The Lynx and The Solstice Sun
FULLY BOOKED
Shamanic weekend retreat in the Yorkshire Dales
June 21st - 23rd 2019
The Lynx and The Solstice Sun
Shamanic weekend retreat in the Yorkshire Dales
21st - 23rd June 2019
Summer Solstice Lower Winskill Retreat
We are living in two worlds right now, and it is not without its consequences.
Sometimes we can feel hopeless in our struggles, as the modern day way of life gets faster and faster, crazier and crazier. Amongst all of this it can be easy to feel down trodden, controlled, and like you don’t have many choices available to you.
It can be easy to feel that there is a part of you that hasn’t got a voice, a part of you that is heard and that isn’t valued.
When we are not standing in our power and we are only part here it can be easy to feel helpless. It can feel like we have little control over wider things which impact on us.
What if we told you there is another way?
That there is a second world running right along side this one?
A world where you know your worth, and where you are clear on your purpose. A world where your voice is powerful and where you have power. What if we told you that it is simply a case of choosing when you are going to step into this other world?
These rapidly changing times we have been born into call for us to be fully here, to be fully present and fully in our power.
Awakening Your Animal Power
A Homecoming
Something happens deep within us when we are in nature. When we still ourselves amongst the beauty we can hear ourselves more clearly. We can come home.
The Wisdom of The Land
Spending time connecting with ancient places is so powerful. It gives us insights which can have a profound impact on our lives. It's an incredible and easy way to access universal wisdom.
A Creative Practice
Experience a regular creative practice that will lead you to a more spacious life, a deep connection with y our true self and a real sense of achievement.
An Iconic Location
The Yorkshire Dales is one of our national treasures. Farmer Tom has spent decades nurturing the wildflower meadows. The nearby waterfall in one of Britain's top ten for beauty.
Set Your Intentions
Without a clear intention we don’t know where we will be heading, so by deciding this and putting it out there in ceremony, we give ourselves the best chance of realising our dreams.
Embracing Shamanic Tools
Working with shamanic journeying, deep nature connection and powerful animals we will access life-changing tools that our ancestors used for guidance and healing.
Kindling the Flame of Your Life
There is an ancient practice of drawing on the power of animals. It has been practiced by the very first humans and recorded in rock art, and the practice was continued in our lands right up to the onset of Christianity. Still practiced by indigenous people throughout the world it is available for us to reclaim once more.
This workshop is about preparing to step from one world into another, and preparing to embrace the real world.
We will draw on the power of animals to help us do this.
Just as the lynx moves between the worlds, so can you. At this special time when the lynx is being reintroduced back onto our island, you can bring its power back into you. This landscape holds a special connection with the lynx, being one of the last places it roamed and the very reason why it is possible to come back. This landscape will hold you as you find your power and fully return too.
On this workshop we’ll work with the oldest spiritual practice of drawing on the power of animals. We will roam the landscape with the wild beasts of this land. We will work under the power of the Solstice sun as it sits in its highest point in the sky.
Come and share a soulful experience in the Yorkshire Dales, one of our most iconic landscapes in the British Isles, to strengthen your power.
Find sanctuary with us and let the wildflower meadows hold you in their gentle grasp.
A Little Bit about Us.
Between us we, Nicola and Jason, have trodden this path for many decades working to release the invisible shackles given to us by culture and unleashing our inner wild.
We have moved from being in stagnant and unfulfilling work to fully embracing our creativity and discovering the true depths of ourselves and the joy that this can bring us.
Because of this we are excited and passionate about working with and helping others master their own wild potential.
We are delighted to be able to bring to you this unique experience in the heart of one of the beautiful Yorkshire Dales, working at the height of summer close to the Solstice, and linking in with our ancient ancestors into a time when our wild selves were interwoven with the wild Earth.
Why not join us and strengthen your power?
Find your voice and know your worth, leading to a deep connection to your true self and greater freedom and creativity.
Yes, it will mean investing a little of your time and money and take yourself away from your day-to-day responsibilities. It may even feel over indulgent, and raise a conflict inside you about whether you can justify the outlay.
But what is clear is that something needs to change, and there is no time like the present to reach out and get a little help to do so. Once you grow your inner power, your willpower strengthens, and you will find a renewed momentum to drive you forward to achieve your dreams.
Maybe you are thinking that now we are civilised we no longer need to draw on the power on animals to live our lives any more. Yet deep in us we have a calling to rekindle the flame and claim back the old ways which have been taken from us; practices that makes us more human, and more in balance with the Earth and ourselves.
Our ancestors sought the power from certain animals, and they were brilliant at surviving. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here now.
So lets go and do as they once did, and in the process become our true powerful selves.
To make the retreat even more accessible we have a payment plan, so you can spread the cost over several months.
What the Workshop Entails?
You will spend the weekend immersed in nature in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales National Park with its limestone pavements, rocky outcrops and stunning views.
We are nestled in an cosy farm, with old oak beamed barns and meadows lined with drystone walls. We have a limited number of beds in the farmhouse and the rest of us will be camping in a sheltered field overlooking one of the highest peak of the Yorkshire Dales, Pen y Ghent.
Friday evening
On the Friday evening once you arrive there will be time to settle in. We will enjoy tea together and then settle down by the campfire, introduce ourselves and the programme for the weekend will be explained.
We will then share the story of the Lynx and why it holds such a significance place here in this landscape.
Saturday
On the Saturday we will spend the morning working with ancient animal bones, the kind that you usually would only see behind glass in a museum.
Here you will be able to choose an animal bone to work with for the weekend. We will guide you on a shamanic journey so that you can experience the ancient practice of shape shifting, and experience what it is like being in the skin of that animal.
In the afternoon we will move onto working with another ancient shamanic technique mask making, before spending time out in the wild flower meadows seeing the landscape through different eyes.
Saturday evening
On the Saturday evening we will share stories around the campfire, poems and writings, songs and good fun. Then, if you would like to you can sleep under the stars, just as our ancestors would have done.
Sunday
On the Sunday we will roam the land as wild animals. We will visit a beautiful waterfall where you can take a wild swim if you would like to.
Then in the afternoon we will begin to draw the weekend to a close, with some alone time out in the meadows once more, before taking part in a fire ritual to conclude our time together.
Each morning
We will begin our day by sharing our dreams and flexing our creative muscles with a little poetry or other creative expression.
There will be plenty of space to explore the immediate area which includes acres of wild flower meadows, and a real gem of a waterfall where you have the option to enjoy the thrill of wild swimming.
You will learn or deepen further into ancient shamanic techniques of British Shamanism, including shamanic journeying, shape shifting, mask making, elemental magic, ceremony and nature connection.
What previous workshop participants have said...
the opportunity to hold stone-age artifacts...
"The opportunity to hold the stone-age artifacts and journey with them was what initially drew me to the weekend, along with the location. I loved the idea of the whole package - the option to camp out, the fire and the waterfall.
The whole weekend was really well organised, an opportunity to push boundaries, and it opened my eyes to new things and experiences."
I thoroughly enjoyed it...
"The experience gave me a greater grounding in nature, a feeling of nurture and friendship."
the most important thing was the new friendships...
"The main thing that I took away was a renewed and stronger belief that things are changing and there are people out there who share similar visions of what life could be like for everyone.
I also took a lot of new information which gave me the initiative to try new things and investigate different areas which I could employ to improve my life.
I think the most important thing was the new friendships and the immense amount of love and positive energy which is always abound at every event which you hold."
I enjoyed being in like-minded company...
"Highlights were connecting to the ancient animal bones and swimming in the waterfall.
I enjoyed being in like-minded and supportive company in a beautiful location"
Learning from the old ones.
Our civilized world has all but stamped out anything wild and continues to do so. In a society were the wild is far from honoured, we will be wise to link back into a time where it was celebrated.
This weekend we get a rare opportunity to hold the very bones belonging to the wild animals that roamed our land.
The bear, hyena, wolf and lynx.
This magical link back into a time held within our fingertips, through shamanic journeying we can meet the beasts themselves and those who lived amongst them.
Under the gaze of the Solstice sun we can draw on their power, just as our distant ancestors did for tens of thousands of years.
Learning in community.
We learn so much in community. It can be hard to find that community in a world where people who think and feel completely differently to us surround us every day.
The Way of the Buzzard is a place where we can gather. Where those people who don’t fit in to a world they don’t understand congregate, because they were born to create a different one. And where better to do this than around the campfire.
In the evenings we will warm our bodies and our hearts next to the soft orange glow of hot embers and flickering flames. We will share stories, poems, sorrows and joys and awaken the deep bone memory of what community is really about.
Coming home to Nature.
Our stiffness is softening as we take the winding road back to nature. We follow the gentle contours, noticing more and more the magic around us.
Only three generations ago we knew no flower meadows or autumn woodlands, we had never seen a waterfall, or walked barefoot on a beach feeling the sand between our toes.
The sound of the ocean was unknown to us, as was the call of the cuckoo announcing spring. We hadn’t seen a sunset over the snowy mountain top, or looked into the pond at our own reflection.
All we knew were factory chimneys, air thick with smoke, the constant noise of the industrial unmaking of ourselves.
Now we have choices and freedom if only we reach out and take hold. Now it is our time to become nature once again.
Book Your Place Now
The full weekend workshop which runs from 5pm on Friday 21st June to 5pm on Sunday 23rd of June is just £260 per person.
The price includes to following:
- A place to pitch your tent in our community camping meadow
- Your breakfast and evening meals
- All tuition over the weekend to reconnect with your inner wild
- Access to over 100 acres of private wild flower meadows
When Geometric Diagrams and Digits
When geometric diagrams and digits
Are no longer the keys to living things,
When people who go about singing or kissing,
Know deeper things than the great scholars,
When society is returned once more
To unimprisoned life, and to the universe,
And when light and darkness mate.
Once more and make something entirely transparent,
And people see in poems and fairy tales
The true history of the the world,
Then our entire twisted nature will turn
And run when a single secret word is spoken.
Poem by NOVALIS in 1800
Translated by Robert Bly
“We have lost our understanding of place of awe and mystery in adult life. We have banished animals from our minds, as though they were not capable of helping us with our predicaments.
We will never find a way back to our sacred roots until as Lopex terms it: “we find a way to look the caribou, the salmon, the lynx and the white-throated sparrow in the face, without deceit, with no plan of betrayal”.
Our loss of contact with them leaves us mysteriously bereaved. If we could re-establish a degree of connection, identification, respect and even a sense of the sacred presence of animals, I think we would feel revivified both individually and as a species”
Brian Bates, author of The Wisdom of the Wyrd.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the farmhouse accommodation like?
What facilities are available?
What about meals?
What do I need to bring with me for the weekend?
Do I need any shamanic experience?
What if it rains?
If you would like any point clarifying, or have any questions you'd like answered please don't hesitate to get in touch. Email us at jason@thewayofthebuzzard.co.uk
Copyright 2018, The Way of The Buzzard