A Collective Emergence
Our inspirational guest Facilitators are mystics, ritualists, writers, poets, healers, guides, mentors and wisdom holders, each rooted in dharma and heart. Immersed in their fields of expertise and interest, they offer from a range of different backgrounds including Tantric, Shamanic, Jungian, Chinese, Japanese and Taoist lineages.
Together we draw from combined influences and disciplines, that include Non-Dual philosophy, Embodied Flow™ yoga, somatic therapy, dance, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Reiki, Body Mind Centering, Authentic Movement, Jungian psychology, Astrology, Mythology, Continuum, Naturopathy and Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy.
COLLETTE DAVIS
PHILOSOPHY, EMBODIMENT, FACILITATION, 300HR
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My offerings are an ongoing inquiry into embodied liberation and I facilitate intuitive moving meditations that guide students into the liminal and imaginal realms of the somatic unconscious.
These can be psychedelic experiences that awaken the inner artist, heal the parts of Psyche that have been cut off and open up the channel for a Graced life. I live and breathe the teachings of Tantra and am constantly learning, practicing, forgetting and remembering how to get out of the Way so life can lead.
An Embodied Flow™ facilitator, senior yoga teacher, tantrika, devotee, and certified Wizard, I am also the humble shepherd of the Samāveśa School of Yoga. I’ve been a devoted student and practitioner of Non-Dual Shaiva Tantra since 2010, and have over 2000 hours of teacher training experience. I have two Masters degrees, the most recent in Interdisciplinary Psychology where I carried out a piece of academic research on the Embodied Flow School. I am forever grateful to my teachers Tara Judelle, Scott Lyons, Leila Sadeghee, Bridget Luff, Zeenat Cameron, Hareesh Wallis, Adyashanti and the luminous lineage and living stream of Kashmir Shaivism.
I don’t get down so well with hierarchical systems of power and am interested in disrupting the teacher-student binary. I advocate for circular communities where we get to co-create a brave and kind space, weaving trauma informed practices so we feel held and supported. I’m all heart so you can expect a big generous holding field and a healthy, tender friendship that honours boundaries on both sides.
OLIVIA PREYE
GITA 50HR
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Liv has been working with the voice as a tool for healing for 15 years in a diversity of settings from prisons to concert halls, psychiatric units to cathedrals, hospital beds to treehouses. Inspired by her studies of Hindustani singing and years spent in India, she weaves together her work as a jazz singer, creative practitioner, singing therapist and yoga teacher to create and facilitate a practice - Voice Yoga - that deeply nurtures spiritual and emotional wellbeing.
Bhakti yoga is at the heart of the way Liv works and lives. She believes that the key to healing and living a full, undefended life lies in connection to the unique awareness, which can be experienced when we sing with our authentic voices. For this reason, much of her work is in facilitating vocal exploration and expression to help people let go and free fall into the arms of grace though making vocal music both collaboratively and individually.
In order to improvise with your voice, you must leave the past and future behind and stand fully in the present. You must empty yourself and allow room for inspiration to enter you. This is where the magic happens and Liv's work is to support you in meeting this magic for yourself and build your own practice around this connection with your deepest presence.
LINDA NENNE
MYTH, SHADOW, DHARMA, ANCESTRY, PSYCHE 100HR
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It is my firm belief that we are all born awakened and in our fullest authentic expression. This expression is unique to each and everyone of us.
It is the original vibratory pulse of the universe that reverberate through every cell of our bodies. The vibration that when it moves through us translates in to characteristics, tendencies, interests, opinions, and of course how we move and act in the world.
When we are disregarded, shamed, punished or otherwise not encouraged in our unique expression, we suffer. The root of the suffering is that we all need to feel that we are worthy, loved and celebrated for who and what we are. We all need to feel that we belong in this world. We all need to feel that there is a place for us, that our contributions and our uniqueness matter, that our voice and our expression makes a difference.
I am here with you who feel that you’ve suffered. You who feel that the uniqueness of you has been buried or lost somewhere along the way. I am here with you who long to remember, and return to, who and what you are.
You who long to show up for yourself, and for the world, in your unique and authentic human expression.
LIBBY ROSE WAITE
MYTH, SHADOW, DHARMA & ANCESTRY, PSYCHE
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I am a mythopoetic therapist in training, recovering academic and embodiment guide.
My primary language is that of the imaginal. I seek to bring into form the images, shapes and colours that arise from the places where I feel the pulse most fully. This rhythm asks to be spoken through our bodies, felt through poetry and sung with soul.
Central to all of this is my devotion to Non-Dual Shaiva Tantra. This lineage teaches you to awaken to what you are: infinite divine radiance. To embrace the unique expression of consciousness that knows itself as and through you. To cultivate unconditional trust in the intelligence of life and all the ways it upends, spirals and settles.
I am a graduate of the Samāveśa Facilitator programme and it is a deep honour to be called back into circle to meet more of this growing Kula of devotees. Samāveśa is my teacher, my community and what keeps me in alignment. She taught me to look for the divine in the beats of mantra, in the breath of silence, in the space between movement and stillness. But more than anything, she taught me to find God in people.
My offerings explore the depths of who you are so that you can alleviate suffering, connect to your essence nature and live as embodied liberation.
Purno-ham vimarsha.
LEELA DASI
PHILOSOPHY, MYTH, SHADOW, DHARMA, GITA 50 HR
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For Leela Dasi, the process of holding space is first a ritual sacrifice-- to Maha Devi, she offers her entire being. The emptiness that results becomes the ground and container through which those who enter meet Shakti herself, in a new-found or deepened experience of themselves and the world around them.
She holds the space very gently; a space enlivened by her devotion, sincerity and playfulness. Inside, you are able to hear the truth as the blood coursing through your veins, the breath of every cell, and the push and pull of desire and fear on the ocean that is you. The result is the radical affirmation of all that arises as manifestations of the One.
Her introduction to Yoga marked her coming of age. And for the past fifteen years, she has sat in the refining, alchemical fire of her devotional sadhana which includes: mantra, pranayama, asana, awareness cultivation (meditation) and puja. Her practice, combined with her infinite curiosity in the human condition, expressed in poetry, music, psychology, traditional wisdom, philosophy and play in the ocean, inform the spaces and rituals she intuitively curates.
Leela is passionate about depatriarchalizing and demystifying Yoga through an emphasis on embodiment, reinstating the original anarchistic spirit of Yoga through activism, authentic relating and inclusion.
In 2016 she founded the Lotus Shores Yoga Retreat in Siargao Island, Philippines, with her family. Alongside a devoted and skilled faculty, they run immersion programs year-round.
www.leeladasiyoga.com | @leeladasiyoga
GWENDOLYN REN
DEEP REST & POETRY AS MEDITATION
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Gwendolyn is a guide and a gatherer, a writer and a ritualist, a healer and a companion, a mentor and a teacher. Devoted to the practices of deep listening and the acts of tending the sacred human, she shares herself and her work through contemplative practice and compassionate presence.
Bringing an amalgamation of intuition, study, and experience to her work, she is guided by the spirit of healing to skillfully craft practices that shift the habitual to the holistic. Her offerings bespeak the Japanese philosophy of ichi go ichi e, that each moment, each encounter, be highly treasured and markedly its own.
Gwendolyn is primarily a human coming heart to heart with other humans, and among other monikers, a writer, a ritualist, a Healer, an artist, a teacher and a mentor, and a curator of personal and group retreat. Forever in awe of, and guided by, the animism, the aliveness, of the natural world.
Gwendolyn chooses to soothe, honor, and bridge the dualities of this wild life with intention, reparative action, and deep relationship.
She lives and serves by the mantra as-much-ease-as-possible.
GEORGIE BUCHANAN
GITA 50HR
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Georgie Buchanan is a unique singer and harpist on the contemporary folk scene. Hailing from the North Shore Mountains of Canada and the Chiltern Hills, Georgie has always felt most at home creating music in the rich landscapes of the natural world.
Working with a talented band of artists, Georgie crafts haunting musical landscapes of acapella harmonies and shimmering instrumentals. Interweaving traditional melodies with original compositions, songs and stories, Georgie’s music speaks of a heartfelt connection with the natural world and charts a personal story of recovery that is relatable at its core.
A dear friend, student, collaborator and gifted facilitator, Georgie will work with us on the Gita module to help you find and fall in love with your voice.
MARI-HALINA COLBERT
EMBODIED ANATOMY, SOMA 100HR
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Weaving together 15 years of experience with movement as medicine for mental, emotional, physical and spiritual harmony, Mari began yoga in the midst of dance school in London and it quickly became a place of refuge in the demanding environment of professional dance.
She has since immersed in the philosophy and study of yoga, completing the Embodied Flow™ training with Adele Kinghan in New Zealand, which was a soul-stirring recalibration and honey-warm homecoming. Her passion and curiosity have led her to many other immersions and study programs in Classical Tantra, embodiment, somatics, biomechanics, humanistic psychology, Body Mind Centering®, and trauma-sensitive yoga, facilitating Mari’s desire to bring these enriching and illuminating teachings to others in an accessible and inspiring way. She is immensely grateful to her teachers who have been beacons and transmitters of these paradigm-shifting practices and teachings, including Christopher (Hareesh) Wallis, Kavitha M. Chinnaiyan, Adele Kinghan, Sarah Hon, Bonnie Bainbridge-Cohen, Tara Judelle and Scott Lyons.
Mari brings a holistic, inclusive, and trauma-informed approach to all of her offerings that warmly welcome the individual however they are, whilst skillfully encouraging the revelation of the wisdom held in the collective.
She now enjoys wearing many hats as a seasoned yoga facilitator, including mentor, spaceholder, yoga teacher trainer, and registered provider for group Trauma-Sensitive Yoga in NZ, where she works together with psychologist, yoga teacher and dear friend, Sandra Palmer.
Mari is also currently in training to become a Hakomi Somatic Psychotherapist.
Forever a student, these experiences and teachings have been, and continue to be, a huge part of Mari’s own healing journey and she is committed to providing up-to-date, authentic, embodied, and compassionate guidance to support others on their unique journey back home to themselves, too.
CHRIS SKIDMORE
TANTRIC PSYCHOLOGY & DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY
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Chris is a registered Psychotherapist with a diploma in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy and a 15 year (and counting) love affair with astrology. After leaving the shores of Perth in 2002, he followed the subtle pull away from the well-trodden paths of the surface world to the less distinct path of soul. Along the way, he met with three mystics who would teach him about the layers of reality that lie beyond, besides and between the consensus reality world. It was a visceral tour of the middle world, the upper world and the underworld.
Chris has lived in Bali since 2008, where he bases his therapeutic practice. His work is influenced by the late renegade psychologist, James Hillman, the weaver of ancient tales, Michael Meade, the Grimm poet, Robert Bly and many more along that lineage, which includes the great C.G. Jung.
Their words have helped him to see that the questions we ask aren’t so uncommon, the unease he has with the ways of the world is a natural and healthy response, and the path he is on is led by invisible forces whose absence of form does not make them less than real.
MEI LAI SWAN
TRAUMA INFORMED YOGA FOUNDATIONS
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Falling in love with the path of self-inquiry and personal evolution in her teens, Mei Lai has been studying eastern philosophies and meditation for over 20 years, and yoga for 18 years. A senior yoga teacher, Mei Lai is a certified Embodied Flow™ teacher, with years of study and practice in Ashtanga, Vinyasa and Anusara yoga. From Melbourne, Australia, but now based on the road, she teaches in-depth workshops, retreats and on international teacher trainings around the world, with a special focus on nada (sound) yoga, somatic and trauma-informed practices.
With a BA in International Development and a Master of Social Work, Mei Lai spent many years working in remote Aboriginal communities running community development programs, before returning to Melbourne to offer psychosocial programs for people seeking asylum. She has trained in somatic-based trauma therapy and counselling, and combined these skills with yoga to deliver individual counseling, group work programs, and specially-tailored yoga programs for asylum seekers, refugees, disadvantaged youth, and people experiencing chronic pain and trauma.
A trained Doula, she is the founder, previous CEO and ongoing board director of Birth for Humankind, a non-profit organisation providing free birth support to women in disadvantaged circumstances.
She is now the director and lead teacher of Yoga for Humankind, a yoga school and social enterprise specialising in trainings in contemporary hatha, trauma-informed and community based yoga.
www.yogaforhumankind.org | @meilaiswanyoga @yogaforhumankind
ALEXANDRA MACDONALD
EMBODIMENT LABS + SOMA 100HR
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I am a professional dancer, yogini and somatics facilitator and have been immersed in the realm of embodiment for over twenty-five years. Formed by decades of exploration, inquiry, research and creation, my offerings are simple yet elegant syntheses that draw inspiration from the rigorous art of Shadow Yoga, the subtle craft of Body Mind Centering and the innovative laboratory of Embodied Flow, as well as the subtle energetic and philosophical elements of Tantra, Taoism and Traditional Chinese Medicine.
A lover of poetry and the liminal, I am inspired by cadence, flow and rhythm and am fascinated by the portals of movement, breath and the imaginal as gateways to embodied awakening. My offerings are not linear pathways of postures, but are seamless weavings of forms and explorations that encourage the mind to surrender its usual grasping and strategizing, giving way to a more natural state of quietude.
In this way, my work involves creating space for a simultaneous unfurling of both quiescence and revelation, providing a context within which our human complexity can coexist with our natural divinity, in a way that is both subtle and formidable.
I invite you to cross the threshold into a realm of embodied inquiry, a place where your mind can rest and your body can slip into a state of ease and availability. A realm were the art of yoga and the practise of embodiment coalesce, acting as ushers of remembrance and belonging.
ADELE KINGHAN | RISE YOGA
BUSINESS OF YOGA, EMBODIED ANATOMY
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Adele's dream is to live in a world where yoga is medicine, desire is celebrated, everyone exudes aliveness, and dancing in the streets is highly encouraged – if not mandatory.
As well as being the founder and lead facilitator of RISE Yoga, Adele is a certified Embodied Flow teacher, underpinned by a long love affair with movement, somatics and non-dual Shaiva Tantra.
Adele's passion for movement comes from her very first love – dance. She studied everything from ballet to hip hop, and was a dance teacher for many years. And then, at the sweet age of 25, the universe threw her a sudden spiritual grenade in the form of advanced stage bowel cancer.
Literally overnight the world as she knew it was no more... Bed-ridden and faced with a 1 in 5 chance of survival, Adele embraced all the support she could, especially yoga – mostly simple breathing techniques and meditation – first as a way to manage the pain and the chemotherapy, then to heal and regain strength, and ultimately to help with all the doubt and existential questioning she'd been carrying around.
That was 15 years ago and through the wins and the losses, yoga has been her anchor. Adele is sought after for her breadth of knowledge, her non-dogmatic empowering approach, and her attention to awakening.