Emerging at Equinox

I've been delving back into my Masters research about outdoor practitioners relationship with place, and listening again to my body. So this workshop is here and is for you to come and strengthen your relationship with nature/land/place. Because really we are all, already, connected.  Come,  make community and explore the emerging energy of this spring equinox.

Everything is shifting, the poly-crisis is daunting, and my sense is that we need and want stronger connections with the web-of-life, the land, the source or whatever we want to call it. Some people call this nature-connection, and in fact I do too when I do not have enough of a chance to explain the depth of what matters. Language is a barrier to this development of relationship, and my reading and research leads to the understanding that the English language actually perpetuates the separation that we experience from the source of life.  So how do we come through that, and re-ignite or reawaken what I believe is our innate, instinctual sense of wholeness, connection and belonging?  

This afternoon workshop is a chance to play with this. Let’s experiment and see what gets us there. An opportunity to find/connect with/be-come that part of yourself that knows you are part of the web-of-life. Being in a place that wants us to experience that, to know we are part, is the first step. I’ve experienced that feeling so many times at Young Wood - a doorway that is open and ready for us to be together.

​We will co-create this with the land. What happens will emerge, be emergent, rather than imposed, pre-planned.  I imagine we will walk together or alone, look and listen, use our bodies to check-in with what we ‘hear’ and ‘see’. We will work with the community we create together in this afternoon as a container, a place to gather our stories together and feel into what we are being asked, told, offered. And then allow that to take us somewhere, bring us a sense of direction  - or stillness - as the balance of the Equinox energies plays out.

Location : Young Wood Staple Fitzpaine, Nr Taunton
Date: Saturday 22nd March 2024
Arrive for 2pm finish by 6pm
Fee: £30 - £45 ​

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Decay and Decomposition, Young Wood, Saturday November 2nd 2024

​A Threshold into the Dark
​This new workshop grew directly from listening with the land. In a ceremony in late summer I felt the beech and oak around me open my mind to a wider consciousness that I had not felt before, somewhere high up in the tops of the trees. At the same time, below me I heard of decay. It felt so overlooked, not noticed or loved in the same way as growth and bud. 

The autumn was fully present, and the dark times were just ahead. Samhain marks this threshold into a new period.  This was a time to gather in the bounty and gifts of what the year had brought. We counted blessings of the warmth in our bones, collected the ripe berries in both literal and figurative sense, where we could and were grateful. Being able to be fully in the dark times of the year and of our lives, to thrive there, is a sign of a healthy being. How do we cross that threshold, notice what shift is needed and find our own place with it? 
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In this half-day workshop we:

• Came together in a circle, either under the trees, in the roundhouse or in the woodland cabin.
• Learn about the West Shield of human nature, from the School of Lost Borders teachings, and other patterns that can help us. 
• Share our stories, what is alive in us at this time, in relation to decay, decomposition and death.
• Cross a threshold and take time alone in the forest, to listen, see, hear, smell, feel what is offered from the non-human world.

• Learn from direct experience with the land, sky and other beings.
• Build the 'muscle' that helps us break free from a feeling of separation from nature.
• ​Be facilitated with kindness and honesty.
• Be with the dark.​