Our Intention
A video message from our founder.
Here we combine the power of raw living foods, juice cleansing and water fasting with deep silent meditation which activates a powerful release of all that is not aligned and gives a potent opportunity to access the innate wisdom we hold deep within, returning us to our true nature.
This is Raw Refuge,
a place to reconnect to the true self.
What if everything your body is asking you to hear has been there all along, buried beneath years of noise, food, and distraction?
Raw Refuge exists at the intersection of physical purification and spiritual truth. Through raw living foods, juice cleansing, and guided water fasting, we create the conditions for you to reconnect with your inner voice and remember how to trust your intuition.
A sacred art form practiced in the lush Caribbean jungle of Costa Rica, surrounded by fruit forests, howler monkeys, and the eternal rhythm of the tropics.
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When we empty from within physically and emotionally, the body and soul can be truly nourished which activates the body's healing mechanism so that everything heals.
This is a retreat for anyone ready for a physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual breakthrough. Alongside the perfect natural and tropical environment that does most of the work, you will be supported by a team dedicated to guiding people through deep transformation.
Experience the magic of what happens when we give our digestive systems a break and start to become sustained by lighter, life-giving sustenance. This is a special opportunity to be immersed in a space fully dedicated to this lifestyle and tool of awakening.
"It's not a question of whether transformation happens here. It's whether or not you're ready for it."
Ålam Nevill · Founder, Raw RefugeWe are lucky to enjoy the potent nature and climate that is ideal for healing and transformation on all levels. Each part of the process is fully personalized and flows according to your body's unique rhythm, beginning with a one-on-one consultation before you arrive to understand your physical state, detox experience, emotional landscape, and intentions for the cleanse.
Schedule Your Free CallChoose Your Path
Custom 7-21 day experiences designed to bring you in deep connection with yourself and your path through cleansing, fasting, and silent meditation.
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A slower, longer path into community life here. Come live, contribute, and remember alongside us, for a week, a month, or longer.
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All food here is locally sourced ripe seasonal tropical fruit and vegetables. Much of what we eat here is grown right on the land here. Throughout your stay meals will include drinking coconuts, fresh-pressed juices, rare tropical fruit, and raw living salads.
Daily polarity meditation developed by Ålam over a decade of annual Vipassana retreats.
Embodied movement such as Chinese lymphatic release, Qi Gong, yoga, breathwork, and somatic practice chosen for where you are in your cleanse.
One-on-one acupressure shiatsu sessions with Ålam, drawing on Five Element traditional Chinese medicine to locate what is out of balance.
Weekly hike through Cahuita National Park. Caribbean beaches, wildlife, barefoot nature time.
Fruit forest tour, tasting rare tree-ripened fruits with the growers of this neighbourhood.
Herbal steam sauna and sound journey deep in the jungle.
All local transport during your stay. Daily education in raw foods, natural hygiene, and detoxification.
Schedule Discovery CallEvery stay is shaped around you that returns you to a natural rhythm
Slow mornings starting with coconut water or spring water depending on where you are at in your fast. Howler monkeys and birds are often the first sounds you hear.
Guided meditation on our yoga deck, Chinese lymphatic release, then fruit, juice, or the continuation of a fast depending on where you are. Bodywork sessions often happen here.
A national park hike, beach time, fruit farm tour, or deep rest on the land. Community events and spontaneous conversations about the path.
A raw living foods dinner created from what grows around us. For those fasting, quiet, rest, and integration.
Herbal sauna and sound journey at the local community. Or simply the canopy, the stars, and the quiet of a Caribbean night.
Every piece of fruit is ripe and in season. Our juices are pressed fresh daily. This is food created with intention as medicine and it is one of the best and most alive tropical food experiences in the world.
Tree-ripened, locally sourced, hand-picked — Filí Forest, Puerto Viejo de Talamanca
Our accommodations are designed as natural and minimalistic for rest, simplicity, and deep connection to the land around you but with all the modern comforts such as hot water, fully screened in windows, fans, and all organic cotton and linen bedding.
Filí Forest · Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Caribbean Costa Rica
Alam and Zoey truly helped me heal my mind, body, and spirit during the 2 weeks I spent at their retreat center. They provided me with guidance, support, and all the tools I needed to transition to a fruit based diet. I'm so grateful for my time spent there. I highly encourage anyone to see for themselves how Alam and Zoey live and give back to their community, and donate if you can to help fund their vision. It is people like them who are helping raise our vibrations collectively. Thanks again Alam and Zoey for all your generosity, I would love to return someday!
I've felt very different and inspired since the retreat. My perspective on eating and every habit for myself have changed into a different light. A light that helps me really live and shift into this true identity of myself that I've been longing for and trying to find.
Ålam is an amazing practitioner and visionary. I was able to experience firsthand his extraordinary abilities as a Chinese medicine therapist as he accompanied me during a very serious illness. Ålam, unlike many others, is not a talker, he is a very serious and conscientious young man with the best of intentions. His spectrum of knowledge extends from medicine to nutrition and meditation. In contrast to many others, this man has no desire for recognition, which only makes his plans seem all the more honorable and feasible. I thank Ålam from the bottom of my heart and wish him the supporters who will bring to life a great project of healing for the human family. Ålam you are a gift!
Ålam has been an inspiration to me for some years now. His approach to food is so simple but at the same time it is so hard to do alone. I noticed the benefit immediately of a two day raw juice and fruit diet I did with Ålam. My bloating, lethargy and gas were gone. I felt lighter and I had more energy. I felt cleaner and clearer in my mind and body, re-energized and inspired with life. I find it very hard to do this sort of cleanse on my own, but when I'm with Ålam it feels very achievable.
Our Team
VISION KEEPER, MOTHER OF 6, AND SOVEREIGN BIRTH GUIDE
Zoey is the founder and vision keeper of Filí Forest, a regenerative tribal living community and fruit forest, and free birthing mother of 6 children.
As a physiologist, Zoey weaves together the practical science of how the body works with the sacred path of spiritual integration and is the main facilitator of the womb circles here. Her intention is to holding space for others walking their own path back to themselves.
As a birth keeper and sovereign birth mentor, she guides women ready to reclaim their power so they can birth exactly the way they want to, some of which choose to come and give birth on her land. Her own path has been shaped by pregnancy, birth, and motherhood and has come to know birth as one of the greatest initiations a woman can experience.
FOUNDER of raw refuge retreat center
Ålam is the founder of Raw Refuge. He's spent the last decade walking the path of raw living foods and deep meditative silence, since sitting his first 10-day Vipassana course in 2017. He's practiced Vipassana annually ever since, and since 2020 has experimented extensively with raw foods, juice cleanses, and water fasting.
He is passionate about working closely with others in discovering the transformational potential of proper detoxification periods and practicing a raw living food lifestyle as a means of integrating one's spiritual truth and unique gifts to this world.
He is fascinated by the mystery that relates to eating and from where humans truly draw energy from. Alongside these experiments he has studied extensively the 5 Elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine and has devised a technique of acupressure and shiatsu that supports his work in assisting others to heal and transform through the power of natural hygiene methodologies.
He views the path of raw living foods as a gateway into revelation, one that must be held as a spiritual discipline, a martial art in its application, if it is to be healthily and sustainably integrated. Finding Sangha (spiritual community) is an essential part of that.
We are removing what was never ours to carry. The body knows how to heal. The soul knows where to go. We are just creating the conditions for both.
The most beneficial way to fast is more than just drinking water for a few days. How you prepare and re-feed after matters.
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