Earth Medicine
Tending to our grief
Sold out
A grief tending ceremonial psilocybin retreat within ancient coastal forest rooted in regenerative community life, in partnership with Rooted Healing.
São Luís, Portugal
24 - 30 May 2024
Rooted Healing and The Grief Space are offering retreats seeded in the medicine of grief tending, nature, psilocybin and ceremony.
This work is centred around the exploration and integration of grief, in all its forms, to cultivate healing and belonging, and to create a new relationship with both grief and life. This is a process of emerging, surrendering and remembering, where your true essence is enlivened and nourished.
Whether you are grieving a personal bereavement or loss, tending to the parts of you that never received love, feeling the collective sorrows of the world or longing for community where grief and love are welcomed as sisters, then you have arrived. Welcome
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Our approach
Our nature-led grief tending and psilocybin retreat offers insight into creating a new relationship with grief and cultivating healing and belonging by weaving yourself into deeper intimacy with life.
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Transformational grief and psilocybin ceremonies are woven within a grounded programme of somatic and transpersonal psychology, deep ecology and homegrown nutrient dense nourishment amongst rare ancient coastal forest on 130 hectares of community tended wilderness and permaculture life in Portugal.
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During ceremony, we carry the medicine of live ceremonial songs and sounds as a key ingredient to holding transformational journeys. You can expect heart-full immersive soundscapes as you delve into the depths of memory, consciousness and natural beauty.
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The wisdom of nature and place guides our programmes and core philosophy. We see psilocybin as a catalyst for personal, social and ecological change, which is why we marry this work with regenerative living, where you can taste the beauty of life in balance.
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We are a multidisciplinary team of grief tending facilitators and healing arts professionals with both traditional animistic (shamanic) understanding of ceremonial work, along with psychological expertise. Our approach ensures that you are equipped with tools and practices for your ongoing integrative healing. We understand that psychedelics are one of many other facets required for life-lasting healing and growth.
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We take great care in the intake process, as well as providing a thorough preparation and integration programme before and after the immersion. We also cultivate long-lasting community and peer to peer support. We appreciate the leap of faith into an experience like this takes and are here to support you with your decision-making process, with awareness and integrity around the acknowledgement that this approach is not for everyone.
The alchemy
Psilocybin. Ceremony. Grief tending.
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Abundant in its nature, psilocybin exists all over the world making it an embedded thread within our collective ancestral heritage. Research reveals it to be one of the safest and most promising non-addictive psychedelics (entheogen), proving to support long-term neurogenesis, which is the formation of new neuronal cells in the brain.
With evidence suggesting its ritualistic use as early as 9,000 years ago, it has been shown to aid in healing multiple physical, emotional, mental and spiritually rooted health conditions. Science is also recognising its capacity to increase creativity, deepen nature connectedness and even reshape our relationship with death.
We see psilocybin as a catalyst for personal, collective and ecological change, showing us how to interrelate with compassion, creativity, intuition and curiosity.
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We, as human beings upon this earth, have sat in ceremony since time immemorial. It is our birthright to cultivate time together to connect with our shared humanity and our relational dance within the web of existence. Ceremony offers us a healing containment to delve into the depths of our heart’s questions, sorrows, joys and dreams.
Ceremony brings us back into a state of belonging, which balms the losses of the modern era. It is an alchemy of intention, song, prayer and elemental relationship, through which our personal and collective voices of longing and creativity are extended to the unseen dimensions of life, beyond our conscious minds and into the realms of nature and spirit. This act is indigenous to the psyche, invoking a form of ‘direct knowing’, which is often ineffable but experienced through the fabric of our being.
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Originating from the root word ‘tenderness’, grief tending invites us to bring compassion to our grief, as we would to a small child or a wild garden. Grief tending is the understanding that to be human is to know loss. It is the practice of welcoming grief so that we can keep our hearts open to life. It is coming home to the recognition that we all have grief, whether it’s for the losses in our lives, the unmet longings or the sorrows of the world.
Grief tending is the understanding that our earth needs us to grieve, just as it needs us to pay attention. It is the trust that when we grieve and allow ourselves to be vulnerable, we open ourselves to connection, authenticity and intimacy. As we remember the lost art of grief tending where all is welcomed, we restore our connection to each other, ourselves and the earth. We emerge with the capacity to hold it all; love and loss, grief and gratitude; life and death.
“To honor our grief, to grant it space and time in our frantic world, is to fulfill a covenant with soul – to welcome all that is, thereby granting room for our most authentic life.”
— Francis Weller
Your programme
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2 Psilocybin Ceremonies with live song + sound
1 Psilocybin Forest Walk Ceremony
Grief Tending, Somatic + Transpersonal workshops
Nature-immersed shared or private accommodation
Homegrown organic nutrient dense meals
Canyon wild swimming + picnic
Access to 130 hectares of rare forest habitat (no noise pollution)
Embodied regenerative living: Lessons from the land
All herbs + medicines we offer throughout
An in-person 1 on 1 session with a facilitator
Thorough preparation + integration programmes, including:
1x preparation live group call and 3x group integration calls
1 on 1 connection call
Full support, community + resources
Airport shuttle (from Lisbon or Faro, depending on bookings)
Our home
We welcome you to a regenerative project that re-connects humans to nature
Tending a regenerative eco off-grid farm and co-living space based in the coastal natural park in South Western Portugal, this is a unique and special opportunity to truly marry the healing of inner and outer landscapes. This predominantly educational project creates hope for future generations, to show what practical possibilities are out there in terms of reversing soil erosion and implementing land restoration, eco construction, passion based learning, local food security and bioregional life-ways.
Our food
Nutritious nourishment straight from our permaculture market garden
We grow organic vegetables and fruit in our terrace gardens and food forest. We also keep sheep for an animal and land management practice that mimics nature to benefit both grazers and biodiversity, improving water and mineral cycles. Our plates will be a celebration of true regenerative life-ways, including an abundance of home-grown and home-produced plants, meat (mutton), butter and cheese. We will celebrate our final feast with local fresh fish from the market (V and GF options too).
Nearby
Following a river immersed in the etherial bell chorus of goats, there is a canyon…
A 15 minute drive takes us to a special, hidden and treasured place. There is a potent charm to this canyon, an ancient memory that awakens through a baptism-esque bath in the healing waters followed by a warm embrace of ancestral rock. We will spend much of the day here, nestled in the canyon’s embrace, picnicking together in the shade of the trees.
Accomodation & pricing
Our maximum capacity is 14 participants.
For a softer landing and gentle integration afterwards, you are invited to book additional days either side of the retreat in your chosen accommodation. (£20-£50) per night depending on accomodation type.
Dorm - £1800
Share with up to 5 others. The dorm may be mixed, depending on bookings. The deposit is £700 and payment plans are available.
Shared Bell Tent - £1900
Share in a non-mixed bell tent with one other person. The deposit is £700 and payment plans are available.
Private Bell Tent - £2200
Enjoy a private and tranquil stay. There are 3 in total so these get booked up fast. The deposit is £700 and payment plans are available.
Private Room - £2300 (single) / £2100 each (shared bed)
Enjoy a private and tranquil room. There is only 1 available so book early. The deposit is £700 (per person, if sharing) and payment plans are available.
Tree House - £2,300 (single) / £2100 each (shared bed)
Embrace nature in our iconic treehouse. Spending a week underneath the crown of this 100 year old cork tree is something rare and unique. The deposit is £700 (per person, if sharing) and payment plans are available.
Scholarship
Our mission is to create opportunity for all who feel called to join us to have access, whether through a partial bursary or a fully funded place, depending on your application and situation. We take a holistic, global view on this, so please consider your status globally before applying. For example, our local Portuguese community and BIPOC folk will have priority. Email nici@thegriefspace.com
Meet the team
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Nici Harrison
Founder (The Grief Space) and Lead facilitator
Nici Harrison is a grief tending facilitator, writer and speaker. She is founder of The Grief Space, a platform to shift the narrative on grief, inspire healing and bring together community.
Grief was the gateway that brought Nici home to herself, a retrieval of her authenticity and truth. She came to grief work, as many of us do, through the experience of a deep personal loss. It was a complicated grief filled with fear, anxiety and confusion. It was loss so fracturing to the human heart that it took Nici nearly a decade to find her way back to her body and back to a sense of safety.
Nici has studied with Francis Weller, Sophy Banks and Jewels Wingfield, amongst others, and is also a transformational coach, carrying deep reverence for the art of grief tending in all its forms.
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Veronica Stanwell
Founder (Rooted Healing) and Lead facilitator
As a multidisciplinary healing + creative arts practitioner, Veronica weaves her love for soma, psyche, land and song into a life-long emergence of service and creativity. From wild Welsh lands, her deep enquiry into expanded states of consciousness within indigenous traditions of the Americas and Mother Europe’s native ways, guides her fascination with the fabric of life. With over a decade of diverse facilitation experience and an MSc in Consciousness + Transpersonal Psychology with the Alef Trust, Veronica carries this work with a grounded compassion and resilience.
Founder + director of Rooted Healing and hosting the accompanying podcast, Veronica’s longing for an intimate relationship with life is apparent and contagious. She serves to remind you that we belong and that the mystery of life is worth falling in love with, again and again.
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Lilja Porsteinsdóttir
Support psychologist
Lilja is an experienced Psychologist from Iceland who specialises in group psychedelic integration, healing trauma, psychedelic harm reduction, and treating addiction and chronic pain and illness. She has created a safe platform full of courses to help people get in touch with their playfulness and creativity, increasing people’s self-understanding and connection with themselves and the world around them. Lilja offers needed perspective on both the healing potential of psychedelics in psychotherapy and the risks involved.
Lilja has also been immersed in native traditions in Ecuador to gain deeper insight into group psychedelic-assisted healing, learning with medicine keepers and masters and offering 1 on 1 support when needed. Lilja will be available throughout our time together, supporting ceremonies and offering 1 on 1 council.
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Migjen Hasani
Support facilitator
A multi-musician and facilitator of trust, breath and connection practices, Migjen weaves his enquiry of entheogenic understanding into grounded group support. With a mixed German-Albanian heritage and fascination with cross-cultural wisdom exchange, he approaches this ancestral work with care, curiosity and humility. With experience supporting ceremonies during his 14 months in Latin America, Migjen will be offering his presence, percussion, songs and support in ceremony, also guiding practices for our rest and integration, along with ensuring the smooth running of our time together.
Alongside this work, Migjen also teaches and is committed to contributing to inclusive cross-cultural place-based education.
Listen to the podcast episode ‘Our Earth Needs Us To Grieve’ between Nici and Veronica on Rooted Healing
Application process
Send us your application form
Schedule your one to one discovery call
Book your place on the retreat
Booking
The full programme