Guardians of Life, 8-Day immersion is an educational and intercultural exchange immersion focused on:
- Activating Intuitive Technologies,
- Elemental Connection, and
- Original Birth Arts.
Our aim is to support established or aspiring care practitioners in connecting with their intuition, expanding their knowledge and skills, and becoming exemplars for their communities. This includes fostering elemental consciousness, expanded states of awareness, and maintaining impeccable practice in their respective fields.
WHAT IS INCLUDED:
-
Room + Board
-
All meals + snacks. It will be an omnivore diet, in season, fresh, local, organic, pasture raised ingredients. PLEASE SPECIFY ANY + ALL ALLERGIES + RESTRICTIONS.
-
Transportation to and from airport on designated arrival and departure dates.
-
Transportation to all destinations. (Sweat lodge, hot-springs)
- Daily Yoga w/ Kia Islam
-
Earth offering Despacho
-
Inipi/Temazcal Sweat-lodge Ceremony (opening and closing)
-
Elemental Breath-work w/ Master Plant Medicine Essence
-
3-Three Classes, ROOT : BODY : UNIVERSE
-
Fogatas (bonfires) + word circles in the evenings.
-
Sealing-Closing of the bones for postpartum + psycho-emotional closure.
-
Herbal Baths, Steams + Self Abdominal and Womb massage.
-
Trip to Hot-springs.
- & Ceramic Workshop with Maria Jose of AYASHAM
"As a maternal health npo founder and doula this was far beyond a birthwork retreat. It's a step closer to liberation. The incredible team of practitioners and facilitators created a safe container for healing and learning but also a portal for reclaiming, reconnecting, and honoring deep wisdom. From this beautiful inaugural in person immersion to the expansive and deeply knowledgable curriculum online, I'm both affirmed and inspired.." - Blaine, @sanasana_wellness
Our approach
-
Activation of Intuitive Technologies: Our intuitive technologies are innate capacities that support us in being conscious, fostering connection and awareness of our senses, as well as facilitating communication within our bodies, relationships, and ecosystems. From this state of awareness, we can navigate life's challenges; the physical, psycho-emotional, and spiritual. We acknowledge a prevalent issue within the medical, clinical, and healing realms today: the mechanical and procedural application of generalized protocols and systems to our physiological rites-of-passage. Our aim is to guide you towards a way of knowing, being, learning, sensing, and transmitting that diverges from occidental-mental-institutional paradigms and connects you with your intuitive compass.
-
Elemental Connection: The elements are the foundational components of all life, constituting our very essence. When we establish a connection with these primal sources of life force, we re-member ourselves as extensions of raw natural power. The elements possess the ability to recalibrate us on a cellular level, unlocking lineage memories and our innate wisdom. They support us in transmuting, metabolizing, and alchemizing whatever is obstructing our health, clarity, and vitality. Elemental connection is essential to reclaiming ourselves as the ultimate authorities over our reproductive-creative processes. From this place we can truly support others to remember this for themselves.
-
Original Birth Arts: Since time immemorial we have been born and will continue to give birth and be born. Being born is an experience that unites us in humanity and as beings within the animal kingdom. Original Birth Arts are practices, rituals, ways of knowing and being with the body, the territory and each other that guard the sacredness and mystery of birth. Regardless of whether we attend births, connecting to original birth arts supports us in integrating and honoring our own experiences of giving birth and being born, especially if they happened in a context in which there was not reverence or protection.
Root
Noun: The basic cause, source, or origin of something
Verb: To establish deeply and firmly
Our root, our seat of power, constitutes an intricate network of connections and memories, informed by the soil of our ancestry and lived experiences. Drawing up the water memory of our earth ways, food ways, and life ways. When our roots have been upended, severed, or transplanted into unfamiliar terrain, we may confront the challenge of adapting to an incoherent space. In the resilience of our radicle (the part of a plant embryo that develops into the primary root), lies the capacity to forge new root systems, birthing a new ancestral reality that can sustain us in vitality.
Our root class will explore the root of our body (coccyx, sacrum, pelvic bowl) physically and energetically and how connection to this space within the territory of our bodies informs the way we give and receive care.
We'll be experiencing a special workshop with Maria Jose of AYASHAM, where we will activate the creative power of our hands to sculpt a tool for our energetic & spiritual wellbeing.
Maria Jose, is a
Colombian born Ceramist based in Miami Florida and currently back in Colombia. Cofounder of Ayasham, a project dedicated to rituals through the process of sculpting. The process of making these creations is a journey of remembrance towards ancestral practices. The strong connection to Nature has brought guidance to expand on this practice, by utilizing and reconnecting with the elements. The work is a representation of a bridge between two cultures as well as the past and the present. Maria Jose has studied sculpting techniques for thirteen years from western and traditional indigenous practices and has merged these two styles as a statement of migration and the intertwining of two cultures.
We will gather in TABIO, CUNDINAMARCA, on the foothills of Juaica, on the land our daughter Numa was born.
It is 1.5 hr away from Bogota, Colombia & El Dorado Intl Airport
APPLY NOW
"This was a life-changing community healing retreat that I have yet to experience before. I feel honored to have known Aya Maria before coming & the people that she attracts & cultivates virtually brought a spectacular group of parteras, doulas, birth workers, cooks, travelers & healers together in a way that made us immediate chosen family. The food!!! The colors of what we are. Veggies & fruit that fed us, nourished us. The yoga & curiculum. The expansion of what is possible. I was able to pray & manifest in nature & heal deeply with sisters I never met before this. The breath-work helped me integrate/meditate my thoughts for where I want to grow my own community back home. Inspiration to continue ceremony life-work & weave it into my birth-work practice that is constantly growing & expending exponentially from this trip. Alhamdullilah! Thank you Creator! Thank you to all the organizers, teachers & leaders that made this happen. Would love to bring my whole family next time. InshAllah God-willing" - Sarena Doucette @manosdeluz
I tend to avoid most group activities and any sort of "wellness retreat" - primarily because I don't believe that "wellness" can be sold and because intentionality can be lost in large group format. The intentionality of this space was evident in every detail of the retreat. We rested, we sat in ceremony, we shared, we feasted, we moved our bodies, we breathed and we explored our hearts - and the awe inspiring natural beauty of our jungle setting cannot be captured in words, so I won't try. Birth work is both indescribably special and uniquely challening and it takes an incredibly attuned person (and team) to create a space that can hold the weight of what birth workers bring. Aya Maria and her team did just that. This was a deeply moving experience for me - one that I will always treasure.
— Janell Moore CPM, LM
Body
Noun: The physical structure, including the bones, flesh, and organs, of a person or an animal.
Verb: To give material form to something abstract.
We will explore our body as Tierra-story, the territory in which the experiences of all those who came before us and the ecosystems they collaborated with culminate to house our spirit (breath). The vessel through which we evolve, transmit, and receive while co-creating reality.
Our body class will weave into "La Espalda Como Oráculo" (the Back as an Oracle), a special class with Juan, a bone-setter, sobandero, and guardian of the birth of @sewa.
During these eight days we will gather to weave together an experience of communal co-existence, engaging in varying expressions of Activating Intuitive Technologies, Elemental Connection and Original Birth Arts.
While our practices may offer deep healing and transformation, please note that this is not a healing retreat and does not provide therapy or individual care. This space is intended for collective participation, co-creation, and openness to receiving. We require all participants to be in good health.
Because of the layout of accommodations this is a women’s-female only immersion.
We are prioritizing participants who are motivated to move through all situations with a solutions-based mindset rooted in personal response-ability.
Immersion Investment : $1,867.00USD
Deposit to secure your spot is: $560.00 USD
Then monthly payments of : $456.00 USD
Or PAY IN FULL BY JUNE 21, 2024: $1,307.00 USD
APPLICATIONS CLOSE JUNE 21, 2024
APPLY NOW
Universe
Noun: The whole world, cosmos, the totality of existing things
Verb: To turn into one
We will explore the mystery of the universe through the ancestral medicine and ceremony of the inipi sweat lodge, the activation of our hands molding and forming with AYASHAM, and through communication with plants in elemental breathwork.
Our universe class will explore the origin stories of the territories where we gather and the cosmologies of the lineages and practices we carry.
Glimpses from last years immersion
