When you're building a platform from scratch, one of the first questions you face is also one of the strangest: what do you call it?
My first instinct was something functional. Retreat Hire. Wellness Connect. Something that described exactly what the platform does, something Google-friendly and immediately understood. Clean, logical, forgettable.
But something held me back from going down that road. I'm not just building a booking tool or a job board. I'm trying to create a community — a living, breathing ecosystem where people who care deeply about wellness, nourishment, and transformative experiences can find each other. That deserves a name with some soul in it.
The answer came, as many good things do, from time spent in India.
While I was in the thick of helping build Luma Goa and Roots & Bloom Cafe, our restaurant project running alongside it — the long days, the decisions, the beautiful chaos of creating something from nothing — I came across amla tulsi water on the menu at Secret Hill, a wonderful little wellness venue in Patnem, Goa, with a yoga shala, accommodation, and a kitchen that clearly understood nourishment. I ordered it on a whim. It became a ritual. Rich in antioxidants, grounding, quietly fortifying — it was exactly what I needed during one of the most demanding periods of my life.
Tulsi — holy basil — is one of those plants that reveals more the longer you spend with it. It has been used in Ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years, prized for its healing and adaptogenic properties. But beyond the health benefits, tulsi holds deep spiritual significance in Indian culture. It is considered sacred — a plant that purifies and protects, that connects the everyday to something larger. The more I learnt about it, the more it resonated. Here was a plant that was at once medicinal and meaningful, practical and profound — rooted in ancient wisdom but completely alive in the present.
"Retreat Hire said what I was building. Tulsisphere says what I believe in."
And then there's the second half of the name: sphere.
I've always been drawn to a way of living that is simultaneously global and grounded. Moving between countries, discovering new corners of the world, working in places that feel far from where you started — and yet always seeking that sense of being rooted, connected to local communities, embedded in real places rather than just passing through. The retreat world, at its best, embodies exactly that. It brings people together from across the globe into spaces of genuine depth and presence.
Sphere felt like the right word for that. Not just global reach — though that matters — but a complete world. An ecosystem. A place where everything needed to build a retreat experience exists in one space: the venues, the chefs, the facilitators, the connections between them. That is what I am working to create.
Tulsisphere. A healing plant at the centre of a global community. Something rooted and something expansive, at the same time.
When the name landed, it felt less like a choice and more like a recognition. This wasn't just what I was going to call the platform. It was a small declaration of what I hope it will become — something that starts as a practical solution to a real problem, but that has the potential to grow into something much larger. A sphere of connection for everyone building the future of wellness retreats.
I am still in the early stages of building it. But the name reminds me every day of what I am aiming for.