Of the setting:
The dancing was great fun and also served well to connect us as a group. I gained so much from the connected breath work session too and found that I could go much deeper into this than on my previous retreat. I experienced a great amount of emotional release.
Without exaggerating, this weekend was one of the most healing and inspirational experiences. I was welcomed by the guides and the other participants in an accepting and loving community, where although I am not overly communicative, I felt acceptance and love. The caring atmosphere gave me the courage to explore parts of myself that needed healing and over the course of the weekend, I felt my whole being come back into alignment. By the end, I came away with a much better insight on who I am, where I came from, where I will be going, and what is most important to me in my life. This weekend brought me a new harmony within myself and my relationship with the world.
As a very brief summary of what I have gained from the retreat, I can include: some very fundamental lessons on how to be a human being, facing and exploring some of my fears, especially regarding allowing myself to feel and experience challenging emotions. I have the sense that I was not learning anything new, just rediscovering that which is innate but has been well hidden.
I felt that I was extremely cared for and in the safest environment in the world.
The ceremonial space and atmosphere, I found it all magical… great energies floating and mixing with and around perfectly picked music and the attention of the team, a real-life daydream.
I loved the group! Our collective sense of purpose along with sharing and experience based exercises allowed many of us to bond and connect with each other quickly and in many cases at a very deep level.
The experience with the group was actually really rewarding. The amount of energy as a collective was overwhelming powerful. I learned how to quite my mind from other and how to take on the environment. Their courage to face their fears inspired me to do the same.
I liked that there was enough time for sharings. I find they really bring people together and bond them as a group. It helped to feel with the issues, topics and things going on in each others’ lives and made me realize that there are some topics that seem to affect almost all women. Interesting and helpful observation which really created a bond and made the ladies “sisters” in the end. The days were such a blissful experience. Geke did not take large breaks, but made us experience the preparation in one block. That brought a lot of positive female energy into the room. Some parts of the workshop moved me to tears as they touched me deep inside.
This weekend was like coming home, back to my sisters
It made me feel connected, not only with this beautiful women in this circle, but with women around the world. It was a big healing experience, especially because I never connected with sisters like this, I always have been afraid of doing that. Now I have felt the beauty of it. And it brought back ancient times ~ where we sang and danced and cried and laughed together. It was a healing proces for me and I feel that healing proces will continue for a long time.
It was a very enriching experience that brought me new insights and self-compassion with regard to aspects of my personality; love, deep appreciation and compassion towards some specific people in my life and beautiful new connections to people I didnt new before and deeper connection with friends.
Nothing compares to the magical spaces that Geke creates for people to heal.
The last day of integrating and sharing was a great experience. I felt a positive change in myself, and all of the group. The last sharing was very beautiful.
I felt the rituals were very engaging and useful. They made me connect to humanity and my ancestors and to the other participants. I felt we all had pain that needed to be released and worked through.
I especially liked the breath work and got amazing insights from it. I was surprised that — with the right surroundings, guidance and an open heart — so much can be done with the breath work.
I also very much liked the mini ceremony of burning the things we wanted to let go of when moving to the next decade. This, I feel, could be done also in other ceremonies no matter what time of year. It was surprisingly powerful, and whenever things I let go of try to creep back into my mind (such as blaming myself or holding on to certain people), I am still reminded that I made the decision to let go, and it is OK.
All in all, the exercises were important and I feel they guided my weekend especially towards generational healing.
So I asked divine Mother Earth
”How do I find more peace?” and I was told:
Peace isn’t something you can find, it’s just here.
You are swimming it, immersed in it.
It’s the ground reality of reality, hiding in plain sight.
You just need to see it with your hearts eye.
There is nothing to know, nothing to become, nowhere to arrive.
It’s all here.
Take off your blindfold, see this rose garden.
Everything is already in a state of loving grace and serenity, it’s before you, in you, it is you.
You humans and your silly minds.
It’s happening, we can be aware and remember or not, it’s ok either way, as either way the spiral of loving creation turns, it moves and evolves, inevitably it will draw us in.
It is inescapable.
Come home brother, father, son, come home my child.
Come home to your heart, this body I give to you, your home in love.
And so she kneaded me in her love, grinded me in her love, enfolded me in the ecstasy and bewildering beauty of her love.
She then took me through all my pain and suffering, my sorrow and sadness and it was witnessed by the stars and held in the earth of her creation.
What a wonderful life I have had and I have.
As all paths, no matter how painful and arduous lead back into love.
What sweet and existential relief.
As I both witnessed the depth of my pain with sense of being it, whilst being apart from it.
The container and the contained.
The loving awareness of myself, is myself.
For human history isn’t the story of conquests and civilizations, it is simple the story of love. Marked by times of deep remembrance and times of dark amnesia.
So too is the story of my life.
Of the locations:
The retreat in Portugal is in the most beautiful setting. It is a sacred space, but also a relaxed space, and it felt good to be there. I loved the smells of the fragrant plants growing wild. The food, when it came, was wonderful – many thanks to Miguel and his team.
The house and the workshop space are very beautiful, being so close to nature is refreshing and really helps you enter a contemplative mood.
The location was fantastic, in the middle of the woods, birds chirping around and geese flying over head… just amazing.
The room was very cosy and warm, facilities were plenty and in perfect working order.
The food was really nice, abundant and tasty (considering it was mainly soups!).
The location was lovely. I so appreciated the natural setting. I know many of my group (myself included) took daily walks in the nature reserve. The guest house was warm, clean and cozy, and I liked that there were communal areas but also areas where you could be more secluded.
The location is beautiful and peaceful
The location was amazing. I enjoyed the nature and the surroundings. It was nice to be at a eco-friendly place with permaculture and animals.
Beautiful location and a great workshop room. It was amazing, also thanks to the candles and the altar. It was also great you could just go outside, directly walk in the forest, and meet nobody but wood and birds.
Of the team:
I am so grateful for the loving care the team gave to me and the others, and importantly to each other. I have rarely experienced such unconditional caring and love. Someone was always there when I needed them. I am overwhelmingly grateful that each of the guides were there. They were all so different, and brought such different energies to the group. And yet, they complemented each other so well.
Geke and the team of guides all showed such loving kindness, insight and support throughout the whole retreat. Each member of the team possesses such a highly evident degree of integrity and passion for what they are doing. I found it incredibly admirable and inspirational to be in the presence of such genuine and open people; so connected, dedicated, hard-working and self-less in their approach to helping others on the journeys of self-realisation and with healing processes. The personal qualities that the team possessed gave me an inherent sense of trust in them and the processes involved over the weekend.
The composition of the team was simply brilliant. Such beautiful and authentic women with strenght and softness and so present within themselves. It provided the best space and setting possible!
The whole team was amazing. It was very inspirational to feel how they “worked” and were part of the retreat.
How beautifully you move with each other and individually, smooth, organically and as such providing me with a warm safe loving encouraging ground, from which I could spread my wings and fly.
I found your guidance very important, patient and comforting. It was essential and it’s difficult to come up with suggestions on how to improve it. It made me feel safe even when at times I felt we were on the level of infants who needed adults to take care of us.
You seemed to know what you were doing at all times and you did everything in a compassionate manner!
It was an amazing experience. You managed to create an atmosphere of trust, love, safety to allow things to develop the way they were meant to be. You guys also knew intuitively when to help during difficult parts of the journey and I am so grateful for this.
Of Geke:
Really beautiful, soft, strong and empowering. Geke empowers her whole team and consequently holds a truly safe space. She is a wonderful example to me of levelling and leading at the same time.
Her energy was so strong and compassionate. She not only oversaw the group but the team as well with loving guidance. I really appreciate how she was present and open but set clear boundaries for her own wellbeing.
One of the qualities that I really like in Geke is that she made time for everyone individually and despite the many different demands put on her time and energy by the role of leading the retreat, she remained so positive and approachable. Geke has the great ability to lead a group with a down to earth calm authority and sense of humour. Her relaxed and happy manner along with a great sense of the wisdom that she possesses really helped to put members of the group at ease and enabled the activities to naturally flow well.
Geke is an amazing coordinator and team leader with a great sense of humor. I was thankful for her attention, support, motherly vibe and care! She dedicated herself to be completely focused and attentive to the whole retreat, participants, and guides from beginning to the end. I felt that she had an extreme depth of knowledge.
Geke is loving, wise and inspiring. Having experienced a number of different facilitators at this point, I really feel I’m in the best of hands with Géke. I have felt very safe, trusting and skillfully guided, and every experience has been incredibly vivid and powerful for me.
I really liked that Geke shared personal stories from her everyday life with the rest of the circle. It was an all-female circle and to have the woman that guides you to also be as vulnerable and as “imperfect” is SO valuable. Geke was just being herself. It it is so damn beautiful! It taught me the meaning of true femininity – it’s not being soft, strong, perfect, guilty, “the good girl’, ” the bad girl”, the enlightened one. It’s being ALL of the above at the same time and owning it. Thank you for that!
Geke held space for everyone, was very present and always in search of things to improve, to arrange for the participants and to orchestrate everything. Her presence was loving and healing.
Connective, compassionate, loving. In general: trusting and tuned into the energy of the whole and going from there which is beautiful and an art, light- air, dancer.
Geke has such a strong, such a powerful presence as well as calming and nurturing all at the same time. She had such intuition about when and what was needed. It was truly extraordinary. She is doing exactly what she was meant to do.
I feel like Geke was an amazing guardian who was watching over us and this made me feel very safe and protected. I feel that Geke is a very skilled and experienced facilitator and used the best format to bring the whole group together in a truly meaningful way.