So many of us women carry a great deal on our own. Work, family, the people we care for, the often long years of being the one who holds it all together.
And underneath, often, a quieter ache for something older: other women to sit with, and a way of meeting the sacred that lives in the body and the land, not only in books.
The Women’s Celtic Shamanic Journey grew out of that longing, It has been open a few weeks now, and five of the founding women have written about what they have found there.
For all that we carry, The Way Through is a guided meditation and drum journey through the whole cycle of water: cloud, rain, stream, river and ocean. Nothing in you needs fixing. It may just need somewhere to move. Like every journey, it comes with integration resources, including freewriting, journalling prompts and a short water ritual.
Shaped with the women: a membership built in community
Fiona put her finger on something I care about deeply:
“This membership is so different to others I have been in because Ruth is developing content and experiences from asking questions that help me pause to work out what it is I really need. She really listens and has buckets of passion for creating with community, not for community.”
From the start, I have built the membership with the women rather than for them.
Before the doors opened, nearly 70 women answered my questions about what they longed for, and their answers shaped the spaces you will find inside.
I keep asking, and the membership keeps changing as women do with the seasons.
Imbas Forosnai, The Knowing in the Dark, is one of the drum journeys in the membership: an old Irish story and a journey into the dark waters of the pelvic bowl, to be found by what you already know. Like every journey, it comes with resources to support your integration afterwards, including rituals, practices, freewriting, journalling and art.
Women’s circle online: before they joined
Mel was nervous she wouldn’t know how to find her way around, and that it might all feel “impersonal or superficial”. Georgina had tried online courses before and found they “rarely get past my thinking mind”. And Kate named something many of us carry quietly:
“It is so hard to make new friends, especially as we grow older. Many of us have lost our community.”
Mel says simply that “those worries were so unfounded”.
When you come in, the first thing you meet is my voice, in a short video about how we are with one another. Then the spaces open out, a little like the rooms of an old house.
The Well, where the teachings and practices drum wait for you. The Hearth, where women gather to share and witness. The Grove, where the courses grow. A growing library of themed drum journeys and guided meditations with resources to support integration. And Hedgerow Medicine, where the plants come in with the seasons.
A resource from The Compassionate Wise Elder, one of the self-paced courses in the Grove, weaving Internal Family Systems (IFS) with Celtic shamanism.
Out of the head, into the bones: shamanic drum journeys online
Georgina was surprised.
“I am surprised by how somatic and body-based this feels. I actually experience it, rather than just understanding it. That wasn’t what I expected from something online.”
Charlie found the same with the drum. It helps her “go deeper than I would just reading on my own”.
Most of what lives in the Well begins the way a circle does. I talk with you for a few minutes, as if you had come early and we were sitting together by the fire. Then I bring you down, out of the busyness of the head, into breath and weight and the beat of your own heart.
Then you lie back, and the drum, sometimes with other instruments will carry you. If you have never journeyed before, it is gentler than it sounds. The steady beat eases you into a waking dream, somewhere between sleep and waking.
There you might meet guides, animals, ancestors, places in the Otherworld, or parts of yourself you have lost touch with. You can open your eyes at any time, and when the drum calls you back, you return.
Each journey is a recording you can return to whenever you need it. Find somewhere to lie down, put your headphones on, and let the drum carry you, in your own time and at your own depth.
The old Irish told of a ninth wave, the border between this world and the Otherworld, and of those who sailed beyond it. These voyage tales, the immrama, are full of islands, and each one held something the travellers needed to meet: wonder, rest, a question, a gift. I have come to feel these tales are maps for our own lives.
So many of us have lived close to the shore, keeping everything steady for everyone else. Beyond the Ninth Wave is an invitation to push off. The first journey takes you down to the harbour to meet the boat that will carry you. From there, the islands are yours to choose, and what you find on them sometimes may have been waiting for you a long time.
Ceremony lives in the body too. At Samhain, we will meet the Boar together, moving low and heavy and close to the earth before the drum begins, so that protection and boundaries could be felt in the bones, not only thought about.
An hour that is yours: recorded journeys and a monthly rest circle
Charlie loves that she can “choose a time that fits my day and give it my full attention”.
The self-paced courses, journeys and guided meditations are recorded, so you can come when you can really arrive: early, before the house wakes, in a quiet hour in the middle of the day, or last thing at night. If you RSVP for a live circle or ceremony and life gets in the way, the recording waits for you. Your camera is always yours to switch off.
When I asked the founding women what they wanted from our monthly live circle over the next couple of months, they chose rest. So for the next couple of months we gather for a Bone Rest Circle.
After a short guided meditation you lie down, with a stone on your belly if you like, and I drum and play while you simply receive. So many of us were raised to earn our rest. Here, rest is the practice. Next year, we will be trying out other circles too, e.g. a conscious chanting circle and a wisdom circle.
Coming soon to the Grove: Selkie, Reclaiming Our Skins. So many of us were bent into a shape so early we forgot it was a shape at all. This course isn't about fixing yourself, because you are not broken. It's about finding the woman underneath, bringing her home and letting her unfold, in your own life, without apology.
Around the hearth: a women’s spiritual community built on listening
Mel speaks of a space “full of women genuinely sharing their own reflections”. Kate puts it this way:
“Only here can we say, ‘this is what I do,’ and expect anyone to validate that with witnessing. Ruth is a master at safely holding space for us all. Here there is no cliqueyness. There is only connection and support and holding of the group as a whole.”
The membership is for women only. At the Hearth we speak from our own lives, and we call it I language. You share what came up for you, in your own words, and the women who answer speak from theirs. No one hands you advice you didn’t ask for, and no one tells you what your journey meant. If you would like cheering on, you ask, and it comes to you.
There is something very old in this. Women have long listened to one another this way, over the loom, with the washing, by the birthing bed, without needing to set each other right.
After a journey, many of us write down what came, then bring it to the Hearth to share, in our own words, with women who listen and witness your experience.
Carrying it home: the Wheel of the Year and hedgerow plant spirits
For Charlie, the membership reaches into the rest of her week.
“I feel held during the week and supported in starting to live my daily life differently.”
Kate also finds it through the other women: “Here I can share my life, rituals and beliefs with other members. In turn, they share their lives with me. Through this, I learn new ways, new rituals and new ideas.”
We turn with the Wheel of the Year, gathering for ceremony at the four fire festivals and both solstices. Next comes the winter solstice, the longest night, when we sit together in the dark and wait for the sun’s return. Between the festivals, the writing and small rituals after each journey carry the work back into your days.
From Hedgerow Medicine, a resource for all members. Each month, as the wheel turns, a plant from the hedge comes to meet us. We share how to make its medicine, bring its old stories, and offer a drum journey to meet its spirit. Then the space is yours, to share what grows in your hedges, what you made, and what the plant showed you on the journey.
Each month, a a plant is brought in from the hedgerow. A seasonal recipe is shared alongside the old folklore, and that month’s drum journey goes to meet its spirit. In October it was rosehip, glowing red in the hedges as the year turned. Right now, women are voting on what November’s plant should be.
In the Grove, there are courses are already waiting. One of them, The Compassionate Wise Elder, weaves Internal Family Systems (IFS) with Celtic shamanism.
It supports women to step into Self energy: the calm, compassionate presence already within us, beneath all the parts that work so hard to keep us going. You meet your own wise elder, sit with your parts around the fire and more.
Through story, breath and drum journey, you come to know Self energy as something you feel: a warmth in the chest, a settling in the belly, a steadiness you can find your way back to.
Throughout the resources that accompany the journeys, meditations and courses, there are invitations to bring shamanism into your daily life through simple practices and rituals, like working with your own Brigid's cloth
The founding women are helping me choose what courses grow in the Grove next.
A women’s circle online wherever you are
You can join from a kitchen table, a bed or a car parked outside the school, with your camera off if that’s what you need. Every gathering is recorded, so if life gets in the way, the circle waits for you.
“I was nervous it may be impersonal or superficial, but those worries were so unfounded. The space feels so safe and supported and full of people genuinely sharing their own reflections.”
Women coming together in circle
Women have always gathered. Around the hearth, at the well, in the fields at harvest. Somewhere along the way many of us lost that, and we feel the loss in our bones. The membership is one way back to it, among women who know what you mean when you say you are walking this path.
Kate says it well:
“The Women’s Celtic Shamanic Journey membership is like coming home. Or finding home.”
The founding doors close on 8 November. If you join before then, the founding rate of £25 a month stays with you for as long as you stay with us. If something in you has been leaning towards this, maybe this is your invitation to come and gather with us.
Coming home to ourselves is at the heart of Selkie, Reclaiming Our Skins, a new course coming soon to the Grove. Each module ends with ways to carry the work into your own life: questions to sit with, freewriting, or simply making a mark on the page.
My thanks to Charlie, Mel, Georgina, Kate and Fiona for their words, and to every woman in the circle for coming as she is.
