An Invitation to explore:
Inner journey to the True Self.
Divine Heart Guidance.
Ancient & New Wisdom to show the way.
Courageous Joy.
Deep Connection to Self, Relationship & Earth Wisdom.
there is a wild woman under our skin who wants to dance, sing grief and offer endless creativity.”
Toko-Pa Turner Belonging
I’m on a journey of Tending the Wild & Sacred would you like to join me?
A series of nature-based, expressive arts-based, IFS-Informed, Deep Sharing Circles exploring parts and Self/Soul using the Archetypal stages from the Great Round, Internal Family Sytems (IFS) and the Journey of Soul Initiation by Bill Plotkin
The other circle I guide is the Deep Parts Wisdom Circle (2024-2025) more information is here.
A sacred circle is something in and of itself. It is larger than the participants within it, calls forth essential truth, and orients us towards love. Your circle will be the leader of itself, and like all true expressions of love, it will not force, persuade or cajole but will wait with infinite patience and understanding to be heard and expressed…”
~ Jenny Rose Smith, TreeSisters Groves Mama
To find out more information or to register please email Sara on saraphillipstas@gmail.com
Circle of Connection
Our intention is to:
Gather in a circle to listen deeply and connect to Self, Other Souls and Mother Earth,
Explore Journey to Self / Soul Archetypes with embodied movement visualisation, active imagination, creative expression, rituals and deep sharing in a soft flowing heart and soul dancing circle
Leave each circle feeling held and supported with an embodied visual map of your next right step toward Self/Soul, feeling lighter and joy in your heart having dived deeper into your body, heart and soul wisdom.
Be held and healed in circle as you listen deeply to your own inner guidance in a safe and sacred space
We need circles of connection now more than ever to be seen, heard and understood, to find our way home to true belonging and active hope, to follow our yearning…” Sara
These circles combine all the healing strategies I use in my own life to understand my emotions / parts and to access more Self / Soul Energy; art journalling, immersion in nature, rituals and ceremonies, Soulcraft practices, embodied movement, music, free dance, poetry, gratitude practice, deep connection to the elements, Mother Earth and the more than human world, mindfulness, self-compassion and deep sharing in a safe and sacred circle.’ Sara
More Information on the 12 Archetypal Stages of the Great Round and the Journey to Soul Initiation here.
Life is more like a devotional practice with more layers appearing for healing, but with each layer more clarity and freedom are realized…” “With each layer that comes up-embrace triggers, mother the child within, differentiate present from past and meet life more fully TRUSTING whatever comes up is for the best even if my mind doesn’t now how or why yet.”
Bethany Webster, Discovering the Inner Mother
Registration Details:
We will meet in circle, online, on 4th Monday of every month 7-9pm starting from 23rd September 2024, (the circle will only be open for new members in September, October 2024 and in March 2025).
Contact Sara on 0458231968 or saraphillipstas@gmail.com to register
Dates:
- 23rd September
- 28th October
- 25th November
- 9th December (please note earlier date)
- 27th January
- 24th February
- 24th March
- 28th April
- 26th May
- 23rd June
- 28th July
- 25th August
Payment:
Regular Payment of $45 per month, ($270 for 6 months, $540 for 12 months)
Donations: $5 per month, $30 each over 6 months from each participant will be donated to Bush Heritage Australia.
$45 Payment by direct bank transfer / paypal needs to be received before the first circle to confirm your place. Numbers are limited to ensure we have a small intimate circle.
When the inner balance between who you think you are and who you really are shifts, you go through something like an initiation experience as you find your new equilibrium.”
Susanne F Fincher Menopause: the Healing Journey
If your heart and soul feel called register now by emailing Sara on saraphillipstas@gmail.com
What am I holding? Who is holding me?
Mandala
A more detailed invitation for Tending the Wild & Sacred: 2024-2025:
Dear Heart & Soul,
We wish to invite you on a heart and soul journey through 12 moon cycles: an inner journey to allow, celebrate and welcome all that you are and to move deeper into exploring all that living a more ecosoulcentric life in the year ahead.
This journey will explore the wheel of life (the Archetypal Stages of the Great Round – read more below) and allow you to release ego/ parts, thoughts, beliefs, stories and rules that no longer serve you and step into living more from your true authentic Self, your heart and soul, your Wild and Sacred nature and your Divine essence.
We will create a sacred container, a sacred circle, to hold and support the changes that happen in life; small transitions in one part of our life and more significan t transformational transitions such as allowing and birthing the transition from first adulthood to second adulthood (Journey to Soul Intitiation by Bill Plotkin). Our journey will be celebrated in an honouring ceremony in Februray after 6 months when we are on retreat.
In our sacred circle we have permission to express all that we are; our shadow and light, our joy and fear, our humanity and our wild essential nature, our inner child parts and the Divine Feminine, through meditation, creative visualisations, creative processing, journalling, art journalling, healing circles, rituals, intuitive movement/dance, mythology, archetypes and deep, sacred, safe sharing.
With each layer I’ve become both more tender and fierce, like a blend of innocent child and wise crone, and this energy expresses as the adult woman I am.”
Bethany Webster, Discovering the Inner Mother
The wild nature carries the bundles for healing; she carries everything a woman needs to be and know. She carries the medicine for all things. She carries stories and dreams and words and songs and signs and symbols. She is both vehicle and destination. “ Clarissa Pinkola Estes from Women Who Run With Wolves: Contacting the power of the wild woman
If you feel called to:
- Deepen your connection to your Self, Others & Mother Earth on a journey of self-discovery & transformation.
- Be in a safe and sacred space for your heart & soul to express your needs, reset your inner compass, focus in on what is important to you and live your most authentic and empowered life.
- Fulfil a deep need to refill your heart, be deeply seen, heard and listened to, to let go of any burdens you are carrying and be welcomed as you are.
- Feel lighter, renewed, deeply supported and in tune with your inner wisdom/ intuition/ subconscious: knowing your inner truth and heart and soul intentions for each month.
- Step out of your roles as Parent/Partner/Adult Child/Sibling and tend to the Wold and sacred within you to find a sense of balance and deep inner well-being.
- Heal your body, mind, heart, soul & spirit to be in tune with your wild and sacred instinctual Self
- Explore with IFS-informed practices how to access more Self Energy / Soul to have more curiousity, compassion, creativity, courage, clarity, presence, playfulness
- Explore the transformational Journey of Soul Initiation outlined in Bill Plotkins book (of the same name) using the 12 archetypal stages of the Great Round
Then please join us for our next Tend to the Wild & Sacred Circle:
Contact Sara on 0458231968 or saraphillipstas@gmail.com to register
Wandering in nature is perhaps the most essential soulcraft practice for contemporary westerners who have wandered so far from nature. The earth speaks to us in a manner and a muscle with which nothing in town compares. What nature has to say is the necessary complement to what we hear all day long from news and social chatter. To save our souls we need nature’s news.
SOULCRAFT: CROSSING INTO THE MYSTERIES OF NATURE AND PSYCHE BY BILL PLOTKIN
Some of the inner resources we will be cultivating and tending within ourselves within each circle are Self-Energy / Soul Qualities such as: courage, compassion, deep connection, acceptance, authentic purpose, deep inner well-being, healthy balance, self-care, spirituality, play, creativity, dance, singing and inner wisdom/intuition. (many of these are beautifully described in the Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown and are considered core qualities of Self in Internal Family Systems (IFS)).
Your deep authenticity…is the most potent expression of the Divine.”
Bethany Webster, Discovering the Inner Mother
Reflection Questions for our Journey:
- What if we could truly celebrate moving into a more Soul-led life?
- What if we could be fully supported in a sacred circle as we transition through the body, heart, soul, spirit and mind changes that occur in creating a more Soul-led life?
- What if we created space to deeply explore and process the letting go of grief, fears and old narratives while we open up to receiving Divine heart wisdom and insights and return to our lives feeling stronger, wiser, kinder, more compassionate, more grounded and connected to ourselves, others and Mother Earth while tending to new narratives?
- What if we opened up space in our lives to be loved, held and supported through one of life’s major transitions?
- What if we could love, hold, and support ourselves enough that we could honour this transition and dive deep into our heart and soul space to allow all the letting go and all the healing we need?
- What if we could support our healing through mandalas, meditation, journaling, visualisations, dance, embodied movement and sharing in sacred space with a circle of kindred women?
- What if we could let our deepest heart and soul receive and speak?
- What if through exploring ancient mythology we can find a path to a deeper knowing, we can see our personal story is also universal mythology?
When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle, an inspiratrice, an intuitive, a maker, a creator, an inventor and a listener who guide, suggest and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer worlds. When women are close to this nature the fact of that relationship glows through them. This wild teacher, wild mother, wild mentor supports their inner and outer lives, no matter what.“
Clarissa Pinkola Estes from Women Who Run With Wolves: Contacting the power of the wild woman
Registration Details:
We will meet in circle, online, on 4th Monday of every month 7pm starting from 23rd September 2024, (the circle will only be open for new members in September 2024 and in March 2025).
Contact Sara on 0458231968 or saraphillipstas@gmail.com to register
Dates:
- 23rd September
- 28th October
- 25th November
- 9th December (please note earlier date)
- 27th January
- 24th February
- 24th March
- 28th April
- 26th May
- 23rd June
- 28th July
- 25th August
Payment:
Regular Payment of $45 per month, ($270 for 6 months, $540 for 12 months)
Donations: $5 per month, $30 each over 6 months from each participant will be donated to Bush Heritage Australia.
$45 Payment by direct bank transfer / paypal needs to be received before the first circle to confirm your place. Numbers are limited to ensure we have a small intimate circle.
According to Jung, mandalas symbolize “a safe refuge of inner reconciliation and wholeness.” They have the potential to call forth something universal within, perhaps even the proverbial archetypal Self. And at the same time, they give us an experience of wholeness amid the chaos of everyday life, making the “sacred circle” one of the very coolest art therapy interventions for both soothing the soul and meeting oneself. Cathy Malchiodi
What is needed: A journal with pen and crayons/pastels for writing and drawing, comfy clothes and a drink bottle, a private, comfortable space for the workshop where you can move freely and comfortably as well as meditate/visualise without interruption. It can be useful to have good bluetooth headphones or good speakers so the music sounds great. Please allow 5 minutes before the group starts to set up your sacred space, you might want to light a candle, bring some sacred nature objects, create an alter, do some breathing or stretching to feel ready to enter sacred space.
Recommended Resources for our Journey (if you want to do more exploring):
- The Mandala Workbook: A creative guide for self-exploration, balance & well-being by Susanne F. Fincher
- Journey to Soul Initiation by Bill Plotkin
- No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz
- Women Who Run With Wolves: Contacting the power of the wild woman by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Prerequisites: This group is for everyone – it will be useful if you have experienced some IFS, or have experienced mindfulness but not essential. Doing an IFS-informed group such as this one, might bring up some strong emotions and it is recommended that you have support from an individual therapist/coach if you need.
This journey is for you if: your heart feels the call, if these reflection questions (above) resonate, if you are curious, if you are ready to begin or continue this transition to a more Soul-Led life, if you are prepared to dive deep and gift yourself healing time and sacred space for your Wild and Sacred Authentic Self this year, (daily and monthly) in our sacred circle.
Please speak to Sara before you register to ensure this circle is the right fit for you and to let her know where you are at in your healing journey right now:
Members Page:
All prompts for the activities we do in our monthly sacred circle (meditations, intuitive movement prompts, mythology, creative processing etc) will be recorded and available online (in our members page) to do in your own time if you can’t join us in the live online circle. We will also all be able to share online our insights, our deep process and any heart and soul resources we find useful throughout each moon cycle in our online message group.
Honouring Ceremony and Retreat: We will honour our journey and sovereignty while on a day long retreat in February (Date TBA). Each participant will be responsible for paying for their own accommodation, transport and food. The Retreat is entirely optional to deep dive further into our own Inner Journey (an added bonus if you can make it!). These retreats will include a welcoming and closing circle, our sacred circle on the theme of that month, forest bathing/journeying and an honouring ceremony. We hope you can make it to each retreat but if not we will share photos and our experience after each retreat so you will have the opportunity to create your own retreat too.
The Wanderer discovers her unique path by perceiving the world with imagination and feeling. She senses what is possible as well as actual. She sees into people and places and possibilities and she cultivates a relationship with the invisible realms as much as the visible. She is in conversation with the mysteries of the world, on the lookout for signs and omens. She attends to the edges, those places where one thing merges with another, where consciousness shifts and opens, where the world becomes something different from what it initially appeared to be… Of the four windows of knowing (thinking, feeling, imagining and sensing) imagination is the Wanderer’s most potent tool, her way of seeing into the dark, of illuminating the shadows, of digging deeper into soul... The Wanderer cultivates this ability to see into the dark. She learns to access and retrieve the images waiting for her in her soul, the images she was born to make manifest in the world, that identify her gift to the world.”
Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing into the mysteries of nature and psyche
Healing Compass
Daily Practices:
As this is a deep healing dive into your heart and soul we will be exploring how to deepen daily practices and rituals in our lives to support our healing and our gentle growth from all of our loyal soldier parts (ego) to our authentic Self/Soul, from fear to Love, from a parts-led life to a Soul-led life, from survival dance to sacred dance. These daily practices / rituals may include stream of consciousness journaling, creative processing, nature-based rituals, meditation, visualisations, affirmations, intuitive movement / dance, mythology, archetypes and prayer.
Rituals gave voice to my awe of the power that moves behind a human life and sends us healing whether we want it or not.”
Susanne F Fincher Menopause: the Healing Journey
We all recognise the difficulties in finding time for these daily practices yet in this 12 moon cycle we give ourselves permission to play and experiment on how best to give ourselves heart and soul space each day, knowing that even 5-10 minutes a day can make a huge difference for our healing and transformation.
February 2022
Registration & More Information: saraphillipstas@gmail.com
More Information on the 12 Archetypal Stages of the Great Round and the Journey to Soul Initiation here.
…the loving old crone was a part of me,… She was the quiet centre of myself that I would spend a lifetime knowing on deeper levels…. I knew that my offerings as a healer would flow from my connection to that ancient feminine wisdom within.”
Susanne F Fincher: Menopause: the Healing Journey
A woman must descend into the dark, chaotic unknown within herself in order to discover that beneath all of the upset she is cradled in the arms of the…goddess who weaves the web of life. Touching this mystery at the centre of herself, a woman is initiated into her new way of being.”
Susanne F Fincher Menopause: the Healing Journey
A little more about Sara:
I am fascinated with this life-long healing journey of moving out of my mind/ego/parts and into my heart/authentic Self. I used to struggle with anxiety and depression and as a busy Mum I was always searching for healing tools and practices that would support me to be in my heart and soul space in a realistic and very human way.
Over the years I practiced more and more meditation and mindfulness which calmed my nervous system and supported my well-being in a deep way. In 2015 I did the Artists Way program for the first time and discovered creative processing in art journals and stream of conscious journalling and it was a revelation to me how healing this practice is, how it supports deep subconscious insights and change. I have been doing both forms of journalling since! In 2023 I dived into Intuitive Drawing IFS-Informed Workshops with Ruth Culver and Journalling your parts with Nique Murch. This year I’ve dived into a nature-based Expressive Arts course (combining two things I LOVE) with Cathy Malchiodi and Elizabeth Warson…
I then discovered the Divine healing, support and insights available in sacred women’s circles and in 2017 I discovered the Great Round of Mandala, an exploration of the archetypal stages we cycle through as humans in our journey through the wheel of life. This journey encompassed creative processing in such a deep healing way I was drawn to repeat the journey in 2019 in a sacred women’s’ circle, the first Wise Woman Within Circle and this was continued 2020-2022.
As women we are most powerful when we join hands in sisterhood. Finding our place, discovering that we belong, and leaning into sisterhood with like-minded women who share our values and dreams allows us to discover and express our most authentic selves Togetherness is key. Sisterhood is everything.”
~ Clare Dubois, Founder of TreeSisters
I was so lucky to do a New Moon Dance Meditation with Ashuma Sachdeva in Delhi in 2019 and I have felt the call to offer similar intuitive dance since then. Ever since I can remember I have loved dancing, I have experimented with different dance styles but now I feel the call to move my body freely, to process emotions, to understand my innermost heart and spirit, to feel a connection with the Divine & Mother Earth, through intuitive dance, meditation and creative expression. I would love you to share some Courageous Joy with me! Inspiration for the dance we will do comes from https://www.dancingmindfulness.com/ and I am also a trained Chakradance facilitator.
Lately I’ve been craving even more support and holding for this midlife transition that I find myself in, where everything appears to be changing; my body, heart, soul, spirit, mind, relationships, role in life, my personal identity and so the list of changes goes on… So here I find myself again in 2024 asking….
What if I gathered women into a sacred circle and we explored a nature-based, expressive-arts, embodied movement Soul initiation journey?
What if we explored all of the healing practices found in Internal Family Systems, The Journey of Soul Initiation and the Great Round?
And so here I am nurturing the seed…and inviting you to join me…
Does your heart feel called to meditate, visualise, create, dance, process, move intuitively, play in a sacred loving, holding, supportive heart space?
Does your soul feel called to release, let go, receive and transform?
I hope so xxx
To register or for more info: Phone Sara on 0458231968, Email: saraphillipstas@gmail.com
What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky?”
David Whyte: What to remember when waking
Having journeyed with Sara for a number of years now in her online circle format, I can sooooo recommend her spaces that always allow and guide me back to myself and the wisdom that resides within me. Sara holds a grounded wisdom and deep humility and a strong intention to empower rather than take power. As someone who had to learn through numerous experiences of giving power away to others I can truly say that Sara creates a space within the circle where we all sit beside each other, a circle where every experience and perspective is valuable and welcomed and no one is less than or more than. A place to remember that you belong as your unique self perfectly imperfect. A place where you can digest Your unique experiences both challenging and joyful in a way that can provide a compass to living a life in connection with soul and heart. It is from this place that we hold a compass to walk our own unique path with respect and kindness and courage. Thankyou Sara your spaces have been foundational in finding my way back home to the deep heart wisdom within me .
Louise Kissane 9th July 2021
We are all filled with a longing for the wild… No matter where we are, the shadow that trots behind us is definitely four-footed.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes from Women Who Run With Wolves: Contacting the power of the wild woman
All photos and drawings are attributed to Sara Phillips unless stated otherwise copyright 2012-2024