Shona Reset Reflections 2026 by Freddie Hooper-Grant

The West Coast of Scotland is one of my favourite places on Earth. And yet, every time I try to describe it, I come up short. The bracken-clad ruggedness. The moody vistas. The ice-cold loch waters. The deep, serene stillness. It exists on another wavelength, always sitting just beyond the reach of words.

So Eilean Shona - a near-perfect slice of the West Coast's wilds - felt like the perfect setting for an experience that, fittingly, also defies description. But this is a blog post, so I guess I'll have to try...

The Strive Shona Reset was our first event of the year, and the very first gathering under The Strive Collective banner. The intention was simple, but ambitious: to help strivers properly reset their minds/bodies/souls, and set 2026 up for success, the Strive way.

For four days, we disconnected completely. No noise. No notifications. Just space to slow our rhythms, drop back into ourselves, and set intentions for the year ahead. Twenty-two strivers made the journey - most of us rattling north overnight on the (it turns out, ironically named) Sleeper Train - for a very different kind of Strive.

There were silent hikes. A full digital detox. Ridiculously good locally-sourced food. Island picnics that felt lifted from fiction. At the heart of the Reset was breathwork, guided by the brilliant Rob Rea.

Rob had fittingly labelled part of his breathwork practise as “Transformational”. In all honesty, I'm not sure I, nor any of my fellow strivers (bar Rob!), had anticipated just how transformational it would prove to be.

Over the course of our evening sessions, Rob led the group through a fusion of breathwork, meditation and visualisation. Through his guidance, we shifted ours nervous systems, bypassing the strong 'thinking mind' of the prefrontal cortex to access the emotional, intuitive, creative powers of the limbic system. I'd read and heard lots about the power of breathwork in the run up to Shona. But reading is one thing. Experiencing it first hand - under a canopy of candles and fairy lights, in the log-fired warmth of Shona’s Village Hall - was something else entirely.

While the breathwork was new, the familiar magic of Strive was there in full force. Strangers arrived from all corners and left as a tribe. We’ve long known that shared experiences outside our comfort zones fast-track friendships into something deeper and more lasting. But to reach that level of connection in just a few days was startling. Strivers often talk about making lifelong friends over the course of a week. The Shona Reset compressed that into a weekend.

By stepping away from the pace and noise of everyday life, we found space to reset not just our bodies, but our minds and spirits too. This wasn’t just a reset. It was a reminder - of the power of pausing, of breathing, and of connecting with ourselves, with nature, and with one another.

We’ll be back next year.

Watch this space.