In conversation with Diana Stobo, founder of the Retreat Costa Rica

An early pioneer of the raw food movement, Diana Stobo’s expertise and passion for healing people began with herself. As well as being owner and creator of The Retreat Costa Rica and Truth Bar, Diana has since become an award-winning author, classically trained chef and nutrition expert, and works to empower people to live life well.

Q: How did your path to wellbeing start?
I was 34 years old. One night, I was rushed to hospital with a bleeding ulcer. With all of life’s stresses, I was a mess. So I started to discover the foods that were causing me illnesses and I eliminated all six of them immediately. Within 10 days, I lost 10 pounds. All my pain went away. In six months, I’d healed my thyroid, my gut issues, everything. And then I went even further. The next step was to go raw. And I got better and better.

Q: You’re a professional chef. What do you believe about the power of raw food?
It has a healing vibration. Nothing grows faster than live food. If it’s moving that fast in the ground, imagine what happens when you eat it fresh. It starts to regenerate your cells. And, you start to heal the issues inside your body.

Q: The next phase of your life was one of transformation. How did your healing process lead you to becoming a wellness coach and eventually founding The Retreat?
We all have an entry point to healing – whether it be yoga, mediation, food, running marathons… Sometimes people have to go through life changes – cancer, divorce – something that shakes their world. You heal yourself and, if you’re like me, you start to create. It wasn’t good enough that I just healed. I had to heal everybody else. I studied hundreds of religions, quantum physics – I was a sponge for information. I began to teach, to write books, to talk to people all over the US. I was on this trajectory of not only changing my life, but people around me. Whenever we’re feeling good, we just sort of flow. We’re walking down this path and next thing we know, we’re walking down another one. Suddenly I’m in Costa Rica building a hotel. Whenever my thoughts go in the wrong direction, or become negative, there’s a prayer I was taught which I often repeat: I am spirit, pure and innocent. All is forgiven, all is released. I knew I had healed and moved on when repeating this prayer actually meant something to me.

Q: What is special about The Retreat’s location on a quartz mountain in Costa Rica?
When I first stood there on the mountain I could feel this palpable energy. It turns out the entire mountain is crystal. Crystals amplify everything – the good and the bad, and they bring everything to the surface. At the time, there were no trees. The Retreat tree – which is our logo – was dead. We were told we needed to remove it. But it turns out it was alive and well – the energy in the mountain changed. Now our peacocks live in the tree. Every single thing around us is covered in nature.

Q: How central is the environment to The Retreat?
We built The Retreat to make you move your body through nature to get to where you want to be. We grow our food in the crystal soil on the mountain. I’ve just built this Ayurvedic healing centre which is opening this summer. We cultivate all of our own herbs and products based on nature. Because when you cultivate nature, you vibrate differently. Everything we’ve done is about connecting to the energy of the earth.

Diana Stobo joined Connections Wellbeing in  Podčetrtek, Slovenia 2-5 May 2019.