WE ARE NOW BOOKING FOR THE FINAL SESSION OF THIS EXTRAORDINARY 3-PART SERIES.
RECORDINGS OF THE FIRST 2 SESSIONS ARE AVAILABLE WHEN YOU NOW BOOK FOR ALL THREE.
WE ARE VERY EXCITED TO BE WELCOMING MARK AND HAYLEY IN PERSON TO THE CENTRE IN LONDON. HAYLEY WILL GIVE A SPECIAL PERFORMANCE NOT TO BE MISSED. OF COURSE THE SESSION WILL ALSO BE LIVE STREAMED TO THOSE ONLINE.
Homing is a three-part series of half-day retreats taking place February to May 2022. Each retreat explores “homing” as a way to support your journey into the deep gift of who you are. The first explores this as “anchoring,” the second through “flowing” and the third in terms of “belonging.” Each explores how we “home” in our lives by drawing upon literature, folklore and history, practicing meditation, engaging poetry, and witnessing dance. Together we will listen, reflect, be guided in meditation and inspired by poetry and dance, joining to discover the wisdom we carry in our own lives.
I: “Homing as Anchoring” (Saturday 5 Feb. 2022. Online only)
In this first retreat, we’ll explore what it means to “anchor” our lives as a way of homing, knowing that this experience might be particularly close to us after recent periods of staying in place. What wisdom have you gleaned through this pandemic? Have you found a grounding in solitude? The witness of poems will carry us deep into the homing journey, with words that “ripen in the silence,” as the poet Rilke put it. We’ll explore the experience of ‘anchoring’ in spiritual traditions, looking at the rites and lives of medieval anchoresses like Julian of Norwich. We’ll turn to Alistair McIntosh’s notion of “digging where we stand”, witnessing dance as a means of exploring—even as observers—what it means that our bodies anchor us and ground our very lives, and move our own bodies in simple ways that might help us own them as our anchors.
II: “Homing as Flowing” (Saturday 9 April, 2022. Online only )
In this second retreat, we will build on the experience of “anchoring,” exploring the experience of “flow” as a means of living into what Rilke called “the Open.” Guided again by contemporary poems and ancient legends, we’ll draw on the energies surging through our lives that connect us with one another and the cosmos itself. We’ll experiment with our breathing as the primal “flowing” we experience in our bodies, discovering breath as “an invisible poem” (Rilke). We’ll also practice simple, meditative movements that engage the energies of our “deep mind” (Maggie Ross). This wisdom of this day draws on Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ notion of the “sealskin” legend, exploring how to allow our souls to lead us—beyond our fears and the expectations of others—into an inner freedom that “flows” through our whole lives. Again, we’ll watch dance to inspire us into flowing.
III. “Homing as Belonging” (Saturday 14 May, 2022 at The Meditatio Centre and online)
The final retreat explores what it means to draw on the grounding that opens us to experience the energies of “flowing” towards belonging in our bodies, in our lives, in the world and with others. Again we’ll draw on literature and legend, dance and movement, song and silence, as means of activating our sense of what it means that we “be/long” and how this experience connects us in our distinctive individuality to the larger web of life. The final “movement” of this three-part retreat will turn to the magnificent “Ninth” of Rilke’s “Duino Elegies,” offering an invitation to live into this “belonging” as a spiritual/corporeal journey. We’ll return to Clarissa Pinkola Estes and her approach to the journey of the exile, and Suzanne Simard and her profound discoveries of the ‘wood-wide web’ and discovery of ‘mother trees.’
While these three retreats are interrelated, each stands on its own; you can come to one or all three. If you can’t make one and you would like to experience it, you can book a recording
