Suzy Reading brings her seven-step winter wellbeing framework to Inverness for a one-night Highland residency at Rocpool Reserve.
Chartered psychologist and author Suzy Reading is bringing her seven-step winter wellbeing framework to Inverness for a one-night residency built around light, movement, connection and the underrated art of slowing down.
Winter rarely gets a fair hearing. By November, much of the conversation has already deteriorated into darkness, tiredness and a collective argument with the central heating.
Suzy Reading has another proposition: stop treating the season purely as something to survive.
The chartered psychologist, yoga teacher and bestselling author will take the ideas from her book Self-Care for Winter into the Scottish Highlands on 7 November, leading a one-night winter wellness retreat in Scotland at Rocpool Reserve in Inverness.
Called Wintering Well with Suzy Reading, the residency is the opening event in the hotel’s new winter programme. Its more interesting premise, though, is not simply that people might feel better after a night away. It is that winter itself can become part of the exercise.
A different way of looking at winter
Reading’s approach is organised around a seven-step winter wellbeing framework, with the Inverness programme designed to move those ideas off the page and into an environment where darkness, cold and low seasonal light are difficult to ignore.
The residency starts with an afternoon group workshop examining why winter can feel depleting and how the season might be reframed around what it offers rather than what it removes.
That distinction matters. There is no suggestion here that a Highland weekend can abolish winter fatigue by administrative decree. The programme instead concentrates on deliberately adjusting pace, paying attention to physical and emotional needs and making use of elements already present in the season.
Reading puts the appeal of the setting rather neatly. “The Highlands in November is the most perfect setting I can imagine for this kind of weekend. Everything I write about in Self-Care for Winter — the light, the stillness, the invitation to slow down and listen to what your body needs — the Highland landscape offers in abundance. I can’t wait to bring it to life at Rocpool Reserve.”
It is an unusually sensible partnership between subject and location. A seminar on embracing winter would lose a little conviction if conducted beneath blazing sunshine beside an infinity pool.
Light, movement and the River Ness
The following morning moves outdoors, with an optional dawn walk along the River Ness followed later by a guided mindful walk through the Highland landscape.
Reading will incorporate breathwork and periods of reflection, before the residency closes with yoga and movement at the hotel.
None of those elements is particularly elaborate. That may be the point.
Modern wellbeing has acquired a remarkable talent for turning ordinary human requirements into complicated projects. Here, the underlying ingredients are more recognisable: daylight, physical movement, food, rest, attention and time spent with other people.
Light is the first step in Reading’s winter framework, while the landscape gives participants an obvious reason to get outside rather than merely being told they ought to.
The movement component is similarly moderate. This is not being presented as a fitness camp disguised beneath softer vocabulary. Walking, breathwork and yoga are used as part of a broader attempt to tune into the season and one’s own responses to it.
Shared food has a role too
Dinner provides another part of the framework.
A seasonal menu using Highland ingredients will be served at long shared tables, deliberately linking the meal to Reading’s emphasis on meaningful connection.
It is a small detail, but perhaps one of the more grounded ones. Winter habits can become increasingly inward as daylight contracts and evenings stretch. Building social connection directly into the programme makes it something participants actually do rather than another worthy instruction to take home.
Breakfast is also included before the morning activities.
For residential guests, the package covers accommodation, meals and all sessions with Reading. Inverness residents do not have to check into the hotel to take part: separate evening and day places are being made available locally, including access to the evening session and dinner.
Why take a wellbeing programme to Inverness in November?
Rocpool Reserve is plainly interested in winter for reasons beyond psychology.
The event launches its Rocpool Reserve Residencies programme, which is intended to give people a reason to visit Inverness during the colder months through experience-led cultural events.
General Manager Armand Botha describes that seasonal intention directly: “The Rocpool Reserve Residencies are about giving people a genuine reason to come to Inverness in winter, not despite the season, but because of it.
Suzy Reading is exactly the kind of partner we imagined when we conceived this programme: someone whose work speaks directly to this landscape, this light and this time of year.”
Another residency, Still Burning: An Evening with Kate Foster, is scheduled for 22 November, with further events planned.
For Reading, whose nine books cover self-care, emotional resilience and wellbeing, the Highland residency offers a physical version of ideas she has spent years exploring in print. Her other titles include The Self-Care Revolution and Stand Tall Like a Mountain, and she also works as a psychology expert for Neom Organics.
The more persuasive aspect of Wintering Well may be its refusal to pretend November is July with worse publicity. It uses the season as it actually is: darker, quieter and slower.
For anyone inclined to spend winter wishing it away, that is at least a more interesting proposition than counting the days until spring.
