What is Sanctum?

The word 'sanctum' refers to a sacred, protected inner space – the kind of place where you can exhale and come back to yourself. To us, it captures the essence of Sanctum: the island that holds us, the quiet container we create together, and the sanctuary within you.

Sanctum is a five-day retreat on Ekskäret Island, created for silence, nature, contemplation and deeper listening. Within the retreat, four elemental Paths – Earth, Fire, Water and Air – offer different ways of moving through the same shared space, each with its own focus, rhythm and invitation.

We invite you to set these days apart from ordinary life – stepping away from its noise, expectations and to-dos, and let life soften. Phones and digital input are set aside, allowing the usual stream of messages, notifications and demands to fall silent – creating more room to breathe and to let life slow the f*ck down.

At its heart, Sanctum is not about adding more, but about gently stripping away, so you can come into deeper contact with yourself, the living world and the larger reality in which our lives unfold.

Sanctum offers a pause from performance - an exhale into radical non-demand. It is not about reaching a particular state or finding a predetermined answer, but about creating the conditions for something meaningful to emerge in its own time. 

We’re longing to welcome you, exactly as you are, right now.

Sanctum is an Emerge Institute retreat at Ekskäret Island, developed and hosted by Pamela von Sabljar and Jonna Lundberg in close collaboration with the Ekskäret Foundation, drawing on more than fifteen years of experience in creating spaces for inner development, contemplation and meaningful change.

Who is this for?

Sanctum may be for you if you feel drawn to step outside the usual demands of everyday life and devote a few days to a different quality of attention – to pause, listen and become more fully present to yourself, the living world and what may become noticeable when there is more space.

Perhaps the pace, noise or expectations around you have made it harder to sense what matters. You may be longing for more presence, a clearer sense of your own direction, a different way of relating to the world around you, or simply the chance to step outside familiar patterns and see what emerges when there is less to respond to.

This is a “solo together” retreat. You come here to be with yourself, yet you are not alone. There is a power to practicing side by side — your experience remains your own, while the collective intention supports what becomes possible within it.

The four elemental Paths offer different ways of entering these days.
Which one do you find speaks to your current reality?

Four paths to guide you

Sanctum offers four distinct Paths, each guided by one of the elements: Earth, Fire, Water or Air. They are not levels, and no element is more advanced than another. Life rarely unfolds in a straight line; we move among the elements more like a spiral. Life draws us in to different elements at different seasons.

Choose the Path whose practice feels the most alive and relevant to you right now - not the one that reflects who you would like to become.

🌳 EARTH — Connecting to the Present Moment
A gentle, nourishing space to rest, ground and let yourself be held. Return to your body, your senses and what is already here.

🔥 FIRE — Finding Your Inner Flame
Come into closer contact with your own inner compass, values, vitality and inner authority and direction.

🌊 WATER — Becoming Fluid
Allowing your familiar ways of seeing and being to soften through deeper relationship with the living world.

🌀 AIR — Becoming More Transparent
Opening towards Cosmos and Source, with less need to direct, interpret or fill the experience yourself.

Each Path offers its own contemplative practices and degree of guidance. Your chosen element becomes a thread through the retreat – not a fixed programme to complete, but a way of orienting your attention throughout the days. Most practices are invitations rather than requirements and you remain the authority on your own wellbeing and boundaries. There is no expectation to reach a particular state or insight, nor to share anything that arises.

🜃 Earth

“What is here when nothing needs to happen?”

Earth may be for you if you feel drawn towards grounding, simplicity, stillness and deeper presence. Perhaps you are tired of striving, performing, holding things together or trying to make sense of everything. Maybe you simply long to slow down, return to your body and rest more fully in what is right here, right now.

Earth is gentle and restorative, inviting a movement from doing towards being, with nervous system regulation at its heart. For a while, let yourself be held. Let the ground carry you. There is no question you need to answer and no insight you need to produce.

Through spaciousness, sensory awareness, contact with nature and fewer demands, this Path supports your system in slowing down and settling. You are invited back to the body, the senses, simple rhythms and the living presence of the island – to what is already here.

Practices – The Earth Path includes a contemplative walk around the island through the four directions and a silent full-moon gathering around the fire. There is also a voluntary daily check-in open to participants of all elemental Paths. Beyond these shared touchpoints, much of the time is left open for rest, walking, contemplation and following your own rhythm and needs. A private conversation with an Elder or Facilitator is available to anyone who needs it.

Earth may be your Path if what you need most right now is not another challenge, insight or direction, but a few days to come back to ground – more rested, embodied and present to what is.

🜂 Fire

“What feels true beyond adaptation and expectation?”

Fire may be for you if you long to come into closer contact with your own inner compass, values and sense of direction. Perhaps you are highly attuned to what others need or expect, while finding it harder to distinguish what you genuinely feel, value or want from what you have learned to accommodate. You may feel ready to loosen old patterns of adaptation, trust your own experience more deeply and strengthen your capacity to make choices from within.

Fire is refining and clarifying, inviting a movement from adaptation towards inner authority. This Path invites you to turn your attention from the expectations and responses around you towards your inner flame – the quiet sense of this matters to me, this feels alive, this feels true.

Through reflective and contemplative practices, you are supported in noticing the assumptions, loyalties and inherited ways of seeing that shape your choices, and in relating to them as perspectives rather than unquestioned truths. This creates space to recognise and tend what feels genuinely your own. The aim is not to stop caring about others or to treat every personal preference as truth, but to remain connected without abandoning your own centre.

Practices – On the Fire Path you will receive one or two daily reflective and contemplative practices designed to help you listen more clearly to your own experience and discern what feels genuinely your own. There is also a voluntary daily check-in open to participants of all elemental Paths. A private conversation with an Elder or Facilitator is available to anyone who needs it.

This may be your Path if you long to remain connected to others without abandoning your own centre, and to move through life with greater inner authority, authenticity and direction.

🜄 Water

"What remains when nothing needs to stay fixed?"

Water may be calling if you sense that your familiar ways of understanding yourself and the world no longer tell the whole story. Perhaps you long to loosen the need to analyse, control or immediately make meaning of what you encounter – and become more available to a reciprocal relationship with the living world.

Water is receptive and relational, inviting a movement from fixed identity towards a more fluid way of being in relationship with reality. Our identities, convictions and ways of seeing remain valuable, but we do not need to hold them so tightly. We can remain ourselves without remaining fixed.

This Path invites you to meet nature not as a beautiful backdrop or a resource for your own wellbeing, but as a living world you are already part of. Forest, sea, weather and other forms of life become part of the encounter – opening us towards a reality that is larger than the one we construct for ourselves.

You are invited to listen with more than the mind – allowing experience to affect you before deciding what it means, becoming more sensitive to nature’s rhythms, limits and agency, and perhaps softening the felt separation between yourself and the more-than-human world.

Practices – On the Water Path, you will receive one or two written daily contemplative practices designed to deepen receptivity, embodied listening and your relationship with the living world. Much of the Path unfolds through extended periods alone in nature, with space to follow what draws your attention rather than a fixed programme. A daily private conversation with an Elder or Facilitator is available if needed, as well as a daily group check-in open to all participants.

Water may be calling if you have already developed a strong sense of yourself, your values and your direction in life, and now sense that these familiar ways of understanding yourself and the world no longer tell the whole story. You may feel drawn to loosen your hold on the self you have built – becoming more receptive to the living world, allowing it to affect you, soften what has become fixed and reshape how you see.

🜁 Air

“What becomes possible when the self no longer fills all the space?”

Air may be calling if familiar constructs of identity, belief and ways of making meaning no longer feel sufficient, and you long to meet experience without immediately filtering it through what you already know. Perhaps you are drawn to enter silence without seeking an answer, a personal direction or a particular experience – becoming more available to what is not of your own making.

Air is spacious and transparent. This Path invites a movement from authorship towards availability – from shaping experience through your own intentions and interpretations to leaving room for something beyond them. The self does not disappear, but becomes more transparent: less occupied with directing what happens, seeking meaning or making the experience about itself.

You are invited to make room for a larger field of life – what some may call Cosmos, Source, God, Ground of Being, or simply the mystery within which our lives unfold. The name matters less than the posture: receptivity without demand.

Practices – On the Air Path, guidance is deliberately light, with one or two written daily invitations for embodied and contemplative practice. These practices support a more open and receptive way of meeting experience – softening habitual interpretation, deepening sensory awareness and allowing what arises to remain unformed for a while before it is shaped into meaning or words. A daily private conversation with an Elder or Facilitator is available if needed, as well as a daily group check-in open to participants of all elemental Paths.

Air may be calling if you have become accustomed to seeing through your own assumptions, identities and ways of making meaning, yet sense a limitation in this very capacity. You may feel drawn towards more transparent participation – less occupied with interpreting experience, and more available to what is not of your own making.

Key Ingredients of our Journey

SOLO TOGETHER

This is a “solo together” retreat. You come here to be with yourself, yet you are not alone.

You are held within a supportive context – by the island, by nature and by the quiet presence of others who have also chosen to step away for a few days. Each person follows their own Path and guidance, side by side.

SILENCE

Silence is an integral part of Sanctum, a shared and protected space that we enter with care and help preserve for one another. The retreat is held in silence by default, and everyone is invited to explore what becomes possible through spending extended periods of these days in silence.

As the usual stream of conversation, input and response falls quiet, space opens for a different kind of listening: to the body, the inner world, nature or something larger than ourselves. What is easily drowned out in everyday life may become more noticeable.

At the same time, there may be moments when a gentle conversation feels supportive, grounding or simply human. For this reason, each day from 3 to 5 PM, conversation may take place in designated parts of the house and island, while other areas remain quiet. There will also be an optional daily group check-in open to participants from all four elemental Paths.

CREATIVITY

There will be a Creative Corner available at Sanctum, filled with colors, paints, paper and other crafting materials, inviting you to slow down, follow your curiosity and create without pressure or purpose.

Working with your hands can help attention settle into colour, texture, movement and sensation. It can be grounding and nourishing, a way to process or express what does not need to be put into words, or simply a way to reconnect with playfulness, curiosity and creative aliveness.

There is nothing to achieve and nothing to be good at. Just space to create, explore and be, if you want to.

CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE

A contemplative approach runs through the retreat. Rather than asking you to think harder, solve a problem or work towards a particular outcome, it invites a different way of paying attention – slowing down enough to listen before immediately analysing, fixing or deciding.

Depending on your chosen elemental Path, you will receive simple invitations for individual or shared contemplative practice. These are not exercises to complete or master, but structures that support deeper attention, receptivity and presence.

HOW THE SPACE IS HELD

The retreat is held with care, humility and respect for the mystery of each person’s experience. Facilitators protect the conditions for safety, silence, rhythm and attention, rather than interpreting what happens within them. Their role is not to tell you what an experience means or what direction your life should take.

Nothing that arises in silence needs to be shared, explained or turned into a decision. Guidance offers structure, not interpretation. Your experience remains your own, and you are free to let its meaning unfold over time. Practical and emotional support is available whenever needed. 

Price & What's included

Dates: Wednesday 23 September – Sunday 27 September 2026

Pricing: the retreat has three price tiers so that you can choose the one that best fits your financial circumstances. All three include the same accommodation, meals, programme and support.

Tier 1: 3 500 SEK inc VAT (2 800 SEK excl VAT)
Tier 2: 4 750 SEK inc VAT (3 800 SEK excl VAT)
Tier 3: 6 000 SEK inc VAT (4 800 SEK excl VAT)

As this is the first edition of Sanctum: Guided by the Elements, we are offering it at a special introductory price. Future editions will be priced higher.

All of this is included:

  • our own private island held exclusively for the retreat, with quiet
  • paths, cliffs, forest, shoreline and hidden places to discover
  • your own private bedroom, where you can rest and retreat undisturbed
  • a generous selection of breakfast/brunch foods (porridge, bread, toppings, eggs, yoghurt, granola, fruit, nuts, etc.)
  • a delicious, nourishing vegetarian dinner every day (Wed–Sat), catered from a restaurant on nearby island Svartsö
  • two saunas — one electric and one wood-fired — available for warmth, rest and silent sauna-and-sea practice
  • a library with poetry, philosophy, contemplative texts and stories to step into if you want
  • a creative corner with paints, pencils, and papers for no-pressure creativity and play
  • free access to coffee, tea, and fruit throughout the day
  • shared spaces with room to gather or withdraw: open rooms, quiet corners, a fireplace and a lookout tower
  • a safe and supportive atmosphere where you can recharge, reconnect and realign side by side with others doing the same
  • a thoughtfully designed elemental path, with track-specific guidance and contemplative practices to offer structure while leaving space for your own experience to unfold

Practicalities

🛏️ BEAUTIFUL, RESTFUL ACCOMMODATION

You’ll stay in your own private room, where you can rest and retreat undisturbed. The rooms are designed in a warm Nordic style, offering a calm place to land while keeping you close to the surrounding nature. You can return here whenever you want – this is your own space for the entire stay.

Each room has a bed, desk and wardrobe. Toilets and shower rooms are shared.

📵 DIGITAL REST

To support the stillness of the retreat, Sanctum is entirely phone- and laptop-free from the first evening until the final morning. The intention is to create a genuine pause from notifications, distractions, digital input and everyday demands, allowing your attention to settle more fully into the retreat.

Phones are handed in and kept safely stored. On Friday, there will be an opportunity to briefly access your phone if needed. You will also receive an emergency contact number to share with loved ones.

🥣 FOOD & FREEDOM

Breakfast and brunch foods are included and available self-service, so you can begin the day in your own rhythm. There will be a generous selection of bread, spreads, eggs, yoghurt, porridge, fruit, tea, coffee and more.

A tasty, nourishing vegetarian dinner is also included every day from Wednesday to Saturday, so you can let go of the logistics. If you would like something simple for lunch in between, you are welcome to bring it and prepare it on site. There is access to a fully equipped kitchen, fridges and freezers.

🚤 TRANSPORT & ARRIVAL

Once your place is confirmed, you will receive clear information about departure times, meeting point and everything you need for a calm journey to the island.

It takes around 2.5 hours to reach Ekskäret from central Stockholm. When you arrive, we will meet you at the dock, show you to your room and introduce you to the shared spaces.

🕊️ CANCELLATION POLICY

Cancellations are non-refundable. In case of illness, a 50% refund may be offered upon presentation of a valid medical certificate.

Our Island Home

Our shared home during the retreat is Norra Ekskäret, a private island in the outer Stockholm archipelago. The island is owned and run by the non-profit Ekskäret Foundation, whose mission is to help us understand the world we are creating – and to make spaces possible where people can explore inner development, new perspectives and ways of contributing to a changing world.

Ekskäret is also home to, or closely connected with, initiatives including Inner Development Goals, Emerge Institute, Elevate, Protus, 29k Foundation and Emerge Lakefront.

The modern facilities are designed to keep you close to nature even when you are indoors, with large windows, wood, light and views across the island. Paths wind through forest, granite and shoreline, and you can walk around the whole island in about fifteen minutes.

To us, Ekskäret is one of those rare places where it becomes a little easier to slow down, pay attention and remember that we are part of something larger than ourselves. We feel deeply grateful to be able to share it with you.

Your Hosts

Pamela von Sabljar & Jonna Lundberg

Pamela von Sabljar is a speaker, facilitator and mentor with more than 25 years of experience in leadership, personal development and behavioural science. Her work focuses on creating spaces for deeper inquiry, inner development and meaningful change, drawing on a broad range of contemplative, relational and developmental practices. Pamela is a fellow of the Emerge Institute.

Jonna Lundberg is an experienced retreat host who creates spaces for meaningful connection, reflection and inner work. With a background in entrepreneurship and purpose-driven communities, she brings a combination of structure, warmth, authenticity and care to the spaces she holds. Jonna is part of the leadership team at Emerge Institute.

Sanctum is an Emerge Institute retreat at Ekskäret Island, designed and hosted by Pamela and Jonna in close collaboration with the Ekskäret Foundation.