Returning Home at Simply Happy

Simply Happy

Returning Home to Simply Happy

In deep gratitude to our love and friendship,

By Anosha Zereh

“The home we seek is not a place in the world but the openness in which the world appears.”

inspired by the teachings of Francis Lucille

I arrived at Simply Happy, a small retreat village in northern Portugal, with a single intention: to find a quiet place to land after a full week at Mandali in Italy. I imagined this next week at Simply Happy as a kind of silent coda—a softer echo after the intensity of Mandali, a place where the teachings could unfurl in their own time. What I didn’t expect was the feeling of descent—into the mountains themselves, into a remoter quiet that at first felt almost too much, as if the land were asking more of me than I had planned to give.

I had just immersed myself in Balyani’s non‑dual teachings with my longtime teacher Rupert Spira, a student of Francis Lucille, held by a very special community of friends I have walked with for many years. I pictured this next week as a kind of gentle after glow: more solitude, long stretches of writing time, and a chance to let the teachings settle in their own way. Instead, as I arrived, I stumbled into one of Simply Happy’s first in‑house retreats: “Returning Home,” guided by Pedro Brañas, also a student in the lineage of Francis Lucille.

The group was small—about fifteen of us, including Pedro and the Simply Happy team—more intimate than the larger non‑dual gatherings I am used to. Most were young students who had already shared time together at Francis’s retreats, which gave the circle a sense of familiarity and quiet trust that I felt invited into from the very first evening.

What struck me immediately was how different Pedro’s style was from the archetype of the non‑dual teacher I carry in my body‑memory. He is light, approachable, full of laughter and friendly teasing while teaching. We didn’t begin with hushed seriousness but by laughing at each other’s jokes, which gently loosened my expectation that deep seeing must wear a solemn face, something I am not very good at anyway. The tone of the week was set: ease, warmth, and permission to be fully human while speaking about what is beyond the person.

Each morning of the retreat opened not with a traditional satsang but with bodywork. I am used to entering retreats through stillness and inquiry, sitting as awareness. Here, we began by waking the body—stretching, moving, breathing together in simple, playful ways. My body, often the quiet workhorse of retreats, felt unexpectedly honoured. Instead of trying to understand what Pedro was doing or how it fit into any conceptual framework, I found myself relaxing into a more instinctive trust, letting the body be the doorway into being.

What surprised me most over the days was the depth of this “coming home” through Pedro’s expansion bodywork. As he guided us to feel the body from the inside out, form began to soften at the edges; the sense of “my” body expanded into the space around it until inside and outside were no longer clearly divided. Mind felt like the flip side of the same coin—also softening, also widening into a field where no boundaries could be found. In those moments, the silhouettes of separate bodies were still visible to the eyes, yet the felt sense was utterly shared. The distinction between “me” and “them” grew thin, and what remained was one continuous body of presence, appearing as fifteen people in a room, all arising in the same open field.

Qigong, Morning Exercise

Around mid‑week, the retreat revealed the teaching of this shared presence in a very human way. We discovered it was Pedro’s birthday, and the group quietly conspired to celebrate him. Everyone offered something—music, food, a poem, a gesture—for the man who, by then, felt more like a dear friend than a traditional teacher. As the evening unfolded and we each stepped forward in our own way, something remarkable began to happen. The veil of separation that still lingered around some of us seemed to loosen; those who had been a little hidden behind mind and body started to shine through. Transparency seemed to dance in the room as the music started and, quite naturally, we began to dance too.

Nothing felt forced or organised. What we had been hearing all week about oneness and openness started to express itself in bodies, in movement, in laughter. The sense of a collective “us” expanded until the room felt like it had no walls at all—just one field of joy, appearing as many faces.

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Our days together continued to unfold gently. The solitude I thought I wanted slowly gave way to a weaving of friendship. Conversations emerged over meals, tea, and spontaneous walks through the village. The young students shared stories of their time with Francis; I shared fresh impressions from Rupert and Eckhart Tolle retreats. The teachings began to echo one another—East and West, Advaita and Sufism—all pointing back to the same intimacy of being. And all of this took place in an atmosphere of ordinariness: dogs running through the courtyard, shared laughter at the dinner table, the sound of someone making coffee in the early morning.

I was also quietly struck by how few questions arose in our gatherings. In other retreats, I am used to long queues of raised hands and stories—broken hearts and lost lovers, the death of a mother, the weight of mental illness or physical limitation—offered to the teaching for holding and illumination. Here, the questions felt fewer and lighter, often touching the nuances of understanding rather than detailed personal narratives. What was shared had an impersonal quality; it did not carry a strong sense of “me” behind it, at least not in the way I am familiar with from my older, more life‑weathered communities. I have no doubt each person held their own private joys and sorrows, but my experience of this retreat, with this young circle and our dear friend and teacher Pedro, was one of remarkable spaciousness—as if even the question‑asking was learning to rest.

By mid‑week, I realised that “returning home” was happening on several levels. There was the home of awareness itself, the place every true pointer ultimately gestures to. There was also the homecoming of the body, invited each morning to soften and participate instead of being bypassed. And there was the quieter homecoming of community, in meeting a small circle of “spiritual friends,” as I like to call them, who felt like travellers of the same inner landscape.

Eventually the retreat ended. One by one, people said their goodbyes, the circle dissolved, and the courtyard emptied. In the quiet that followed, I stayed back for a few days to finish writing, and I found myself alone with the land and the bones of the village, able to meet Simply Happy more directly, without the buffer of group energy. The place itself is breathtaking: an old stone village where simple bungalows for retreatants sit alongside ruined cottages and restored homes, creating a tender dialogue between what was and what is becoming.

I stayed in one of the stone houses, and it carried me back to the remote village in Iran I have visited over the last twenty years when I am with my in‑laws—with its thick walls, small windows, and the sense that the land itself was the true host. For seekers who might find themselves in this remote corner of Portugal, it feels important to say a word about the practical side of staying at Simply Happy, because the land asks for a certain kind of preparation.

Access to food is not straightforward if you do not have a car and are not part of a formal retreat where everything is planned. There are no nearby grocery stores to wander down to, and although the cabins and stone homes are equipped with basic kitchen essentials, they are not designed for elaborate cooking. To stay here comfortably, you really do need to plan ahead: transportation, groceries, and simple meal plans become part of the contemplative container. For some, that level of intentionality will be a welcome deepening; for others, it might feel like one layer too many on top of the inner work.

Once the retreat was over and most people had left, I noticed something else: the quiet can sometimes lean toward emptiness. For an extroverted, people‑loving creature like me, it is not always easy to emerge from the hermit cave when I am finally ready to be with others and find that there is no village life around, no café, no neighbour to bump into. Without a car, the isolation becomes part of the retreat whether one chooses it or not. For many, this will be the gift of Simply Happy; for others, a vehicle or a plan for gentle excursions might offer a bridge between the depth of solitude and the nourishment of human contact.

When I first arrived and felt the mountains closing in around this small village, a quiet fear moved through me—an old reflex that associates remoteness with being cut off, forgotten, too far from the known world. In the first days, the silence felt almost sharp, like a mirror held too close to the face. And yet, as I stayed on, something in me began to soften. The same stillness that had unsettled me at first slowly revealed itself as an invitation, a wide, inner space I could descend into rather than escape from. The mountains that had seemed intimidating at the beginning started to feel like companions, holding and echoing that descent into the heart.

The wider setting of Simply Happy holds all of this like a soft, stone bowl. It is a remote little pocket of Portugal where cobblestone lanes are shared by sheep, cows, and the few humans who happen to wander through; where old stone houses, a red van, and wildflowers coexist with wide mountain views and a sky that keeps changing its moods. It is not a polished luxury retreat centre; it is something humbler and, in many ways, more precious: a simple, accessible refuge for those who are serious about inner work but may not have access to the high prices of spiritual tourism.

Simply Happy seems to exist precisely for this: as a small, village‑like space where non‑dual teachings, embodied practice, and simple rural life can meet. Sylvie, the visionary behind it, has created a place that is not just a venue but a living container—one that can hold both organised retreats and solitary stays for writers, seekers, and facilitators who need a supportive yet uncomplicated base in which to rest, create, or host, while remaining truly affordable.

Still in its teething stages, it is remote and not yet bustling with visitors, but the intention for this beautiful place is to evolve into a fully living organism that embodies the manifestation of the core teaching in non‑duality: love expressed outwardly as loving friendship in the form of community.

In a time when many spiritual spaces are drifting out of financial reach and serving mainly those with greater financial comfort, Sylvie has offered this place as an expression of her love—an act of service and inclusion.

When I think back on this week, what lingers is still a texture: the mix of clouds and mountains at sunrise, the sound of our group’s laughter, the spontaneous dancing on Pedro’s birthday, and the unexpected tenderness of saying goodbye to a dozen people who were strangers only days before. I came here to drop in and left with something more like ascension: a felt sense that the path of oneness can be light‑hearted, shared, and grounded in the simplest forms of village life.

If someone asked me about Simply Happy, I would say this: if you long for a quiet, pared‑back space to deepen in non‑dual practice, and you are comfortable with rural stillness—especially if you have a car or a plan for small adventures—this little village in the Portuguese hills may feel like a homecoming. If you are someone who does not want to spend too much money on fancy hotels but is looking for an affordable, comfortable place to fall into yourself and return to the deepest parts of you, this is your place. If you thrive on being with people, going to cafés on your breaks from solitude, or having crowds in the surrounding areas, it might not be your place, and that is perfectly all right; some homes are meant for the seasons when the soul is ready to listen more closely than usual. Here, at Simply Happy, the invitation of coming home to yourself is always here.

For me, that invitation arrived as a descent—first into the mountains and their stark quiet, and then, more tenderly, into the inner space that was waiting to welcome me all along.

Where the mind steps aside, love takes the throne

here, happiness is not found, it is known.

Beyond the thinking mind, a village of pure light

where love is not a feeling, but the source of life.

In this sacred place, the mind learns to rest

and love, ever present, rises as what’s left.

In love and gratitude to Sylvie and her community for welcoming me, Anosha

The local shepherd

Resources & Gratitude

Pedro Brañas — Non‑Dual TeachingPedro Brañas is a non‑dual friend and teacher in the lineage of Francis Lucille, offering retreats and meetings that weave lightness, bodywork, and embodied inquiry into the direct path. You can explore his offerings and contact him through his website: elpajaroquecanta.com.

Simply Happy — Northern PortugalSimply Happy is a small, village‑like retreat space in the hills of northern Portugal, created as a place to “gather, create, and belong” in an atmosphere of natural beauty, simplicity, and friendship. More information about retreats and stays can be found here: simplyhappy.pt.

Francis Lucille — Non‑Dual TeachingFrancis Lucille is a contemporary Advaita teacher whose work points directly to consciousness as the universal reality in which all experience appears, emphasising effortless resting as awareness and the recognition of our shared being. You can learn more about his teaching and meetings at francislucille.com.

About Anosha Zereh — Writer

Anosha Zereh is an Afghan‑born writer, poet, and contemplative guide whose work weaves Sufi mysticism, non‑duality, and lived experience into prose and poetry. Her books and offerings explore inner peace, women’s voices, and the meeting place of culture and consciousness. More about her work and offerings can be found at anosha-zereh.com; her books are also available on Amazon.