Created by Brett Shuttleworth, Joe van Niekerk and Cobus Visser, three of South Africa's most powerfully experienced facilitators working at the intersection of elite performance, leadership psychology, and embodied transformation, this work bridges human depth with commercial relevance.
Delivered through Retreats in the Wild by African Monarch Journeys, every engagement is held within a values-led ecosystem committed to integrity, purpose and meaningful impact across people, place and community.
“Have you any idea how uniquely powerful your business is? When you unlock the potential in your people, you tap into unlimited power that expedites the growth of the business. There is no wiser place in which to invest. Make the people in your business, your business.”
— Brett Shuttleworth
The Ultimate Breakthrough Experience is a structured intervention for leadership teams, sales divisions, and organisations at inflection points. It bridges performance pressure with conscious leadership practice, and it produces behavioural shifts that begin inside the engagement and extend through the ninety days that follow.
It is not traditional training. It is not team building. It is not motivational keynote without follow-through. It is a delivered methodology, shaped to the organisation, held by three facilitators with fifty years of combined experience across elite sport, corporate leadership, government, and global consciousness work.
The methodology is single. The delivery format flexes. A keynote at your leadership conference, a three-hour team activation at your preferred venue, a fully bespoke engagement designed to your organisational calendar or a five-day immersion at Nambwa Tented Lodge inside the Bwabwata National Park, located in the world's largest conservation area for wildlife.
The same principles carry through every format. The depth of the engagement is scaled to the time and context you bring.
“Leadership is not only about performance, but about how we show up for our people, our work, and the world around us.”
Tinolla Rodgers, Owner & Managing Director — African Monarch Journeys & Retreats In The Wild
Every engagement is custom-scoped with the organisational sponsor. The four formats below are the standard entry points. Any of them can be delivered at Nambwa Tented Lodge in Namibia, at a venue of your organisation's choosing, or in a combination of both.
A keynote experience designed to introduce the core principles of conscious performance at scale. Suitable for conferences, leadership gatherings, annual sales kick-offs, and strategic off-sites. Every keynote is customised to audience and organisational context, and can include experiential elements that move participants from passive listening to active engagement. Best when you need to seed the methodology across a large audience before deeper work.
A signature experiential team intervention. Designed to produce immediate shifts in energy, communication, accountability, and cohesion. Configurable as a high-impact team building session, a sales performance accelerator, or a fully customised workshop aligned to a specific organisational question. Best when the team needs a decisive break in culture, performance trajectory, or alignment.
A high-level executive immersion designed for organisations seeking their next competitive advantage in an increasingly complex and rapidly evolving world. Delivered at Nambwa Tented Lodge or a venue of your choice, this multi-day experience creates the space for leaders to step away from operational demands and focus on strategic clarity, organisational alignment, high-performance culture and sustainable growth.
Ideal for organisations navigating transformation, cultural evolution or preparing for their next phase of scale, the experience strengthens decision-making, unlocks breakthrough thinking and develops the human advantage that technology cannot replace.
A fully bespoke engagement designed around your organisational calendar and strategic context. Combines keynote, activation and retreat formats into a single integrated programme. Ideal for multi-phase leadership development, post-merger integration, IPO preparation, and global leadership teams seeking a distinctive African immersion blended with conservation and impact experiences.
The methodology produces its most decisive outcomes when the organisation is facing a moment that requires the senior team to hold alignment under pressure. Growth, complexity, cultural misalignment, post-merger integration, sales pressure, or a strategic shift that asks leaders to think.
Where performance, culture and wellbeing intersect. The methodology supports cultural alignment across teams, leadership capability at every level, retention through deeper engagement, and measurable behavioural change beyond traditional training.
Navigating growth, transition, restructuring, or post-merger integration. When the team needs to realign around vision, role clarity, and collective accountability before the next strategic phase begins.
Operating under sustained pressure and numeric targets. When the team needs to shift from grinding to focused, from depleted to resourceful, from reactive to disciplined in execution. The methodology strengthens nervous system regulation and emotional intelligence, which are the capacities that hold under quarterly pressure.
Where the ESG and culture conversation has moved from compliance to strategic advantage, and leadership needs an embodied experience of what that integration actually feels like, not just what it reads like in a report.
Where leadership, resilience, and collective spirit are the competitive edge. The methodology adapts cleanly to institutions that operate under public scrutiny and sustained performance demand.
Who need a high-integrity, premium option for executive off-sites, board gatherings, leadership conferences, and strategic events. The offering includes seamless logistics coordination through African Monarch Journeys when the engagement is at Nambwa.
“The Hojo training was electrifying, practical, engaging and inspiring.”
— ArcelorMittal
Focus under pressure, trust, decisive action. Leadership in motion.
Firewalking, glass walking, ice plunges & breakthrough challenges that transform fear into courage and pressure into performance.
Reflection, gratitude and purposeful alignment.
Emotional intelligence, resilience. Shift from reactivity to coherence.
Leadership alignment, strategic clarity, sales acceleration and high-performing cultures.
Joy, connection and nervous system regulation.
Purification, deep connection and authentic transformation.
Restores perspective, expands awareness and reveals unseen team patterns.
At the heart of the methodology is Brett Shuttleworth's Seven Sacred Miracles framework, a practical leadership philosophy built on seven principles: Intention, Mastery, Gratitude, Balance, Integrity, Humour and Love. Together, they align mindset, behaviour and action, producing conscious accountability, clear decision-making and leadership presence that drives sustainable results.
This instructional framework is brought to life through a series of experiential practices that combine embodied learning, nervous system regulation and breakthrough conversations. Each element is adapted to the delivery format. A Team Activation may draw on two or three practices, while a Leadership Immersion integrates the full methodology.
Hojo Consciousness Training. An embodied leadership practice adapted from ancient Japanese warrior traditions, using wooden sword work to build focus under pressure, trust, communication clarity, and decisive action. Teams practise leadership in motion, not in theory.
High-Performance Breakthrough Training. An experiential methodology that pushes individuals and teams beyond perceived limitations through carefully designed breakthrough challenges. Participants build resilience, confidence and mental toughness while learning to perform and lead under pressure. Experiences may include firewalking, ice plunges, glass walking and other high-impact breakthrough activities. Participants don't simply learn resilience, they experience it.
Manifestation Journalling. Written reflection and life-vision work that aligns the individual with their deepest truth. Paired with Brett's Journal as a companion tool where relevant.
Conscious Connected Breathwork. A science-informed nervous system regulation practice with Joe that supports resilience, emotional intelligence, and sustainable performance. Teaches participants to regulate stress responses and operate from coherence rather than reactivity.
Leadership, Strategy & Performance Acceleration. A practical methodology that strengthens the human performance systems driving organisational success. Focused on leadership development, strategic clarity, team alignment, communication under pressure and sales performance, it equips leaders with the mindset and behavioural discipline required to build resilient, high-performing organisations.
Laughing Yoga. A somatic practice that uses sustained intentional laughter to shift the nervous system out of stress activation and into coherence. Teams that laugh together, regulate together.
The Sweat Lodge. A purification practice drawn from sacred indigenous traditions. Strips participants to their raw essence and rebuilds from truth. Available in retreat and custom formats where venue permits.
Immersion in Nature. Where venue permits, all activities happen in wilderness or outdoor settings. The natural environment does structural work that no conference room can do: it slows the nervous system, opens perceptual capacity, and reveals patterns the team cannot see indoors.
Brett Shuttleworth's journey is a story of extraordinary transformation. He transitioned away from careers as an international rugby player, Africa's first male supermodel and Hollywood actor to become one of the world's leading consciousness trainers and retreat facilitators.
With over 25 years of experience guiding professional sports teams, Fortune 500 companies and government leaders, Brett has touched the lives of more than 200,000 individuals worldwide. As the founder of Smiling Soul Retreats, he has hosted 50+ international retreats across South Africa, India, Bali, and Croatia. He is also the creator of HoJo Consciousness Training, a unique blend of ancient warrior practices and modern performance psychology.
Brett's approach fuses corporate leadership transformation and spiritual development to help individuals and teams dissolve limiting beliefs, cultivate presence and lead with integrity. His mission is simple yet profound: to guide people back to their authentic selves and create a ripple effect of love across organisations and the world.
Proven track record:
“I am most passionate about the human journey to self-realisation. I want to make the spiritual process mainstream, because something beyond body and mind should become a living experience for everyone in the world.”
Brett Shuttleworth
“Brett Shuttleworth is the Mother Teresa, the Oprah, and the love that this country needs. He has touched our souls.” — Education Department
Joe van Niekerk's expertise bridges the worlds of elite performance and holistic healing. As a Springbok rugby legend with over 50 international caps and a Toulon Hall of Fame career in European rugby, Joe knows what it takes to perform under intense pressure, lead elite teams and cultivate resilience.
After retiring from professional sport, Joe embarked on a deep personal transformation, overcoming trauma, addiction and illness to become one of the most sought-after somatic healing and conscious breathwork facilitators. He immersed himself in the sacred traditions of Mexico and Costa Rica, where he trained in sweat lodge ceremonies with indigenous elders, discovering the power of stillness, surrender and truth. Today he guides leaders and teams through practices that combine corporate leadership development with nervous system regulation, trauma release and conscious connected breathwork.
Through his blend of ancient wisdom and modern psychology, he aims to show that true strength comes from vulnerability and that sustainable success lies in reconnecting to your wholeness.
Proven track record:
“Every breakdown became a breakthrough. From the rugby field to the healing space, I've learned that performance without alignment leads to collapse, but when we connect body, mind, and spirit, extraordinary results follow.”
Joe van Niekerk
“After Joe's breathwork session, I experienced the most profound shift in my life.” — Sales Director, Multinational Corporation
Cobus Visser is a South African entrepreneur, business strategist, leadership expert, author, and internationally recognised keynote speaker with more than two decades of experience across consulting, retail, hospitality, technology, manufacturing, franchising, tourism, and property investment.
As founder of Cobus Visser International, he helps organisations strengthen leadership, accountability, culture, and performance through behavioural science, executive coaching, experiential learning, and strategic execution. He also founded Firewalking Africa, a leading experiential leadership and team development organisation delivering transformative programmes to businesses, government institutions, professional sports teams, and private organisations.
Cobus is the co-founder of BSC Ignite Agency and has successfully founded, scaled, and exited several businesses. He also helped expand Furn4u / Modern Living from six to thirty stores nationwide, creating approximately 350 jobs through that business, and 8000+ through his career.
Living with haemophilia and having overcome periods of paralysis, Cobus climbed Mount Kilimanjaro on crutches. His journey embodies resilience, courage, and his belief that extraordinary potential exists within every individual. He remains committed to sustainable growth, community upliftment, and global impact.
Proven track record:
“The true measure of success is not just in achieving one's personal goals but in inspiring others to pursue their dreams with the same fervour and dedication.”
Cobus Visser
“This training has an absolute return on investment.” — Vodacom
Some organisations arrive with a specific context that does not fit a keynote, an activation, or a standard retreat. For those organisations, the methodology can be designed from scratch to the specific brief.
When custom design makes sense:
How custom design works. Custom engagements begin with a discovery conversation. The conversation scopes the outcome, the participants, the timeline, and the delivery envelope. From that conversation, a tailored proposal is built, including methodology design, integration tools, venue and logistics, and investment.
Custom engagements can be delivered at Nambwa, at the client's preferred venue, or in a combination. The methodology remains the same; the architecture around it flexes.
Six integration categories extend the engagement into the weeks and months after the work. Together they support sustained behavioural change, cultural reinforcement, and measurable community impact. All are optional additions to any delivery format.
Brett's Journal is the written companion to the methodology. It guides participants through the manifestation and reflection practices that form the structured written layer of the work. Designed to be used during the engagement and continued for ninety days afterwards, the journal is what carries the methodology out of the venue and into the individual's ongoing leadership practice. For retreat participants, the journal is included in the engagement inclusions. For keynote and activation audiences, it is available as an organisational gift at delegate level and can be co-branded with the organisation's own identity.
Branded reflection and application tools tailored to the engagement, supporting integration during the work and ongoing application back in the business.
For executives continuing the work after a corporate engagement, for high-potential talent as a development reward, or as a recognition incentive within sales and performance programmes. African Monarch Journeys runs an annual calendar of open retreats at Nambwa and internationally.
Structured one-on-one and group coaching that embeds the methodology into daily leadership practice in the months following the engagement.
Consciousness-based digital courses that reinforce the core principles and practices over time, supporting individuals and teams between in-person engagements.
The Sijwa Project is African Monarch Journeys' sustainability and skills development programme. All waste generated across the African Monarch lodges is consciously redirected into the Sijwa Project, where local artisans repurpose materials into craft, textiles, and homeware. The programme has been featured at SA Fashion Week and has been recognised with an ATTA Award for community conservation.
Organisations can include curated Sijwa items as leadership gifts within any engagement. Each gift is artisan-made, traceable to the specific Sijwa programme, and accompanied by a provenance card that identifies the maker and the waste stream the piece was created from. Options range from individual gifts at delegate level to larger pieces designated for boardrooms, reception areas, or executive offices.
Every Sijwa purchase contributes directly to artisan livelihoods and to Mayuni Conservancy conservation work.
Contributions can be reported against the organisation's ESG and CSR commitments as measurable community and conservation spend.
Many organisations select Nambwa Tented Lodge as the venue. When they do, the engagement draws on the most remarkable conservation and wilderness asset African Monarch Journeys holds, and it produces a specific, reportable impact outcome.
Nambwa Tented Lodge sits inside Bwabwata National Park in Namibia's Eastern Zambezi Region. The park forms part of KAZA, the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area: the largest terrestrial conservation area on Earth, spanning Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Nambwa is one of only a handful of lodges operating inside Bwabwata. Guests are not visiting the wilderness. They are living inside it.
12% of revenue generated through Nambwa or the Sijwa Project flows directly to the Mayuni Conservancy. Nambwa operates in a joint venture partnership with the Mayuni Conservancy. Every engagement contributes measurably to conservation, livelihoods, and community programmes through the Sijwa Project, African Monarch Journeys' sustainability and skills development initiative.
Here, the wild does not just welcome you. It remembers you.
Nambwa Tented Lodge consists of ten luxury suites perched high in the treetops. All suites connect to the main deck by elevated timber walkways that allow migrating wildlife to pass beneath, undisturbed.
Open-sky dining and the main viewing deck overlook the floodplains below, which host large herds of elephants, buffalos, plains game and the big cats. For engagements at Nambwa, the lodge supports groups of up to 20 delegates sharing suites, or 10 delegates in single occupancy.
Each suite includes:
For engagements delivered at Nambwa Tented Lodge, the following are included in the engagement investment. Engagements delivered at the client's preferred venue are scoped separately — see Four Formats above.
Included:
Not included:
For engagements delivered at Nambwa Tented Lodge, the logistics below apply. African Monarch Journeys coordinates all in-country travel from the arrival airport to the lodge. International flight booking is handled by the participant or the organisation's travel partner.
Arrival options:
Via Windhoek: fly into Windhoek (Hosea Kutako International), onward flight to Katima Mulilo (closest airport to Nambwa). Road and boat transfer to the lodge via the Sijwa Project.
Via Kasane (Botswana): fly into Kasane direct from Johannesburg. Road and boat transfer to the lodge via the Sijwa Project, including cross-border formalities coordinated by African Monarch Journeys.
Via Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe) or Livingstone (Zambia): fly into either airport. Road and boat transfer to the lodge, coordinated by African Monarch Journeys.
Every engagement is custom-scoped. The bands below provide an indicative starting point so organisations can self-qualify before a conversation and so the engagement scoping process moves cleanly from first enquiry to confirmed scope.
Every engagement follows a five-step process:
Timelines vary by format, from 2 weeks for a keynote to 3 months for a retreat or custom engagement.
“Brett Shuttleworth is such a special speaker. You are sure to be inspired.”
MEC Pinky Phosa, Government
“This electrifying Hojo and sales training is in perfect alignment with what we are trying to achieve.”
Sanlam
“We simply loved this Motivational Hojo Training. Love was the teaching that really made our souls smile.”
Virgin Active
“Cobus can motivate you to push limits you did not know you have and question the norm to find yourself.”
Taryn Ebersohn, Project Coordinator
“The results have been beyond my wildest expectations.”
Hilton Johnson, CEO, Compliance Hub
Every engagement begins with an exploratory conversation. The purpose is to understand what the organisation is working on, confirm whether the methodology is a fit, and scope an indicative format and investment. No commitment is required at this stage, and the conversation takes thirty minutes.
What to have ready for the discovery call:
Nambwa Tented Lodge, Bwabwata National Park, Zambezi Region, Namibia · +27 (0)82 902 0994 · info@retreatsinthewild.com · africanmonarchjourneys.com
