The Way of the Body
A Personal and Collective Journey Emerging from an Embodied Perspective – 13th – 18th May 2019
Join us for six days living and exploring together as a community. Bathing in hot springs, savoring distant Corsican sunsets in Tuscany, a place and peoples truly versed in indulging the senses. The perfect location for this programme.
The Journey
What is embodiment and why does it matter?
Living in a culture that rewards high alert, problem solving states of mind, destinations, getting ahead and getting high, has profound consequences for us, for our relationships and for the planet. We have become profoundly distracted and addicted, and often purposefully numb out just to get through the day.
To be embodied suggests to ‘be at home within ourselves’, to be present and alive to our felt experience, both to the ‘hearts’ and the ‘guts’ of us. This way of being brings us fully alive enabling us to connect with our deeper most authentic voice and navigate from a place of centredness.
The Plan
Within this way of working there are qualities that express our values such as relationship, connection, relaxed embodiment, authenticity, presence, purpose and balance.
You will come away with an experiential understanding of the following:
– How to regulate and encourage healthy parasympathetic nervous system responses
– Asking and hearing what your body is calling for
– Refining our ability for deep listening
– Skillfully working with our emotional body
Some of the activities will include:
– Play-fighting as an active relaxed awareness practice
– Embodied voice and voice as medicine
– Boundary practices as a path to staying in our integrity
– Befriending and valuing down-time. The value of resting, resourcing and resilience.
At the heart of the programme lies an invitation to the ‘solo’ – a 24 hour solitary immersion into deep nature. A practice inspired by the traditional Vision Quest and practiced for centuries by our ancestors and peoples throughout time. When we are disembodied, we lose contact with our bodies and when we lose contact with our bodies we lose contact with our soulfulness. Some people might choose a vipassana retreat and others plant medicine. The ‘solo immersion’ here offers a different path that also leads to new ways of perceiving and connecting to our soul stories.
Guides
Natasha Lythgoe
Natasha is a wilderness guide, facilitator and mentor dedicated to soulful generative change. Weaving together themes of empowerment and life transitions, reconnection to Nature, mythic journeys and the wisdom of our indigenous cultures, she supports others to find and express their meaning and purpose, and live their most authentic lives.
Natasha’s work is richly informed by the work of Joseph Campbell, mythic contexts and the body. She has trained with the West Country School of Myth, tended to shadow through her time at River of Soul, began her wilderness guide training at Schumacher College and continued with School of Lost Borders, Animas Valley Institute and Annie Bloom.
Natasha has been guiding groups and individuals in arts/mindfulness since 2004 and designing and delivering natured based initiatory experiences since 2013.
Natasha is a member of the Wilderness Guides Council, a Buddhist nun, an accredited mindfulness teacher, has a PGCE and a Masters in Fine Arts and is training this year with Stephen Gilligan in generative therapies. An authentic, playful guide with a courageous open heart she has an affinity with the rocks and whales.
Adrian Kowal
Adrian is a wilderness guide, adventurer and grower of movements. Through his long and deep interest in wellbeing and inquiry, he blends together practices for more balanced living, contemplative tools for self-knowledge and an intimate playful way of experiencing our inner and outer landscapes.
Adrian has been catalyzed by his guide training with John P. Milton and draws on his exposure to hundreds of wellbeing practioners through his wellbeing centre – Evolve in a multitude of healing and thriving modalities. He has been leading Men’s Groups for many years and is passionate about creating safe containers in the groups that he leads to enable a more intimate level of sharing.
What really gets Adrian juiced up is exploring remote rivers, introducing the joys of wild camping to others, ‘up-side-down’ fires and time alone in the wilderness.
Dates
May 13th to 18th, 2019.
Travel
The programme will take place in a mountainous remote area of Tuscany, Italy. The nearest transport hub is Pisa, from which trains run to the city of Grosseto. Grosseto is where you will be picked up and dropped off.
Price
The price is £695 including guiding, food and local transportation from Grosseto.
Early Bird price is £595 for registrations before 31st January 2019.
Bursaries: £495*
*We are able to offer two reduced price bursary places on this retreat. To apply, please email us at [email protected] with a short description of who you are and why you would like to come and be part of the journey.
Booking
To book please register your details and follow the booking instructions here. If you have any questions please email [email protected] who will be happy to help.