Why We Built Explore & Chill with a Little Bit of English

A long-form reflection on what shaped us, what we’re building, and how it might touch your life.

1) The weight that isn’t seen

Some lives are lived with a public label: ADHD, PTSD, eating disorders, anxiety, depression, dementia, addiction, life-limiting conditions. These words open doors to assessments, treatment plans, acronyms and waiting lists. They don’t, however, capture the invisible orbit around the person at the centre—the partners, parents, children and loved ones who keep the house running, who pick up the pieces at midnight, who steady the ship when the weather turns.

We have spent more than thirty-five years in that orbit. On paper we were the competent ones, the “you’ll manage” people. In reality we were often exhausted, worried, and afraid to stop moving in case everything fell apart. If you recognise yourself here, you already understand the central truth that led us to create Explore & Chill with a Little Bit of English: the person in crisis often receives support; the people who support them usually do not.

This is our response to that gap—not a theory, not a posture, but something practical and humane we wished had existed when we needed it most.

2) The small circle that kept us afloat

The turning point for us was not dramatic. It was a small circle of people who met weekly in the London area, guided by a therapist. Before the pandemic the group met in person; afterwards we moved to Zoom. That hour each week became a kind of pressure valve: a place we could tell the truth without fear of breaking the room.

There was one question our group leader returned to again and again: What have you done for yourself this week? Not “how did you fix the situation” or “what did you do for them,” but something small for you. Walk to the sea. Sit in a garden. Finish a puzzle. Phone a friend. Take ten minutes to breathe.

It sounded simple. It wasn’t. Codependency, for many of us, had taught a cruel arithmetic: if they’re not okay, we’re not okay, therefore we’ll be okay only when they are. That logic erodes your health slowly. The group interrupted that spiral, one small act of self-care at a time. We never “solved” everything, but we carried it differently.

Explore & Chill is the shape we’re giving to that experience: a wider circle where the question what have you done for yourself this week? is held gently and answered in community.

3) Invitations, not instructions

We don’t believe people in long-term stress need another manual or another voice telling them how to live. What helps, in our experience, are invitations—clear, kind prompts that make it easier to do the thing you know would help if only you could make yourself start.

That’s why Explore & Chill is built around:

• Gentle commitment: two or three nudges a week that ask for your time in small, real ways—watch this together, walk here, try this ten-minute practice.

• Shared experiences: live-streamed sunsets and seasonal walks; quiet creative sessions; watching an artist paint or a cook prepare a meal; moments that you join as they happen so “later” doesn’t swallow them.

• A calm library: video pieces crafted to steady rather than stimulate, with meditative soundscapes and visuals you can return to when the day has been too loud.

We’re trying to replace doomscrolling with something that gives back more than it takes.

4) What a week can look like

This is how it often plays out for members:

Monday. A short, ad-free video lands in your feed. You watch it on a phone with headphones during a lunch break. It’s a quiet coastal scene with soft sound. For twenty minutes, your brain has nothing to solve.

Tuesday. You read a message from the community: a Tai Chi session is happening live at 7pm. You’ve never tried it. You join anyway. The teacher keeps it simple. You sleep better.

Wednesday. A poll opens: would next month’s Wellness Box be more useful with a small craft kit or a journaling prompt set? You vote for the craft kit; your hands want to make something.

Thursday. A live walk is scheduled for sunset. You can’t go out, so you join from home. The stream is unhurried: birds, wind, a path crunching underfoot. Others are watching; the chat is sparse and kind.

Friday. You take the long way to the shop so you can collect a geocache stamp in your logbook. It’s five extra minutes. It feels like you did something for you.

Weekend. You don’t catch the live moon watch, but the replay is there. You find it oddly grounding to watch a crater sharpen quietly on screen, light gathering from across a distance you can’t fathom.

Not every week looks like this. The point is not to do everything. It’s to have more than one door back to yourself.

5) Gentle challenges that widen the world

Long stress narrows our lives. We move between the same rooms, the same tabs, the same thoughts. One part of Explore & Chill is the simple practice of learning something small and new.

Sometimes that’s Tai Chi, or a breathing exercise. Sometimes it’s a knitting kit, a small sewing project, a puzzle that takes just enough focus to block out the noise. Sometimes it’s colouring with a cup of tea. The purpose isn’t performance; it’s rhythm. When your hands move steadily, your mind follows.

Wellness Boxes (quarterly in some tiers, monthly in our top tier) are one way we seed these practices—little anchors you can hold onto when everything else is in motion. You’ll always know what’s inside before we send it; you’ll often have a say in shaping it; and you can gift boxes to someone who needs a nudge more than you do right now.

6) Exploration: close to home, far from ordinary

We can’t always get away. We can, however, experience more than the algorithm serves us. Explore & Chill is built in layers of exploration:

• Here & now: live, lightly-guided walks you can join from your sofa or your street; seasonal views from places you might never visit; slow-TV style scenes to punctuate your day.

• Hands & eyes: creative sessions where you watch a craftsperson work without the TikTok tempo; cooking that respects quiet; “learn with me” moments that feel like sitting beside a friend.

• Thirty-five thousand feet: we have access to cockpit views; we’re creating sequences that show the world sliding by at the pace it actually moves when no one’s trying to sell you anything.

• Maps & markers: our geocaches are placed as “points of calm” across the UK, each with a unique stamp for your logbook (you’ll receive one after three months of continuous membership). Finding one is part scavenger hunt, part mindful walk. Members can even propose and place caches for the community, learning how to choose locations respectfully and safely.

Exploration in this sense isn’t consumption; it’s connection—to place, to craft, to sky, to other people who showed up at the same time you did.

7) The sky as a teacher

There’s a special calm in looking up. We’ve built two strands around that:

• Cosmic journeys: ambient videos curated from publicly licensed imagery—Voyager, Juno, New Horizons, Apollo, James Webb. Not as trivia, but as a backdrop to breathing. You are very small, and not at all alone.

• Live astrophotography: using our digital telescope, we host sessions where you watch an image of a nebula or galaxy build in real time over the evening. For top-tier members we take requests, capture the target you choose, and send you a personalised print. It becomes a piece of your wall that says: the world is larger than my worry.

We also run live moon watches—simple, friendly events where the familiar becomes strange again and you remember how much detail hides in plain sight.

8) Stepping away: why retreats matter

Videos and live sessions help. Sometimes you need time out of place.

Our retreats are simple cottages in dark-sky regions—close to the ocean, to clifftop paths, to quiet woodland and estuaries. They are not hotels. There is heating and good bedding; there are books; there is a box on the table where you can put your phone if you want the option to be unreachable. Internet can be turned on or off by arrangement. Food isn’t included by default, but we can have a package delivered for your arrival. Check-in is 3pm; check-out is 11am. You let yourself in. You let yourself be.

We created these because stepping away saved us more than once. A few nights under a sky where the Milky Way is visible to the naked eye can press reset on a nervous system that has been humming for years. Silence can be uncomfortable at first. Then it becomes relief.

At our higher membership tiers, retreat stays are included or discounted, and additional nights can often be booked at cost. We keep numbers low because calm does not scale well. If you come, the cottage is yours. No shared spaces. Just air and time.

9) How the community steers itself

Top-down wellness rarely sticks. Explore & Chill runs on shared choice:

• Polls decide which live sessions run next month, what goes into Wellness Boxes, whether a group wants to trade a physical item for a therapy session.

• Calendars make participation visible and possible. Events are bookable to keep numbers small enough for real conversation.

• Placement of geocaches is something members can propose and take responsibility for—learning what makes a good location and why respect for land and people matters.

• Feedback loops are built in. We listen. We adjust. The point isn’t to be clever; it’s to be useful.

We’ve seen that when people have a hand in shaping the space they occupy, they’re more likely to enter it—and keep returning.

10) The tiers, without the pitch

We offer progressive membership because needs and capacities differ:

• Clear Mist is a gentle beginning: shorter, ad-free videos and mindful reminders to exchange a scroll for a pause.

• Partly Cloudy deepens the practice: longer formats in 4K, alternate soundtracks, colour and monochrome editions, a richer library you can lean on any time of day.

• Settled Skies extends into live experiences and quarterly Wellness Boxes, with bookable streams like sunset walks, Tai Chi, creative workshops, live moon watches and deep-sky evenings; members start collecting stamps, voting on content, and occasionally meeting in person for wellness walks.

• Golden Horizons is immersive: monthly Wellness Boxes, guaranteed annual retreat access with loyalty nights added over time, priority booking, and a stronger voice in what we build next.

• Endless Summer is our lifetime tier, limited in number and designed for people who want to underpin the project for years to come—five retreat nights annually, permanent access, and a seat at least once a year in our Annual Board Meeting so that the people most invested in this work can help steer it.

• Trade Winds is for organisations who want to support the well-being of a whole team: seat bundles, curated playlists for offices, aggregate privacy-respecting usage reports, options for in-person wellness days, and access to retreats appropriate for leadership offsites or small team planning.

We don’t mention these to sell you up or down. We mention them so you can see yourself somewhere that fits now, knowing you can move when life does.

11) Stories of tiny, good changes

We have watched small acts matter:

A man who couldn’t sit still for ten minutes now makes tea in the evening and watches the same river film three nights a week. He says the quiet has stopped feeling like a threat.

A mother who thought she had to be “on” at all times scheduled her first live session and cried when she realised nothing fell apart while she was gone.

A carer who hadn’t left their town in a year found a geocache, got the stamp, and sent a photo of their muddy boots and grin.

These are not miracles. They are first steps. And they are enough to begin.

12) Boundaries, welcomes, and giving back

A few things we hold to:

• Accessibility: we design for phones and small tablets on purpose; you can watch with headphones in a kitchen and still feel part of something. We keep live streams simple enough for real internet connections. We schedule across times; we record where it makes sense.

• Privacy: reports to organisations (when applicable) are aggregate and anonymous; your business is yours.

• Membership shapes: most people join as individuals; couples and families are possible when the circumstances ask for them—priced to reflect actual costs (boxes, retreats, resources).

• Giving back: 5% of Patreon income goes quarterly to mental health and well-being charities voted for by members. Care should ripple.

We’re not a charity. We’re a community that finances the space it needs and shares a portion of its strength outward.

13) What this changes, and what it doesn’t

Explore & Chill won’t cure the conditions in your home. It will not make bureaucracy kinder. It won’t end the 3am phone calls or the appointments that take months to arrive.

What it can do is change the texture of your days. It can interrupt a spiral with a breath. It can put a walk on your calendar you might actually take. It can give you a reason to learn a stitch, to watch a cloud bank roll in, to lie under a dark sky and remember how old light is. It can put you in touch with people who understand that love is heavy and worth carrying—and that you don’t have to carry it the same way you always have.

If nothing changes, nothing changes. We built Explore & Chill so that something small could.

14) A letter to the person who is always “fine”

If you are reading this because someone sent it to you, it’s probably because they see you carrying a lot and don’t know how to help. If you found it yourself, perhaps you are quietly admitting you need something you haven’t asked for.

Here is what we want to say:

You do not have to become a different person to take care of yourself. You do not have to announce anything. You can start by watching something gentle for fifteen minutes instead of scrolling. You can book one live session and show up late. You can pick a geocache and go alone. You can put your phone in a box for an hour. You can ask the sky a question and let it answer with silence.

You have permission to start small. You have permission to stop when you are tired. You have permission to try again next week.

And if you come into this space, you will not be the only one trying. We built it because we needed it, and because we suspect you might, too.

15) The path ahead

We don’t know everything. We know enough to begin: to create a calm corner of the world, to lift a little weight, to replace some noise with presence. We will keep listening, keep adjusting, keep asking the same question our group leader asked us:

What have you done for yourself this week?

If the answer is nothing, let’s change that. Not with pressure. With invitation.

It begins with you. And it begins now.

Explore. Chill. And give your mind a moment to breathe.

Robin & Haslina September 2025