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I am astounded at the effect. I feel so much more free and inspired now. Thank you for making this opportunity available Carolyn Forrest, Birmingham

Wonderful, profound, brilliant, touching beyond words.

Tracey Gann, Oxford

 

I have completed some events that couldn’t be completed outside of me…the old sadnesses about goodbyes have gone Jake Whitby, Reading

 

This is a rare and unique opportunity -with so many benefits for those who attend -

Acceptance of death allows you to

· accept, digest, transform  and let go of the past

· be responsible for who and where you are now

This is a life changing workshop for almost everyone who participates. How do we let go and not give up? What are we willing to actually let go of? Do we trust when it is time to let go? What is our relationship with death? What is death? What does goodbye touch in us? What is the difference between life and living? Can we befriend death? How alive dare we be? How can we recognise the real significance of our relationships with the people close to us and with everything in existence? What is our relationship with darkness and with the shadow side of our own and others' psychological make up? How do we help others die and soothe them as they go? How can we be healers of planetary trauma when it occurs? How do we receive and embrace our own and others’ blocked, shadowy  energy in the body  so it is in the light and cannot hide. The fire set alight in this workshop consumes this smoky, contracting energy, and you can align with the source -the source of healing, presence and joy., the root of all your nourishment and to your original energetic state. We won’t say anything about the format except that this work involves pair work, circle work and individual journeying –and this is a journey EVERYONE should make!

My first thought was there is no way – it’s too frightening - and now I feel it’s the best thing I ever did. I'm glad I didn't believe my fears and doubts and stay away.

J. Mullen, Manchester

 

I realised this is IT, not a rehearsal for life. That I need to connect with others. That I really enjoy being in nature. That I love challenge. So many benefits That it's ok to trust and let go the more I do allow things to be, the easier life becomes. I loved so many of the structures and the sharing, the support. It takes away some of the fears surrounding death Oriana Wood, Gerrards Cross

 

Embracing shadow energies, darkness and death, experiencing and owning our mortality brings more life and freedom, more soul. This workshop allows you to embrace the shadows that humanity has struggled with for millennia, and make friends with the journey none of us can avoid making, death, in order to bring more consciousness into your living here now, easy to be and live all you are naturally meant to be.

By finding the courage to face the power and instinctive vitality of the shadows - as well as their falseness and unreality - you find the courage to overcome your fear of the death of the ego’s ideas and preferences. The unowned shadow is sustained by all the apparently rational justifications of whatever ego structure we have adopted in order to survive. Transparency, intimacy and the absence of guilt allows more friendship with our own being. Then, the pure life force of the shadows can be released in consciousness. This can become the fuel for that embodiment of creative and original soul purpose, gratitude and joy rather than turned inwards, denied and then a saboteur all that is potentially creative in life.

You will be in complete darkness for some of the course. Darkness and the ritualisation of death is an ancient shamanic tool for enhancing one’s experience of life as an ocean of energy and aliveness and for embracing deeper aspects of unconscious and states of realization of the highest truths. The stilling of the mind can happen and from this the often inaccessible hidden gifts of intuitive knowing and seeing of what is extraordinary. Darkness wakes up our awareness and appreciation for the light in being. Trauma is released and inner certainty and creativity arise, along with effortless flow and activity in existence. You can become a see-er in the darkness, a source of light in unconsciousness.’

I am not good, bad, sad, innocent, intelligent, frightened, trying, finding, caring, hateful, loving- 'I am' is enough. Thank you

Mark Jenkins, Worcs.

 

This is a sacred, safe space for this rite of passage.  The circle will hold you in your journey to integrate and enlighten more and more of who you are, releasing all the power it has had over us back into the light. With love this can transform your ordinary life and gift all those you encounter through the gifts you give yourself in this weekend. The circle cannot help but touch you and increase your wisdom and compassion and trust.

By undergoing this very real encounter with that great teacher, death and its mystery, you create the opportunity to bring trust, light, celebration and presence into all the moments you breather air on the planet and to live your life embodied soul. We live with intelligence rather than living from the conditioning of the past, from our genealogy, from the painful history of our history and from the misinformation of our present day ‘culture of information’.

The workshop can bring profound acceptance into your relationship with death, a humble gratitude for life and bring liberation from old, destructive behaviour patterns and attitudes, restoring your delight in life, your playfulness, aliveness and your capacity for joy. You will learn to love, and accept gracefully, with trust the periods of darkness, the dark nights of the soul, the absolute truth that the body will die and life will come to an end.

Joy faciliates your realisation in this workshop of a state of seeing through and beyond the forms of existence into love and truth. By learning to continually bring your attention back to this reality here, now –where there is no death, no birth either, you free yourself and your life from belief or identification with the stories, tension, conflict and unhappiness. Eventually this ordinary inner reality becomes home, a boundless presence which never dies and is never born and which means more than all life and existence can apparently bring you. Your life becomes an effortless activity, flowing with the challenges and the delights. Secret Garden gatherings offer you a greater trust in and realization of happy, healthy, and en-lightened living.   

Times
Thursday 2pm. – 6 30pm plus coffee breaks
Friday 45 am. - 7 pm with lunch and coffee breaks. and-8 - 9 30pm
Easter Saturday 8 30am-1pm
Please bring lunch to share for Fri plus soup bowl, plate and mug and all cutlery , and a possession of personal significance in your life, eg.a book, a ring, toy from childhood, a photograph, a gift. Whatever you choose to bring should have real personal value to you as well as your humour, kindness and courage Also notebook, pen, waterproof outdoor footwear, cushion and blanket to sit on outdoors, waterproof jacket (and trousers if wished), flask with hot drink, thick socks or slippers for indoors,           
Accommodation
Res or non-res options
Residential highly recommended on eve Fri 22nd and both nights if poss. We will send full info on booking or call us (informal b/b available). Catered Fri supper and Sat lunch  
(bring shared lunch for  Friday)
You are invited to participate in a very profound and deeply liberating shamanic healing journey. This is a beautiful and surprising exploration, without belief or theory, which you and anyone will find value in, whatever consciousness work you have or have not done before. No matter what our interests might be in this wordly existence, we all will face and probably have faced, letting go, death, dying, loss, maybe devastating loss, in many different ways.
This is a powerful journey and exploration for you if you fear loss or death, if you are finding it hard to let go, if you cannot find an acceptance of something about your life, if you have ever grieved or still grieve the loss of a loved one, if you feel your attachments to possessions, or dependencies on others, career or worldly security hold you back, if you are in transition and letting of an old phase of life, or if, even if life has ease at present, you are concerned about the future, and also if you are wishing to stay fully present with ill or dying relatives , fully engaged with your life if you are ill, or if you are a healer, shaman working with others or simply value consciousness.
Return to Source
 The Healing Power of Death, Darkness and The Shadowlands
A weekend retreat near Stroud, Gloucestershire
How to Book
2012 date to be confirmed

  Email us

 Office: 01452 813241

 Mobile: 07866 470238

I drank it up like I was thirsty for it.

Susan Sheddan, London

One of the best things I've ever done. Joy is incredibly brave, a genius, uncompromising but deep and loving too

Jill Langford, Bristol

Darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding

Lao Tsu

 

I have allowed death to become part of my life, rather than a a shadowy and feared presence

I appreciate so much more the fact of being alive, the sweetness of life with all its imperfections

Paula Kingston, Malvern

Loved the strength of the energetics coupled with the feeling of security

Graham Hobbs, Dursley

Booking Information starts here