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WE GATHER ON THE LAND, TO MEET OURSELVES, EACH OTHER, AND RECONNECT…

Elements of Being is a deliciously quiet, deeply sensory retreat, held during the final days of October as the landscape of West Cork turns towards Samhain. For seven nights we live together at the water’s edge, with ancient oak rainforest behind us and the sea immediately before us, allowing the elements, the weather and the darkening season to enter naturally into the work.

Steeped in earth-based ancestral tradition, Elements of Being is a full sensory rite of passage shaped through the elements, the archetypal imagination and our relationship with the living landscape. Each day we turn our attention towards a different element and the archetypal territory that accompanies it, exploring how earth, water, fire and air live within the natural world and within our own ways of being. The teachings draw upon elemental psychology and philosophy, ecopsychology, Irish cosmology and the old stories, opening into creative and embodied practice, contemplation and ritual as the day unfolds.

There is a carefully considered rhythm to the week, but also considerable spaciousness around it. Much of the retreat is held in silence outside the teachings and shared practices, allowing the interior life to remain private and giving each person the freedom to participate according to their own capacity on any particular day. There are no alarm clocks to set and very little reason to watch the time. If what is needed is sleep, a long walk beside the water, several hours with a book, sitting beneath the oaks or simply looking out at the sea, there is room for that too. The days have substance, but they are never crowded.

West Cork is where I am from, and my relationship with this land long predates the work I now teach; in many respects, the work has grown from it. During Elements of Being, Atlantic weather, ancient oak woods, stone and water, salt and wind, fire and darkness become part of the sensory and elemental language of the week. We work closely with what is found and gathered, allowing material, place and season to inform our creative and ritual practices and returning our attention again and again to the living world immediately around us.

Elements of Being takes place at Samhain quite deliberately, at the threshold between one seasonal cycle and the next. It gives us a natural place from which to look back across the year we have lived, to recognise what has changed through the living of it, what may have reached its natural ending and what we are ready to surrender before winter begins. It is also a time for listening more closely to what we need, wish for and desire, and for considering what we might choose to seed into the winter ground. Samhain offers us a language for death and relinquishment, gestation and renewal, and for the unseen beginnings from which another cycle will eventually emerge.

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A TIME TO SLOW DOWN, REDISCOVER BEAUTY, RECLAIM EARTHLY MAGIC, AND EMBODY LIVING POETRY…

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There is a particular quality of attention that becomes possible when we are given enough time. The senses begin to sharpen; small things become visible again. The smell of woodsmoke carried through damp air, the changing colour of the sea, rain moving across the mountains, the texture of something gathered from the shore, the warmth of a bowl held between the hands. Elements of Being is deliberately spacious enough for these things to matter.

We spend time outdoors in the old oak woods, along the shore and beside the water, gathering and observing, walking and making, allowing the weather and the season to determine some of the shape of our days. Indoors there is fire, good food, beautiful materials to work with and time to be still. We move naturally between the landscape and the house throughout the week: going out into weather, water and woodland and returning again to fire, food, making, conversation or solitude. In time, the distinction between the elemental landscape around us and our own interior landscape becomes increasingly porous.

Nothing here needs to be hurried towards an outcome. The week offers the unusual luxury of staying with an experience for long enough to discover what it has to say, and of allowing beauty, curiosity and the pleasure of making to have value in their own right.

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HEART SONGS FROM THE (H)EARTH...

Making is an important part of our time together. We work with natural materials gathered from the surrounding landscape and with those I have collected, grown and prepared throughout the year, learning something of their particular qualities through the hands as much as through the mind. Stone, clay, wood, fibre, plant matter, pigment and other found materials become the prima materia through which an idea, an image or an intuition can gradually find form.

These practices change from year to year and are developed specifically for each gathering. No particular artistic experience is needed. We are interested in the intimacy that develops through handling a material, noticing its limits and possibilities, and allowing ourselves to respond to what is already present within it. What we make carries something of the place and season from which it came, as well as something of our own encounter with it.

There is an old intelligence in making this way. Human beings have always gathered from the places around them and transformed what they found into objects of beauty, necessity, remembrance and ritual. During Elements of Being, these simple acts of gathering and making become another means of entering into relationship with the land, and of giving material expression to some of what has been moving quietly through the week.

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HONOURING THE WHOLE...

The elemental work of Elements of Being is approached through the whole of our experience rather than through thought alone. An idea encountered in a teaching may find another expression through the hands, through movement or ritual, through something noticed in the landscape, through the senses, or through the quiet reflection that follows. Each offers a different way of knowing, and throughout the week they are allowed to speak to and inform one another.

The elements are particularly rich companions for this kind of inquiry because they are never merely symbolic. We can consider water archetypally while standing beside the Atlantic; contemplate fire while tending or sitting beside one; work with earth while our hands are occupied with clay, stone or pigment; become aware of air through weather, breath, sound and the movement of the world around us. What begins as an idea can therefore be encountered materially and sensorially, allowing understanding to develop through experience rather than explanation alone.

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A TIME TO NOURISH AND NURTURE ON ALL LEVELS...

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Food is woven deeply into the elemental and seasonal life of Elements of Being, and the making of our October table begins many months before anyone arrives. Throughout the year I grow, gather, ferment and preserve specifically for the retreat, bringing the fruits, fungi, herbs, seeds, nuts, ferments and preserves of the season into the food we share each day. By autumn, the pantry has become an archive of the year that has passed through the land, and much of that harvest finds its way to the table during our week together.

I prepare all of our meals during Elements of Being, allowing the food to respond to the season and to the element we are exploring that day. Colour, scent, texture, warmth and flavour become another sensory language within the retreat, and the table itself becomes a place of pleasure, nourishment and quiet conviviality. This is SoulFOOD in the truest sense: generous, beautiful food made with attention, rooted in place and season, and intended to be savoured rather than hurried.

Alongside our meals, the Elixir Bar is stocked with herbal tonics, wild beverages, teas, herbal elixirs and other preparations made from the garden and the surrounding landscape. This extends into the more intimate rituals of bathing and tending the body too, with botanical preparations and natural body-care products created especially for the week.

Nourishment at Elements of Being is experienced in many forms: in what is placed on the table, in warmth and rest, in the pleasure of scent and touch, in being outdoors and returning inside again, and in having the ordinary practical details of the day quietly taken care of.

Much of the care that holds Elements of Being happens quietly in the background. The teachings are prepared, the materials are waiting, the meals are made, the fire is tended and the rhythm of each day is attended to, leaving you with very few decisions to make once you arrive. For people whose ordinary lives require them to carry a great deal, this can be one of the most precious aspects of the week: the simple experience of being able to relinquish responsibility for a while and allow yourself to be looked after.

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OUR NEST FOR THIS RETREAT...

For our seven nights together, we make our home on a private 96-acre waterfront estate nestled amongst the ancient oak woods of Glengarriff, overlooking the sheltered waters of Glengarriff Harbour, Garnish Island and the Atlantic beyond. Built from mellow local stone and designed to sit quietly within its surroundings, the house gives us both the intimacy of a shared home and an extraordinary amount of landscape in which to wander, rest and be alone.

The estate lies within an extraordinarily rich landscape of native woodland, meadow, shoreline and water. Deer and feral goats move through the land, while the wider waters of Glengarriff Harbour and Bantry Bay support seals, cetaceans and sea eagles. At this time of year the landscape is constantly changing: Atlantic weather moves through quickly, the oak woods are turning, evenings draw in and the relationship between house, hearth and the elemental world beyond becomes particularly tangible.

Our group is intentionally small, and everyone has their own large private bedroom. There is space to gather around the table and beside the fire, and equally there is room to withdraw, close a door, walk outside or spend time alone whenever that is what is needed. This balance between companionship and privacy is an important part of how the week is held.

For seven nights, the house and surrounding land become our temporary home. There is nowhere else you need to be and very little that you need to organise. From here, at the edge of the Atlantic, the whole experience of Elements of Being unfolds.