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 guild of Wild Mind guides 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 18 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.
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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.
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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.
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Currently:
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Wild Death - Placing Death at the Centre of a Whole Life
Date : 12th - 16th Sept 2024 Place: Dartmoor, UK
Price: £720 supported - £820 standard - £920 + supporter
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​Co-guided by Rebecca Joy Card in collaboration with Nature Wisdom
“…It’s very strange where you come from…it seems to me...that everybody wakes up expecting to live.” Words spoken by Martine Prechtel, paraphrased by Stephen Jenkinson in Diewise. We are living in uncertain times, yet one thing is certain ~ each of us will die. Indeed, as a species along with so many other beings, we may well be facing our collective death. How shall we choose to do this?
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We invite you to join us for 5 days of embodied nature-based practices. In particular, the Wild Mind map developed by Bill Plotkin, deep imagination, wild creativity and ceremony held by the land as we turn to look at our lives through the natural lens of death. By choosing this intimacy with the cycles of life, death and rebirth we can live fully guided not by fear but by earth’s vision.
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Winter's Dreaming - Deepening into Earth's Dream
place: Bannau Brycheinniog, Cymru ( Brecon Beacons, Wales)
date: January 17-20th 2025 price: tbc
with Rebecca Joy Card
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Winter in the Northern Hemisphere is the time to enter the earth’s, and our, dreaming. Our bodies, along with the body of the earth, need rest, hibernation, slowing down in order to be with the potency of our dreams for it is from them that the rest of our lives can be shaped. How we choose to show up, what we choose to respond to, the parts that hold us back from living the fullest version of ourselves ~ are all offered to us by Mystery through the underworld of our psyches, the unconscious realm, at night when we sleep, and also in our waking dreams.
You are warmly invited to join us for an intimate soul gathering in the depths of winter to explore our individual and collective dreams, both sleeping and waking. There will be invitations to work with dream encounters through enactment, time with the land and the other-than-humans of Bannau Brycheinniog , as well as hearthside councils, movement, art and, that's right, rest.
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Betwixt - Exploring the Thresholds between the Worlds
March 20th -24th 2025
Venue : Bannau Brycheiniog, Cymru ( UK ) Price : tbc
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In a time of increasing polarity and disconnection this is an invitation to those who wish to linger in-between long enough to learn what it is to be at the threshold, the place of not knowing, the liminal and the mysterious. To stay long enough to become undone, to unravel from who we thought we were and become something else, perhaps the threshold itself.
An equinox weekend March in Cymru co -guided with Rebecca Joy Card of Nature Wisdom
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Solo Quest
May 11-21st 2024
place : Dartmoor UK with Rebecca Joy Card
price : TBC
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Also known as a Vision Quest, this ancient ceremony with the land, with yourself and with Mystery offers a potential rite of initiation, a journey to the underworld to uncover what is uniquely yours as a gift to yourself and to the earth community. This deep process is in itself an offering to Life.
Through fasting, self generated ceremony and direct contact with the other-than-human world, including the wild elements, lies the opportunity for healing, maturation and deeper meaning.
This ceremony is held as a death process ~ a soul descent that creates the conditions for the initiate to die to the familiar ways of inhabiting the world and to be ‘undone’ in a held, safe and potent way that supports you to find ‘what is hidden as a gift to others’.
Are you feeling called to this marking ceremony? What are you ready to say ‘yes’ to?
Please note an application process in necessary and note that there is now a tiered exchange system.
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Ynys Enlli / Bardsey Island Retreat - Cymru /Wales
Sept 28th -5th Oct 24 ​
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.
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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
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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.
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