🌿 The Majestic Oak Retreat – Wellness Centre

The Majestic Oak Retreat is a serene wellness centre and retreat space founded by Paula Harrison, offering a holistic, compassionate approach to wellbeing, personal growth, and spiritual development. Set within a peaceful natural environment, The Majestic Oak provides a sanctuary where individuals can pause, reconnect, and restore balance in body, mind, and spirit.

Paula brings over 40 years of diverse professional experience, spanning clinical healthcare, mental health, education, nutrition and wellness, spirituality, and the performing arts. Her work is grounded in both evidence-based practice and ancient wisdom, blending modern therapeutic approaches with holistic and spiritual traditions to support meaningful, lasting change.

Clinically trained as an Occupational Therapist in the United Kingdom, Paula has worked extensively across public and private health sectors with individuals of all ages. After relocating to New Zealand in 2006, she focused her career on mental health, counselling, and adult education, gaining postgraduate qualifications in Adult Education, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT).

Through individual counselling, life coaching, and educational programmes, Paula supports people in developing essential life skills, including anxiety and stress management, emotional regulation, self-esteem, assertiveness, addiction support, mindfulness, relaxation, meditation, and overall wellbeing.

Alongside her clinical background, Paula’s lifelong immersion in the performing arts deeply informs her work. From the age of three, she has followed her passion as a performer and teacher of dance, singing, acting, and music in both the UK and New Zealand. She has founded her own schools, taught in a wide range of educational settings, and integrates movement, creativity, and embodied awareness into her spiritual and therapeutic practice.

Paula’s spiritual journey has been a guiding thread throughout her life. While rooted in early experiences of community, music, and service, her understanding of spirituality has evolved beyond any single belief system. She honours the diversity of spiritual paths and philosophies, guided by a core principle of leading with the heart — practising compassion, forgiveness, respect, and kindness toward others, oneself, animals, and the natural world. Central to her philosophy is a deep respect for the interconnectedness of all life.

Over the decades, Paula has studied and practised a wide range of holistic and spiritual disciplines, including Reiki, massage, transcendental meditation, sound and dance therapy, chakra healing, colour therapy, yoga, Tai Chi, crystal healing, astrology, numerology, channelling, and mediumship. She continues to expand her knowledge through ongoing study of herbal medicine, integrating these practices into daily life and professional offerings.

A passionate believer in living what she teaches, Paula views life’s experiences — both joyful and challenging — as powerful opportunities for learning, growth, and transformation. She gently inspires others to embrace change, develop self-awareness, and move forward with greater clarity, resilience, and purpose.

In recent years, Paula and her partner Gavin have established The Majestic Oak Retreat as a place of peace, tranquillity, and connection. Through workshops, wellness days, retreats, meditation, and spiritual development experiences, The Majestic Oak offers a nurturing space for reflection, healing, and reconnection with self and nature.

Paula is also currently in the process of registering as a celebrant, with plans to offer intimate weddings and ceremonies at The Majestic Oak, as well as civil unions, vow renewals, naming ceremonies, funerals, and other meaningful rites at locations of personal significance. Her compassionate presence, creativity, and holistic understanding ensure that every ceremony is authentic, heartfelt, and deeply personal.

The Majestic Oak Retreat welcomes those seeking calm, clarity, balance, and a deeper connection — offering a gentle yet powerful pathway toward wellbeing, wholeness, and personal evolution.