SACRUM - SACRED

TIME - TEMPLE

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This residency will look at our existence in space and time - that we are sacred matter moving through the temple of time. 

With a focus on the root chakra and our primal experience of our connection with to earth - we will look at the relationship between matter, light and dark and how their very existence are completely dependant on the other. The processes will embody the cyclical dance of our mother earth, of birth, life, death and transformation - and how we move  within the same continuous cycle, forming a mirror image of the greater circulating body of the universe. 

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This nomadic residency will combine artistic, spiritual and ecological practices to unify processes of ‘healing’ and ‘creativity’. Considering that there is a close relation between ‘the artist’ and ‘the healer’, we will rekindle this important relationship to processes of 'progress’.  We will explore  how we can open our intimate experience as individual creators, to become shared vessels of creative potential. How art practice and making with our hands can inform and initiate a healing of ourselves the community and further afield. How by realising we form the parts that constructs the 'collective' body - we can call in a new type of active participation to inform methods of holistic change. 

 

Each day will bring together our 4 lands methods, combining yogic practices of breath work and posture, with movement, sound work dance and ritual. These energetic practices will lead into individual and collective making, ceremony, performative land walks and home making. Through working with these “source gestures” we will delve into the essence of myth, facilitating a deep re-thinking of the stories we tell about home, climate and society. The gathering will also include the first process of making a very special altar piece in the land, using local clay and ecological building methods. 

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The Old doors and The Golden Horn will create the energetic foundation for the seasonal journey of The Circle. Working closely with the element of earth to explore ways of entering the Earth Womb as a cauldron of deep messages to be harvested. This gathering will embark on a sacred journey of grounding through our primal selves, our animal spirits and the ancient wisdom we carry within our hands. In response to the climate in crisis, this gathering will emphasise that 'we are the climate' by returning to a deep tuning of our bodies as the most advanced technology which holds radical answers lingering within our cellular memory. 

 

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Location

We will be hosted by Mount of Oaks a wonderful permaculture community nestled within the Gardunha Mountains. Mount of Oaks is a beautiful place of convergence, micro-climate and refuge, within the district of Fundao, meaning Deep Place, The land, spaces and holding of Mount of Oaks is deeply special, enabling the work we will do together.

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Accommodation

We will camp in a simple way in shared bell tents close to nature.

This is very much part of the experience of returning to and becoming

ensconced in the land. There are lovely compost toilets,

wood and solar showers.

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“So much gratitude for the circle and the space you created for such a beautiful, expansive and humbling journey. Rediscovering the ancient and elemental forces of the creative process felt like remembering part of me long lost… feeling like our time birthed a story in me that grows day by day from collective roots. Still feeling the presence of the circle and our dance and voice still gentle sings through my being. Thank you for bring us together and for sharing so much.. would love to join on future journeys!”
-Nomadic residency participant
 

“It was such a multi-sensory and multi-layered experience that I am finding it hard to put words around it. Just a few of the sensations – the soft light of the early morning sun, incense, bells, soles on the earth clay floor, hot soil, red paint on feet, the last apricots and luscious figs, our chanting, wild flowers, music, tears, sitting on the sticks and dry leaves of the forest, holding new hands, cool water, red thread, olive oil, fresh herbs, wet felt against wet hands, unfurling paper, speaking, laughing, my baby turning in my belly, tiredness… The whole experience was so suffused with these sensations, an overwhelming richness in every moment. It could be enough just to be still to taste it all. And overlaid on the sensations, a richness of emotional connection, both within and with others. You brought us together as a group so skillfully, so gracefully, so powerfully. I felt a wonderful safety in the holding space you created. I constantly felt in the presence of your generosity – the ceremonies you created for us, the material and objects you brought, the practices you shared with us, the structure you suggested. I can’t think of anything I would not have wanted to experience, in order to create that possible space. I could see the retreat as a seed of something that then continues to grow in exchange with others. Finally, I felt an enormous privilege being among the group as the one’with child’ and also one of the older presences. It helped me to see where I have come in my own journey, and to feel the next steps emerging in front of me. Overall it was a wonderfully rich, grounding and loving time, and I came back carrying a lot of peace and happiness.Thank you.”
-Nomadic residency participant

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