Heart of Darkness
a collective ritual response to these times
Join us for our Women’s Winter Womb Retreat. Come gather and journey into the body of soulful fertile territory, softening beneath the surface of things and into the depths.
In the Inuit language there is a word - qarrtsiluni - which means sitting together quietly in the dark waiting expectantly for something creative to happen. Expectant. Emergent. Not yet known.
We offer a collective gestation.
What is being called forth in the challenge of these times?
A collective Inscendence, a collective ritual to these times.
‘Inscendence’ as opposed to ‘transcendence.’ Whereas transcendence is our drive away from the world, away from our bodies, inscendence is the movement within, the inward movement. This ancient idea that there are times in our lives when, as individuals and as community we must descend into our instinctive wisdom in order to reinvent ourselves.
The challenges of our times are manyfold and demand emotional wisdom and composting - a process as individual as collective. Our preparation will shape itself along a weave that includes feeling wisdom flow, practices of befriending the dark in nature, of connecting with and making offerings to our ancestors, and nature-based embodiment practices.
After our preparation cycle we will enter our collective womb ritual. Fasting before gathering to sit in communion with the fertile darkness, a kind of this soul’s language.
Our seeds of light, we carry through the night. We enter a journey of melting into this season and into the gifts this has to offer in communion.
Our final day will tend to how our personal and collective lives might be enriched through our time together. We, as guides, will share ways, tries and tested, to help land this experience into your everyday lives.
The details of this retreat are yet to be finalised.
If you would like to be updated on this Women’s Winter Retreat please sign up to my newsletter or drop me an email.
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Five days and nights to deeply immerse with inner and outer nature.
After gently arriving and landing the on Wednesday, we will prepare ourselves on Thursday and Friday for the ritual on Saturday followed by a lush celebration and tending to integration and incorporation before leaving midday on Sunday.
We aim to imbue our time together with soft, slow, receptive, restorative, reflective and enriching, enlivening qualities.This retreat is especially for you if you feel the yearn for digesting and fertile integrating something around the topics of grief, fear, death/rebirth, change and want to connect to your unique seeds to bring back to community. All this within a like-hearted community together turning to tenderly face the global challenges of these uncertain times.
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Spending time in nature immersed in awe-inspiring landscapes re-humanises us. Nature supports rest, opening up to a bigger perspective, and reconnect us with what matters most.
At its core, my work is about relatedness - how we relate to ourselves, and each other with nature as guide.
It's about exploring both our inner nature and outer nature, developing ways to uncover the wisdom and ground needed for these times.
The binding thread of all my work aspires to assist people through our current global transitions and personal life transitions, to awaken them to their true nature, supporting them to find their medicine and to share their medicine, to protect and preserve the ongoing life systems of our communities and the natural world. This is about becoming mature humans and eventually elders for the health of the community in the largest sense of that word.
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All dates and logistics tio be confirmed by Summer.
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We will be in Sweden.
More details to come.
Rest assured it will be super cosy, we will be sleeping indoors, with a roaring fireplace and a sauna.
Painting Credit: Moon Falls a Thousand Times by Iranian artist, Naeemeh Naeemaei.YOUR GUIDES
I’m Natasha, also known by my Buddhist name Nagadipa which means light in the depths - this name was given to me as a mirror of my own essence and as life teaching. I guide individuals and groups through transformative nature-based immersions. With over twenty years of experience leading programmes I have been moved and honoured to witness countless stories; listening and attending to what has purchase on folks’ hearts.
The way I work weaves together nature-based rites of passage which support life transitions in nature, somatic practices that understand the wisdom of the body, myth-making and the guiding of sacred soul journeys for women. 
Maria do Carmo Stilwell, also known as Geeta, is a certified Forest Therapy Guide based in Portugal. She creates and facilitates restorative programmes that promote wellbeing and health through nature connection practices, clean eating and self-care. Her passion is to bring human beings back to nature and supporting the reconnection to the restorative potency of the natural world. Based on her own recovery journey, she creates a safe space for the nature connection and self-care journey to unfold. Over the past 20 years she has dedicated a great part of her time and resources to her own development and self-care journey. This life experience is the foundation for her work.