BEWILDER
You were made by earth, from earth, for earth
Find out what you are here to be .
Conventional knowledge is death to our souls and it is not really ours...we must become ignorant to what we have been taught and become, instead, bewildered.
Rumi
BELL SELKIE LOVELOCK
Nature-based Human Development Mentor
I have been rooting into Cymru for 27 years, rewilding alongside 40 acres of ex-chemical dairy land in a multi-species co-creation called Ddaear Ydym Ni ! We are Earth !
Courting the edge where the worlds meet, I resecrate (restore to sacredness those who have been desecrated) land, people, rivers, trees , practices of living, language... Resecrating is the part of a new indigeny and I've been weaving together hearth and soul for 25 years, with much practical experience of creating strong physical, emotional and cultural " baskets" in which folks can unravel in order to tend to and heal and / or make sacred the wounding that is within them and around them.
My work with individuals and groups, Bewilder, is inspired by Bill Plotkin and Animas Valley Institute with whom I'm a member of the Animas Guides Guild as a Wild Mind guide and a trainer for the Wild Mind training program. I also co-conspire with Starter Culture , an initiative dedicated to supporting inner-led change in service of outer ecological and social change. I also lean into 20 years experience of counselling and life coaching, of home-educating six children, co-founding and living in housing co-operatives and an organic farm co-operative, of bee-keeping and growing food, non-violent direct activism for earth, and the casting of wordspells as a poet/writer.
​
​
links:
​
​
​
​
​
ONE-TO-ONE MENTORING
Deepen into your belonging and discover what earth made you to be ...connect to yourself, other people and the other than human world around you... working with a nature as mirror and guide
Sessions either in person or online/telephone. Wild Mind guide and trainer with Animas Valley Institute , was an accredited member of BACP and am an accredited NCFE Lifecoach.
​
GROUP OFFERINGS
These range from day-long immersions and nature connection circles (in person or online) to collaborations with others such as vision quests and intensive programmes as well as hosting Animas Valley Institute programmes in UK.
​​
I'm currently co-creating new programs with new collaborators including a movement based Wild mind exploration and an advance Wild Mind Intensive for Animas Valley Institute and "Tending the Wild Hearth" .Also I will be contributing to Animas programs in Romania and Bulgaria in the summer months - news of which I will share through my occasional postings to subscribers...so do sign up if you'd like the fresh details.
​
Dreaming the World to Come - online program
Jan 23rd, 30th, Feb 6th, 13th 2025 6.30-8.30pm GMT
What if we are part of Earth’s dreaming; past, present and future? What if our gift of being human in these times is to offer our personal and collective deep imagination to Earth’s vision? Instead of knowing what will come and making plans and resolutions for the new year, we invite you to risk following your heart into the depths of the questions:
​
What is Earth up to in and through these times of crises and collapse?
How might we dream with Earth, the world to come?
What is a dream? There is the dream that visits us at night or in a sacred vision, and the dream that is our imagination expressed through our creativity. And there is the dreaming, the way humans are interwoven with life through space and time, in our own human ancestries and also other-than-human and place ancestries. We could say that Earth is dreaming us; through us and as us. We are part of and within Earth’s dreaming, which includes all creatures, and that our dreams arise directly from the dreaming of Earth. Dreams are like love letters from Life and Earth to our Souls that we might overhear.
As we re-member ourselves as part of Earth’s body and the dreaming we call Life, we awaken to the potential in our dreams. As we begin to remember our own dreams by deepening into the world of the dream and the emotions and aliveness within them, we let them guide us, rather than interpreting them. Bringing a dream from the night world into the day world, we dream into living a soulcentric life. This way of being in the world shifts the consciousness of our waking world into a deeper, more mysterious and soulful way of being. This changes the choices we make and the ways we are in relationship with our web of relationships across all strands- self, other human, wild others and unseen ones. When this happens, we can begin to listen to Earth's dreaming and center the wild voices of our world and our souls; rather than the feeding the consumerist habits of numbing and distraction, we feed Life and the Holy Wild.
We begin in the darker part of the seasonal year, with night dreams and as we circle towards the spring we will look at the ways Earth’s dream can be courted and amplified using nature-based Tarot and other divination practices. We will explore how we remember dreams, seed dreams and let the dream “work us” (rather than working on a dream). We will learn how to listen and understand their messages, both personally and collectively and how might we be guided in these times by the deep time/the dream time. And over the weeks each of us will open to experiencing how each of us uniquely might co-create the dream of this world with Earth.
Practices will include:
​
-
Dream council
-
Dream work- telling the dream, movement, expressive arts etc.;
-
Seeding dreams to invite conversation with Soul and Mystery;
-
Co-dreaming with Earth in these times of collapse;
-
Letting ourselves be guided by Earth;
-
Shared dreaming with the other participants;
-
Working with nature-based Tarot;
-
Inviting Earth to write through us;
-
Dream deep imagination journeys and more...
​
for more info and to book, follow link below:
Dreaming The World To Come - Starter Culture
​​​​​​​​​
​
​
Ynys Enlli / Bardsey Island Retreat - Cymru /Wales
Sept 2Oth -27th Oct 25 ​
There is an island off the west coast of Cymru that is known as island of tides. On this rock, sea prevails and you are always in the sound, smell and sight of water. It’s called a holy island – the island of 20,000 saints and is a pilgrimage destination. Before christianity it is said that it is the burial place of Myrddin/ Merlin. It’s a place to get whole.
This is a retreat , mostly silent and intended to largely a solo time out of conversation with humans and with other-than-humans. There is no electricity in the house we are staying in and virtually no reception on Enlli so it’s a good place to stop, tech detox and to gather yourself in at this time of harvest. There is very little to do except be here. Be weathered, be enchanted, be in the song of seals as they nurse their pups on the beaches, be under the spell of fire that is the heat for Garreg Fawr, the house we'd stay in.
​​
You are invited to come and to be as present to this place as you can be – this isn’t just an opportunity for you to take space and time for yourself, but also a time to offer your full attention to a place and to listen in deeply to the conversation of rock, water, seal, chough and wind and willows
​​
​
please subscribe below to get newsletters about events and offerings.
MISTLETOE PLANTING
I have been planting mistletoe as a practice of connection for over 20 years. Mistletoe was the plant of peace and fertility for my UK ancestors and I plant it with the intention of bringing both qualities. I offer a 30 seed mistletoe planting service in Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion which can be purchased as Valentine/ Yuletide gifts with a mistletoe themed gift card that is exchanged for a March planting . I also run workshops on how to plant your own mistletoe. Contact me for details.
​
​