you and I.
You sat in a room with me. You did the work. Something moved — and you knew it moved, because you drove home differently.
Then Monday arrived with its hand out.
Same calendar. Same phone. Same business that needed you by nine.
That's not the work failing. That's a room ending.
A room ends. That's what rooms do.
This is not a room.
This is four days on land that has been doing this particular work for a thousand years, where the only thing scheduled is what your nervous system actually needs, and where nobody — not one person — wants anything from you.
You already know if this is for you.
Revenue's fine. The team functions. You're the one people ring for advice.
And somewhere in the last twelve months you noticed the arrival you were building toward never actually arrived — and that you've been quietly waiting for it ever since.
Not broken.
That's the thing I want you to hear.
Buried.
There's a difference between someone who is lost and someone carrying so much they can no longer hear themselves underneath it. The first needs direction. The second needs to put it down.
You don't need another framework. You've got a shelf of them, and you can teach most of them.
You need four days where nothing is required of you.
Four days walking the eastern highlands — waterfalls, temples, one mountain before sunrise. Eight places in the circle.
This is not an improvement programme.
It's the opposite of one. It's taking enough away that the thing underneath can finally be heard.
a letter, before you decide
Friend,
I made my first million at twenty-four and I was buried alive underneath it.
I had the business. The numbers. The identity that came with both. I was also running a nervous system that hadn't properly switched off in a decade, and if you'd asked me I'd have told you I was fine — because that is what you say.
I built The Game Changers and Trading Business School, and eventually I got myself out of the day-to-day of both.
Then my intuition told me to leave Australia.
I asked where. It said Bali.
I'd been to Bali maybe thirty times by then — holidays, conferences, the usual. This time I landed and it wasn't a place I was visiting. It felt like home, and it felt like the next chapter was going to happen here whether I organised it or not.
So I moved, and I started writing my first book, The Path to Freedom.
A few months later the pandemic arrived, and I stepped straight back into a business I'd spent years getting out of — because my staff and my clients needed somebody to hold the thing steady.
I want you to notice that, because it's the whole pattern.
I had actually got free. And the moment it got hard for other people, I picked it all back up without breaking stride.
You've done the same thing. Possibly this year.
I married Kate in September 2023.
She died the following March.
A few nights earlier, we were in Margaret River, lying out watching for shooting stars, talking about how things had been. That was the last ordinary night I had.
What I remember about the days after isn't grief, exactly. It's that everything I'd been carrying — the deals, the numbers, the things I'd been turning over at three in the morning for years — just went. Not resolved. Gone.
It turns out almost nothing I was worried about was load-bearing.
Then I didn't leave my room for months.
I'm not going to dress up what those months were. I got through them in ways I'm not proud of, and there was no morning where it lifted. That isn't how it goes.
It just slowly stopped being the only thing in the room.
Then, about two years ago, I had a dream.
It told me to go to a particular part of the island. Inland, east. Nowhere I had any reason to be, nothing there I wanted, nobody I knew.
I booked somewhere the next morning without asking myself a single sensible question about it.
I arrived and thought: well. I'm here.
That afternoon I found the first waterfall. Not on a map, and not from anybody's recommendation — I was led to it, and I'm aware exactly how that reads to someone with a business to run and a calendar that doesn't care about dreams.
Then on the drive to dinner I got a clear instruction to go and find somewhere to watch the sun go down.
Which is how I ended up at a temple I'd never heard of, at the one hour a man named Ketut happened to be standing in it.
His family have kept that temple for more than seven hundred years.
I've walked this route ever since. Every place across the four days came from following instructions I couldn't argue with, to places I couldn't have found.
And I've never sold it.
Until now it's been friends, family and a handful of private clients — people I already knew. This is the first time it's been open to anyone else, and that's the honest reason there are eight places and not forty.
I should tell you what I am and what I'm not.
I'm not a therapist and I won't play one. I've been a Reiki master since I was eighteen, an NLP master practitioner, a breathwork facilitator and a business mentor to thousands, and I've held circle in Bali, in Egypt and in Peru. I've written three books — The Path to Freedom, Sex, Drugs and Radical Self Expression, and Sovereign, which is finished and not yet published.
But the part that actually matters here is the first part. The carpentry business. The companies. The exit — and the day I picked it all back up for everybody else.
Because it means I'm not going to hand you a sunrise and a metaphor and send you back to a P&L.
I know what it costs to be the one everyone leans on. I've been leaned on. I've broken under it.
I'm not offering to fix you. You're not broken and we both know it.
I'm offering four days on the only ground I've ever found that does this properly, with a circle small enough that nobody can hide, including me.
— Kai
What the last circles said
If you want to speak to one of them before you decide, say so on the call and I'll connect you. They're better at describing this than I am.
"I came back feeling lighter, clearer and somehow more connected to why I'm actually here."
I thought I was going away to switch off, reset and spend some time in nature. What happened was much deeper than that.
Every place we went seemed to have a reason for being there. The temples, the water, the mountains, the ceremonies, the people Barry introduced us to — it all felt connected. And Barry has this way of creating space where you naturally start asking yourself some pretty big questions.
It didn't feel like a retreat. It felt like being guided through an experience that I'll probably keep unpacking for a long time.
Stacey Lee · Los Angeles, California
"It was less about someone telling you what to do, and more about being taken on a journey where the experiences themselves become the teacher."
It never felt like he was taking us somewhere just to tick a box. There was intention behind every place, every meeting and every experience.
We spent time with monks, priests and local friends of his, sat in places that felt incredibly ancient and peaceful, and had moments where everything just seemed to slow down.
What really stayed with me was the sense of connection. To Bali, to the land, to the people and, unexpectedly, to myself.
I've done retreats before, but this felt different.
Chris Williams · Melbourne, Australia
Some journeys take you somewhere. This one brings you back.
Four days
DAY I — Arrival
water · putting it down
We collect you before lunch and drive inland, into cooler air.
Lunch. An opening circle. Time to actually land, which takes longer than anyone thinks.
Late afternoon, a purification in water as the light goes. Blue lotus tea that evening, a journal put into your hands, and the first conversation where nobody performs.
Most people sleep that night in a way they haven't in months. That isn't a promise. It's just what tends to happen when the phone goes in a drawer.
DAY II — Remembering
water & heart · what returns
Before dawn we go to the waterfall from the dream — the one that fills with light for about an hour a day — and we sit in it while the sun arrives.
We don't rush this one. There's no second stop to make, nowhere to be at eleven. You stay in that water as long as it's doing something.
Ceremonial cacao. Then a long brunch, the kind where the conversation goes somewhere because nobody's watching a clock.
Midday we enter Pura Kehen — one of the island's oldest temples — for teachings, offerings and ancestor prayer.
And then the afternoon is yours.
I want to be direct about this, because on paper it looks like a gap in the schedule and it isn't. There is nothing to do out here. No shops, no beach club, no list of sights.
That's deliberate, and it's the most expensive thing on this itinerary to arrange — because what it costs is my nerve.
You haven't had an afternoon with nothing in it for years. Possibly a decade.
For most people who come, it's the hardest four hours of the trip. It's also the one they talk about eighteen months later.
You'll have the journal, and a few prompts written for exactly this afternoon. Use them or don't. Sleep, walk, sit.
Circle in the evening.
DAY III — Reckoning
fire · what falls away
A slow start. For those who want it, a cold immersion at a waterfall near base — offered, never expected, and nobody counts who did and who didn't.
After breakfast we travel to Besakih — the great mother temple of Bali — to meet the mangku, the local priest who changed my life.
Silent walking. Lineage work. Offerings made properly, in the way the guardians make them, not the way Instagram makes them.
Movement in the highlands as the day drops.
This is the day people stop managing the impression they're making. It's usually the day that matters.
DAY IV — Return
air & fire · perspective, and the walk back down
Before light, four-wheel-drives take us up.
No climb. No test. Nothing to endure — you've endured enough, that's rather the point.
Sunrise ceremony. Then you write a letter to yourself, and I post it to you ninety days later, when the ordinary has had time to work on you.
Closing circle. A blessing at Lake Batur Temple.
Then the drive back down, which is deliberately unhurried, because the descent is the part everyone skips and the part that decides whether any of it holds.
You're back by around four in the afternoon.
Who holds the circle
Three of us. Only one is a westerner.
Me.
I've walked this route enough times now to know what it does to people, and enough to know when to say nothing.
Kadek Putra.
Kadek drove me around this island when I first arrived, more than six years ago, before I knew anything about anything. Over those years he became a friend, and then a business partner in two ventures.
Earlier this year I took him on this route for the first time.
He's Balinese. He's lived here his whole life. And I have photographs of his face at the second site, because I hadn't expected what happened and I wanted to remember it.
He'd never been.
Sit with that one. These places aren't hidden from tourists and open to locals. They're quiet — and reaching them properly takes relationships that are the work of years, not the work of a booking.
Pak Ketut, guardian of Pura Kehen.
The man I walked into on a sunset I hadn't planned.
His family have kept that temple since it was built. More than seven hundred years. The same family, unbroken, still opening the gate.
He isn't a performer we booked for the morning. He's the reason we're allowed in.
Here's the unpopular version of what that's worth. Most foreign-run ceremony on this island is performed for foreigners, by people who were paid that morning and who go home to families with no idea what happened in that room.
You can feel the difference the second you stand somewhere the guardian knows your name.
You don't have to take my word for it.
"It felt like being shown around Bali by someone who had a key to places that normally stay behind closed doors."
Honestly, some of the places Barry took us to, I'm still not entirely sure how he found them. 😂
We went off the beaten track, into these incredible sacred sites, met people he's built genuine relationships with over years, and experienced a side of Bali that you simply don't get from a villa, a resort or a Google search.
But the best part wasn't even the locations. Barry knows how to connect you with the right people and then get out of the way enough for you to have your own experience.
Ryan Keban · Toronto, Canada
"We weren't just visiting sacred places — we were actually being welcomed into them."
I've been to Bali a few times, but this was something completely different. Barry took us into places I genuinely would never have found on my own. We met his Balinese friends, priests and monks.
Nothing felt forced or touristy. It felt intimate, real and deeply personal.
Emma Smith · Perth, Australia
The four days are not the product.
Anyone can make you feel something on a mountain at sunrise. That's not difficult, and on its own it's worth almost nothing.
What matters is the Tuesday.
The Tuesday three weeks later. Inbox full, someone's let you down, and the old shape of you is standing right there waiting to be picked back up like a coat.
So we build for that Tuesday from day one.
You won't be given a workbook.
Nobody in the history of the world has been changed by a workbook, and you've got a drawer of them from other people's programmes.
You'll be given a journal on the first evening. A good one — the kind you keep.
Through the four days I'll give you prompts, a few of them, at the moments they're actually useful rather than all at once at the start. Most of them land on the second afternoon, when you've got hours and nothing in them.
What you carry home isn't a document. It's a book in your own handwriting that you'll open again in March.
And you go home with
- Three practices that take under fifteen minutes and survive a bad week. That's the only test that counts
- A pace across the four days built so you land home restored, not wrecked
- A letter in your own hand, posted back to you at ninety days
- A call with me at thirty days. One to one. Not a check-in — a proper conversation about what's held and what hasn't
- Seven people who've met the actual version of you, and a group that outlives the flight home
You don't leave expanded and then deflate over a fortnight.
You leave anchored.
Where you'll sleep
Here's the honest version, because I'd rather you know now than find out on arrival.
These aren't resort areas. There's no five-star anything within an hour of where we're going, and that's precisely why we're going there.
You'll stay in simple, clean, Balinese-run accommodation across two bases. Air conditioning, hot water, wifi. Family-run, and a view most hotels would build a package around.
Not luxurious. Cared for, which is a different and better thing.
Rooming. My intention is that everyone has their own room, and that's what I go looking for first. Inventory in these villages is genuinely limited, so if it comes down to sharing I'll tell you before the balance is due, not on arrival — and you'll be matched thoughtfully. Couples share.
On naming the properties. Inventory out here is small and it moves. I confirm both bases once the circle is closed, and I'll send you exactly where you're staying, with photographs, before the balance falls due — so you see it before you pay the second half.
If a property becomes unavailable I substitute something equivalent or better, and I tell you.
If a rain shower and a hot stone massage are part of what you need from four days, I'd rather you went somewhere else and had a lovely time. This isn't that, and it was never going to be.
The practicals
- Length
- Four days, three nights
- Dates
- 23–26 October 2026
- Circle
- Eight places. Up to two couples' places
- Where
- Bali's eastern highlands — cool air, crater country, and the water that comes off it
- Collection
- Denpasar airport, Canggu or Ubud, before lunch on Friday 23 October
- Finish
- Back by around 4pm on Monday 26 October
- Fitness
- No summit climb — we drive up. The hardest thing you'll do is stairs, and there are a lot of them. If you can manage a long flight of steps without dread, you're fine
Fly in on the 22nd if you can. Arriving the same morning and going straight into the drive is survivable, but you'll spend day one catching up with yourself.
Don't book a flight out on the evening of the 26th. We finish around four and you'll want the night. Fly on the 27th, or stay on — most people do.
What we drink
Ceremonial cacao
Grown here. Cacao has been used as a heart medicine across cultures for a very long time, and what it does is simple and unremarkable to describe — it warms you, it opens something in the chest, and it makes people more honest in a circle than they'd otherwise be.
It isn't psychoactive. You won't hallucinate. You'll feel warm, slightly more awake and slightly less defended, which is the entire point.
If you drink coffee, this is a smaller event than your morning.
Blue lotus
Blue lotus was an Egyptian flower before it was anything else — in the tombs, on the temple walls, in the hands of the figures carved at Karnak. They drank it in the evening, and associated it with sleep and with dreaming.
It's legal in Indonesia, grown and sold openly across Bali.
Ours doesn't come from a supplier.
It grows on our own land at Jatiluwih, beside a water temple, fed by the same spring the temple uses.
We drink it as tea on the first evening. That's the whole of it — an evening tea with four thousand years behind it, grown fifty metres from holy water by people who know what they're growing.
If you'd rather not, don't. Nothing here is compulsory and nobody keeps score.
Investment
$2,200 USD per person — all inclusive
$4,000 USD for two — couple's place, twin share
Half to hold your place. Half due 23 September 2026.
Payment plans are available to 23 September. After that, it's full payment on booking.
Some context, since a number on its own tells you nothing
Four days of private transfers, two bases, every meal, all temple access and fees, ceremony at each location, summit transport and a full guide team — assembled independently, and without the access — runs between $3,500 and $4,000 per person.
You're not paying for the difference. You're paying for a route that took a dream, six years and two friendships to find.
What's included
- Four days guided, start to finish
- Accommodation, two bases
- Airport or town collection, all private transfers, summit transport
- Every temple offering and fee
- Ceremony at each location
- Blue lotus tea and ceremonial cacao
- Yoga, meditation, breath and sound
- All meals — clean, local, plant-forward
- A journal, and prompts through the four days
- A one-to-one integration call at thirty days
- Your letter, posted at ninety
- A circle of eight
Not included
Flights · travel insurance (required) · optional massage · personal extras
If money is the only thing between you and a clear yes
Say so in the application. I've made this work for people before and I'd rather have the conversation than lose you to arithmetic.
If life happens
You run a business. Things break in October that were fine in August. Here's exactly where you stand, so you're not hunting for it in a terms page at eleven at night.
Deposits are non-refundable. I'd rather tell you that here than bury it.
More than 30 days out (before 23 September) — your place transfers in full to the next journey. It doesn't expire and it doesn't disappear.
Inside 30 days — the bases, guides and vehicles are committed, and your place doesn't transfer. That's what travel insurance is for.
If you find someone to take your place — we transfer it cleanly, no fee.
If we cancel — you get every dollar back, in full.
Travel insurance is required. Not a formality — four days, mountain roads, water, cold immersion.
Is this your walk?
Come, if…
- You've built something that works, and the arrival never arrived
- You're the reliable one, and there's nowhere you get to put it down
- Your practices have quietly turned into performance
- You're standing at a threshold. A sale, a separation, a decade turning, a business that needs a different person to run it
- You can be genuinely present for four days. Not half-present with a phone in your pocket
- You've felt this pull before and talked yourself out of it
Maybe not yet, if…
- You want a party, a luxury escape or a content trip. All three exist on this island and they're easy to find
- You want a guaranteed breakthrough. I can't sell you one and I won't
- You're collecting another framework for the shelf
- You're not ready to be met by people who won't perform back at you
- The timing is genuinely wrong. It'll run again
The questions people actually ask
Is this a plant medicine journey?
No. There's no ayahuasca, no psilocybin, no san pedro, no kambo. None of it, at any point.
What's offered is ceremonial cacao and blue lotus tea, both described above. Cacao isn't psychoactive. Blue lotus is a traditional evening tea, legal and openly grown here.
Both are offered. Neither is required. If you'd rather have ginger tea and watch, that's a completely normal choice and more people make it than you'd think.
I'm not a spiritual person. Will I be the odd one out?
No, and the people who worry about this most tend to get the most out of it.
Nothing is chanted at you. Nothing is asked of you that you haven't agreed to. Everything intense is offered, and "no thanks" is a complete sentence for four days.
Can I come alone?
Most people do. At least four of the eight places are solo places.
Do I have to share a room?
My intention is that you don't. I go looking for single rooms first, and I'll tell you before the balance is due if the village inventory won't stretch. Couples share.
How fit do I need to be?
No summit climb — we drive up. The hardest thing you'll do is stairs, and there are a lot of them. If you can manage a long flight of steps without dread, you're fine.
Phones?
There's wifi at both bases. I'll ask you to put it away for the practices and I won't police it — you're an adult, and four days of me confiscating phones would be its own kind of retreat.
Alcohol?
None on the journey. That's not a rule I'll be enforcing at dinner — it's just not what these four days are, and nobody's ever missed it.
I have a dietary requirement.
Everything is clean, local and plant-forward, and we cater properly around allergies and requirements. Tell us in the application.
Flights and visa?
Fly into Denpasar (DPS). Arrive on the 22nd if you can, and don't fly out before the 27th.
Most nationalities — Australia, the UK, the US included — get a 30-day visa on arrival. Buy it online before you fly at evisa.imigrasi.go.id, or at the airport when you land. Online is faster and saves you a queue after a long flight.
Have you run this before?
Yes — but only for friends, family and private clients. This is the first time it's been open publicly, which is why there are eight places and an application rather than a booking button.
What if I apply and it's not right?
Then I'll tell you, on the call, and I'll mean it. Eight places, and the wrong person in one of them costs the other seven.
Apply to come
Eight places. Applications close 2 October — or when the last place is taken, whichever comes first.
This comes to me. Not a team, not an inbox.
I read every one, and I come back inside 48 hours to book a twenty-minute call.
That call isn't a pitch. I'm working out whether these four days are actually your walk — and if they aren't, I'll say so and point you somewhere better. I've done it before.
Eight places is a small number and I'd rather lose a deposit than fill one wrong.
If you've read this far, that isn't curiosity.
Curiosity stops at the second paragraph.
You don't have to be sure. You only have to be honest enough to start the conversation.
Don't argue with it for another year.