A Journey Inward
Celebrating the Harvest at Lúnasa
Taking Your Seat at the Banquet of Life - Cultivating Beauty, Sensuality and Meaning
Sunday August 18th, 2024
9:00 am - 12:00 pm PST (Pacific Standard Time)
5:00 pm - 8:00 pm IST (Irish Standard Time)
You are invited to join me for a 3-hour live online workshop experience - Deepening the Senses – A Journey Inward – Celebrating the Harvest at Lunasa on Sunday 18th August 2024 at 9 am (PST) and 5 pm (IST).
This workshop is open to Ireland, USA, and Internationally.
The Harvest Festival of Lúnasa/Lúghnasadh/Lúghnasa was one of the four half-quarter-day festivals in the ancient Irish/Celtic year. it marks the mid-point between the Summer Solstice and the Equinox and was celebrated in remembrance of the Celtic God Lugh. It marks the end of the period of summer growth and the beginning of the autumn harvest. Lúghnasadh celebrates the fruition of the year’s work. Most of the food that could last the winter has been stored, and people are preparing for Autumn and Winter to settle in.
Lúghnasadh is a time to enjoy the fruits of the summer, the sun, and the bounty. It is a time to rejoice, with gratitude, at the hard work. To embrace in the moment the abundance that life has to offer.
This workshop will explore, through the lens of Depth Psychology, how we can interrupt our life force and our potential. We will explore what is unlived in one’s life and create a space of curiosity and reflection on how our past stories hold us back. What might it be like to feel enlivened, creative, and inspired in our lives rather than exhausted and depleted and feeling that something of the soul self is missing?
Our past stories and wounds often prevent us from being present in the world, from feeling joy and gratitude, a sense of contentment in our lives, and feeling safe in the abundance of life around us. When we have these wounds, it is difficult to allow beauty in, to embrace in the sensual, embodied life. We should allow ourselves to, as the poet John Keats wrote, “Singest of summer in full-throated ease”.
When we have past wounding, it can be very difficult to truly feel worthy of that feeling of contentment in our lives or even to know what that feels like in the body. Even when we start to heal those wounds, it can feel bewildering and sometimes overwhelming initially because the body is unfamiliar with it. To begin to feel safe in your body, without being vigilant and watchful, to experience life not in survival mode, requires support to the self until it starts to feel familiar and safe to let it in. It can be difficult to rejoice in the force of life, to be in our body and senses, to feel one deserves to be, to take the metaphorical seat at the banquet of life, and to really and truly let it in. This workshop explores how to support yourself in claiming life’s beauty and abundance at this harvest time.
What will this workshop look like?
There will be a presentation that draws on understandings from depth psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, literature and poetry using images and music that evoke and stir the senses and imagination. Through gentle embodiment practices, there will be an opportunity to resource and support you to connect to your body to enhance that learning experience. Trauma is held in the body, and we need to return to the body to heal it.
The presentation will have a Q and A section where you can ask questions and share your insights and reflections.
This workshop will take you on a journey into the inner world and soul self, invoking the spirit and wisdom of ancient Ireland, of the harvest festival of Lughnasa and the ancient banquets, Gaelic stories, myths, poetry, folklore and ancient landscape. This aims to help you find your inner ground and light the way for you on this journey inward.
When we listen to myths, we step into a timeless world, out of the rational concrete, into the symbolic life. This is the world of soul, the world of metaphor and imagination. This makes us more receptive to our inner environment, life's energies, and the archetypal patterns living through us. This workshop is cultivated with great care to create an experience for you to engage your heart, mind, body and soul self.
During this workshop…
… we will deepen our understanding of our self-abandonment wound and its connection to our own unlived life, our self-worth and our deservedness.
… we will build a foundation of insight to support change and growth.
… we will explore why we might self-sabotage and how to change it.
… we will explore embodiment practices, which will focus on cultivating safety in the body, recognizing how vigilance shows up and prevents us from “playing” and being at ease.
… we will explore how we can fear letting joy in (foreboding joy) and how to change that pattern in our lives.
… we will explore beauty and sensuality, the life force of eros, the appreciation of life’s everyday moments, and how to deepen into the senses and embrace life in new ways that enhance fulfilment and creativity.
How will this workshop help me?
This workshop will explore how self-abandonment patterns show up in your own life. It will create a foundation of self-awareness and provide you with ways to support and resource you to begin healing this wound. It will look more closely at how to allow beauty into our everyday lives, free from vigilance and patterns of self sabatage so that you can finally “play”, nurturing a sense of deservedness and self-worth. This workshop will explore how you can support yourself to build gratitude into your life, to feast on what enriches you free from fear of joy, guilt and shame, and how to create spaces of support and more profound meaning and ritual in your daily life.
Workshop Agenda
-
We are arriving into the body and setting out our intentions for our time together. You will be invited to light a candle to set your intention for your work.
-
This workshop will take you on a journey into the inner world and soul self, invoking the spirit and wisdom of ancient Ireland, its stories, myths, poetry, folklore and ancient landscape. This aims to help you find your inner ground and light the way for you on this healing journey inward.
When we listen to myths, we step into a timeless world, out of the rational concrete into the symbolic life. This is the world of soul, the world of metaphor and imagination. This makes us more receptive to our inner environment and the energies of life and the archetypal patterns living through us. This workshop is cultivated with great care to create an experience for you to engage your heart, mind, body and soul self.
-
There will be a presentation that draws on understandings from depth psychotherapy, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, literature and poetry using images and music that evoke and stir the senses and imagination. There will be opportunity through gentle embodiment practices, to resource and support you to connect to your body to enhance that learning experience. Trauma is held in the body, and we need to return to the body to heal it.
-
At the end there will be time for answering any questions you may have, to share reflections and to help deepen the experience for you and the other participants.
This workshop is grounded in:
Depth psychotherapy research, theories and practices, somatic psychotherapy, psychology and neuroscience, Celtic mythology, ancient Gaelic wisdom in folklore and stories, the medium of poetry, art images, symbol and metaphor.
This workshop is ideal for you if:
… you recognize yourself in the description of the Self-abandonment wound and need to make changes in your life to heal this wound.
… you are struggling with your sense of self, self-worth, deservedness and self-esteem.
… you struggle with self-sabotage and feelings of fear when joy comes into your life.
… you are passionate and curious about deepening a connection to your soul self – to experience the fullness of that in your body and the world around you.
… you are curious about cultivating “play” in your life and embracing the moments, beauty and sensuality of life, free from the survival mode of vigilance.
… you are curious about the ancient Gaelic culture and the healing powers of our Celtic ancestors through the ages, connecting to a deeper inner world and landscape of a collective psyche and soul – through the ancient Gaelic Celtic culture, mythology and landscape.
By the end of the workshop you will:
Recognize and identify how the self-abandonment wound interrupts you from fully connecting to yourself and others.
Begin to feel more resourced to support yourself in your body to heal this wound.
Begin to connect to the beauty and wonder around you and how deepening into the senses, in play, and embodied presence, supports you in this healing.
Begin to understand how our old narratives and embodied trauma keep us stuck in vigilance and self-sabotage, and you will have very practical tools and skills for how to support yourself to change it.
Experience curiosity, a spark of recognition and connection to your soul self, and a sense of gratitude for the abundance of life itself.
Experience the wisdom and the wonder of ancient Gaelic culture and tradition and the Celtic festivals, and how this wisdom can resource and support us today to deepen into the body and soul self.
Book Your Seat
Celebrating
the Harvest
at Lúnasa
Take Your Seat at the Banquet of Life - Cultivating Beauty, Sensuality and Meaning
Sunday August 18th, 2024
9:00 am - 12:00 pm PST (Pacific Standard Time)
5:00 pm - 8:00 pm IST (Irish Standard Time)
This workshop will look more closely at how to allow beauty into our everyday lives, free from vigilance, so that you can finally “play”, nurturing a sense of deservedness and self-worth. This workshop will explore how you can support yourself to build gratitude into your life and to feast on what enriches you, free from guilt and shame. We will create spaces of support, deeper meaning and experience of the sacred in daily life.
Learn more about the workshop here.
What’s Included?
3-Hour LIVE Zoom Workshop
Welcome Email and Follow-Up Email
Access to the Recorded Workshop (available 2-3 days after)
Companion E-Book to continue your personal development after the workshop
CPD Certificate for Irish Professionals (3 hours)
This workshop is open to Ireland, USA, and Internationally. Discount codes are available for past participants and current therapy clients; contact Eileen for more information.
About the host
Eileen Sullivan
I grew up in Connemara which is a wild and rugged on the Atlantic in the west of Ireland. I grew up in a small Gaelic (Irish) speaking community where Gaelic is still spoken today in the homes of people living there. Gaelic is an ancient language. Its traces, in written form, reach back to Ogham inscriptions on stone from the 4 th Century AD.
Gaelic is my first language. I did not speak any English until I started attending school at five years old. The region where I grew up was a major center for the work of the Irish folklore commission recording endangered folklore, mythology, sean-nos (old-style) songs, and oral literature. My own development, my soul self, has been greatly influenced by that physical landscape, and by being immersed in those ancient songs, stories, customs, myths, legends, and music since I was a child.
This is at the heart of these workshops and retreats. My desire is to share with you the experience of that ancient Celtic culture and spirit and, as a Psychotherapist, to connect you to how that can support and nourish your own personal journey to the soul self.
I hold a Master’s degree in Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy, a Master’s degree in Social Work, a Degree in Social Science, a Diploma in Jungian Psychology, and a Diploma in Reflexive Supervision. These workshops have been honed and developed over a period of seven years. I am really delighted to be able to share them with you.
FAQs
-
Live on Sunday, 18th August 2024
Start and finish times:
9 am – 12 pm (PST) Los Angeles, CA, USA / Vancouver, BC, Canada
11 am – 2 pm (CST) Chicago, IL, USA / Regina, SK, Canada
12 pm – 3 pm (EST) New York, NY USA / Toronto, ON, Canada
5 pm – 8 pm (Irish ST) Ireland and UK
6 pm – 9 pm (CEST) Amsterdam / Berlin / Paris / Madrid
-
To register and book your place, follow this link. You will receive a welcoming letter via email 2-3 days prior to the day, which will give you more information and suggestions on what to have with you on the day to create a supportive space in your own home to embrace and enjoy this experience fully.
-
If you wish to receive notifications on up-and-coming events and access to a regular exclusive Deepening the Senses newsletter, please click below to subscribe. I post daily on Facebook and Instagram, so please click and follow me there for daily inspiration.
-
No refunds and no exchanges. You will receive a workshop recording if you cannot make it LIVE.