Creativity & 'Feeling Wisdom'

This retreat offers creative ways to open to the wisdom of the body weaving between somatic experience and creativity, Focusing (1.) and the arts, nature and ritual, with meditative and heart-based practices from the Buddhist tradition.

Our time will centre around listening and following our body sensations or felt-sense using Gendlin’s (2.) Focusing practice. There will also be invitations to express the images and intuitions that surface in our work with the body through simple creative exercises.

We will spend our days gently tracking and weaving betwixt inner and outer worlds, between earth body and mythic body using simple creativity and nature based rituals. Listening, feeling and following the flow of wisdom much like the well known story of Ruth Stone’s tugging of the tail of the poem.

But what she actually did was run across the fields to try and get a pen to catch the poem as it thundered across the plains. One time she wasn’t fast enough. The poem was passing over for another poet so she reached up and caught the tail of it pulling it back and writing down a poem, word perfect, from the last word to the first.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Ted talk on creativity (including a reference to Ruth Stone)

Embodied equanimity, befriending ourselves and opening to warm direct experience are natural gifts of Focusing. We will also follow what Gendlin calls the fresh-edge which is akin to the forward-flow of starling murmurations. Within Buddhism this is the fresh becomingness found in impermanence reflections.

Join us and catch the tail of your poem. 

Nagadipa has dedicated the last decade to www.theartofrewilding.com. Her work encompasses somatic wisdom, vision quests, nature based rites of passage, The Artist’s Way and myth.  

Sahajamani is part of The River of Soul team which uses myth, poetry and image to better understand this human life. She also practices traditional Chinese medicine from her home clinic in Somerset.

(1.) Focusing is an experiential, embodied and evidence-based practice of self-reflection.
(2.) Eugene T. Gendlin was a groundbreaking philosopher and psychotherapist who has been honoured 4 times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy.

Covid-secure requirements

We are no longer asking each retreatant to take a lateral flow test before travelling to Rivendell, but we are asking that they bring a test with them in case they fall ill whilst here.

We want those that come to Rivendell to be confident that we are making their stay here as safe as possible.

Concession information

Rivendell has a concessionary rate available for most of its retreats. If you are in need of further financial assistance to help enable you to come on retreat here, please do consider writing to our office team via bookings@rivendellretreatcentre.com explaining your circumstances.

Cancellation policy

All deposits are non-refundable and non-transferable in all circumstances. If you wish to cancel your place on a retreat, we require a minimum notice of 4 calendar weeks before a retreat is due to take place, in order that a refund (not the deposit) will be possible. If you cancel and we can't replace you, you will be required to pay half the total cost of the retreat. Please let us know as soon as possible if you need to cancel, as there may be other people waiting for a place on the retreat to become available. Any refund will still be on the basis that we can the fill your space.