Kenyans have always known that a “kisima” is more than a place to draw water. A well is a gathering place—a source of life, news, and connection within a community. A well is also a place to replenish ourselves. When a group of coastal creators borrowed that word for a new kind of gathering—part festival, part retreat, part civic experiment—they weren’t being poetic so much as precise. Kisima would be a well for wellbeing, focused on community.
Kisima would be centred in a baobab forest near Kilifi, would open its arms to families and elders and the hard-working healers who hold Kenyan communities together, and it would embody wellness through local rather than imported traditions, making the festival relevant to Kenyans from all walks of life.
This October 9–12, the baobab forest of Kilifi comes alive once again with the Kisima Festival 2025, under the theme of Unity: One Rhythm, Many Voices. The festival has grown, but unlike global wellness retreats that lean towards exclusivity, Kisima keeps its arms wide open. It is committed to its “soul mission”: to make wellness relevant and accessible to Kenyans, breaking taboos around mental health and grounding healing in traditions already familiar to the community.
The first edition of Kisima launched on Mashujaa Day weekend in 2021, using a national holiday for heroes to launch a festival proposing a quieter, personal and communal heroism. The hosts called it “a celebration of mind, body and soul,” and recruited Kenyan and East African practitioners to lead sessions. It brought breathwork and capoeira, ancestral ceremony and children’s theatre to the space under the giant trees at Beneath the Baobabs.
Kisima 2021 was small, but it set the blueprint for what Kisima is today: four days; multiple stages; a huge kids’ area, making the festival family-centric; and programming built around five elements that move you from conversation (Ignite) to healing (Inspire), from land (Ground), through movement (Flow), to the creative and the cosmic (Ether).
The present tense finds Kisima widening its circle, retaining its five-element spine and also new strands offering indigenous economics and a lineup that stretches from horse-assisted therapy to kaya elders’ ceremony and live music showcasing a host of Kenyan musical talent. Traditional music and drumming ceremonies will be held by Kilifi’s talented local community and there’s a lineup of fantastic contemporary musicians who will come from across Kenya for epic musical experiences, including: Nazizi, Lavosti, Zaituni, Keynotey, Chris Barr, Ndibo and Boywaley 4.
Wellness, Made Kenyan
Kisima remains a Kenyan project first: local practitioners up front, family-focused by design, free camping on site, and plenty of space for the kids. Kisima is part music and movement, part indigenous knowledge lab, and part civic classroom, all with support systems set up, such as psychologists who offer integration sessions and podcasts exploring topics like “What is Wellness”.
Kisima is not about escape. It’s about presence—about learning how to live well with what we have and where we are. Workshops on gut health, grief, addiction recovery, conscious business, climate adaptation, and indigenous economics highlight that wellbeing is also about how communities survive and thrive together.
Kisima actively opposes wellness packaged as imported luxury. It is rooted in the soil of the coast and nourished by indigenous knowledge. The programme honors Mijikenda traditions, with healing ceremonies, cleansing rituals, and the Tree of Life space where elders share wisdom. These practices sit side by side with yoga, aerial silks, sound healing, and even horse-assisted therapy, creating a dialogue between ancient and contemporary approaches to care.
The Mijikenda’s lutsaga music and rituals and communal drumming sessions are central to the festival’s ethos, reminding participants that wellness something that has been embedded in Kenyan communities for aeons. In teaching practices like mweria and dhome—indigenous economic systems based on reciprocity—the festival stretches the very definition of wellbeing to include how communities support one another.
Families at the Heart
Another element that makes Kisima special is its focus on merging wellness with family. While parents explore workshops on grief, addiction recovery, or consciousness, children have their own expansive programme: aerial silks, theatre, eco-crafts, storytelling, yoga, and endless play in paddling pools and climbing the baobabs.
The Kids’ Baraza Hub was not designed as childcare, but as a space that integrates children into the wellness world, introducing them to emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and the joy of movement through play therapy, theatre games, music, and honey-making workshops. On Saturday, kids can even join in horse play at the “Horse Forest,” a unique blending of nature, animals, and self-discovery.
The baobab forest allows Kisima to be social and contemplative at once; a child could learn aerial silks while a grandmother listens to Mijikenda elders, and both could meet later at the fire. The name—“well”—keeps asserting itself, not only as metaphor but as method: a place for replenishment that also remembers its neighbors must drink.
That last promise – share the well – manifests into a community arm. Twenty-five percent of tickets are distributed through scholarships via partnerships with NGOs, ensuring that the “well” remains open to all. Outreach programmes extend workshops beyond the festival, reminding us that wellness should be a public good, not a private luxury.
The festival grounds themselves, Beneath the Baobabs, reflect this ethos: 50 acres of eco-conscious design with water systems, tree-planting, and open-air stages.
More Than Mind, Body & Soul
The schedule for 2025 is packed and eclectic. There are aerial yoga flows, gut health talks, breathwork journeys, cacao ceremonies, and nighttime ecstatic dance. Panels address climate adaptation, indigenous economics, and conscious business. Musical evenings feature drumming circles, kalimba sessions, capoeira rhythms, and intercultural performances, blurring the line between healing and celebration.
But beneath the variety lies a simple thesis: wellness is communal. It lives in conversations around the fire, in shared meals beneath the trees, and in the courage to address mental health openly. Kisima makes space for grief circles and addiction recovery panels alongside children’s theatre and Mijikenda rituals—because real life, in all its difficulty and joy, belongs at the well.
The Soul Mission
In a country where mental health still carries stigma, Kisima stands as a counterpoint: a gathering that normalizes healing, creativity, and community care. Its mission is not escapism but integration—showing that wellness can belong to everyday Kenyan lives, to families, to workers, to elders, to children.
Most wellness festivals around the world veer towards curated escapism; Kisima reads like an invitation to show up with your real life—children, questions, budget and all —and be part of the work.
Kisima Festival runs 9 – 12 October, 2025 at Beneath the Baobobs, Kilifi. Find the full programme, TICKETS and all the FAQs on https://beneaththebaobabs.com/kisima/
In case you haven’t had enough after Kisima Festival, you can continue your inner journey with Kisima Retreats – Kisima is offering the UHAI :Nature Immersion Retreat 17 – 20 October.
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