deepening the senses | ireland 2027
Walking Between Worlds
Meeting the Gaelic Otherworld
Deep Time • Landscape • The Inner World
The Burren, Co Clare, Ireland - October 8th-15th, 2027
A seven-night retreat on the western edge of Ireland, where the ancient limestone landscape of the Burren meets the Wild Atlantic.
Here, the light is rarely still. Mist moves in from the ocean. The Atlantic appears and disappears, silver one moment and dark the next. Wind and rain sweep across the limestone beneath an immense and changing sky, revealing a remarkable landscape that can seem at once stark, beautiful and strangely alive.
Over the course of our days together, we will become attentive to these changes - to the movement of weather and light, to the textures of stone and water, and to the subtle ways the outer landscape begins to speak to the inner one.
Walking Between Worlds is an invitation to inhabit this landscape slowly. Not simply to visit it, but to allow it to resonate with our own bodies, to bring us into a deeper connectedness with our own inner world and soul self. Here, the Gaelic Otherworld draws near - in story and landscape, dream, inner images, myth and imagination - inviting us to listen for what moves at the threshold between the outer world and the inner life, and to the deeper currents of ancestral memory living within us. The landscape becomes a doorway into the inner world, where we begin to notice what images quicken, what memories stir, and what deeper stories may be asking for our attention.
The Gaelic Otherworld
In Irish mythology and folklore, the Otherworld exists alongside the everyday world - a mysterious realm associated with the Aos Sí (the fairies), ancient mounds and hills, wells and bodies of water, and places where the boundary between worlds was understood to be especially permeable.
Rather than a distant supernatural realm, the Otherworld was imagined as intimately entwined with this one - encountered through landscape, and in those moments when the familiar gives way to mystery. Time moves differently there, and the old stories tell of people crossing into the Otherworld and returning changed by what they encountered.
In our work, we enter imaginatively into the realm of the Aos Sí, approaching its stories and imagery not literally, but symbolically and archetypally. The Otherworld becomes a doorway into the inner world - a way of encountering the unconscious, the numinous, and those less familiar dimensions of ourselves that may make themselves known through dream, image, symbol and imagination.
An Invitation
There are landscapes in which the past feels very close. The Burren is one of them.
Everywhere there are traces of those who came before us - portal tombs and burial places, standing stones and sacred wells, old stone walls, ruined dwellings and pathways worn through centuries of human passage. The lives of those who inhabited this place have left their marks upon the land.
For thousands of years, people have lived here, buried their dead here, gathered and prayed here, tended animals and land, endured loss, told stories and made meaning. Their presence has not disappeared. It remains in stone, myth, story and landscape, in place-names and traditions, and in the memories carried through generations.
And beneath these human traces lies a much deeper story. Some 300 million years ago, the limestone beneath our feet was forming in a warm, shallow sea. Across immense stretches of geological time, water, weather and the movement of the earth shaped the extraordinary landscape upon which we will stand.
Deep time. Ancestral time. The Cailleach's time.
Walking Between Worlds invites us to enter this landscape slowly and attentively - to notice what becomes perceptible when ordinary time begins to loosen, and when we listen not only to what is immediately before us, but also to what has been carried, remembered and forgotten. Here is the wellspring of creativity, of our ancestral inner world.
Through mythology and story, dream and imagination, and an embodied attentiveness rooted in the senses, we begin to listen differently - to the dreaming self, to what the body knows, and to the images and stories that find their way to us.
This stunning landscape becomes more than the setting for our retreat. It becomes part of the work itself - a meeting place between the visible and invisible, the ancestral and the personal, the outer landscape and the inner world. This is the work of Deepening the Senses, this is Walking Between Worlds.
Rooted in Irish Myth & Ancestral Memory
Deepening the Senses is grounded in Irish mythology and folklore - not as story alone, but as a living language of the psyche and the archetypal inner world.
Here, in the landscape from which so many of these traditions emerged, we will encounter stories of the Cailleach, the Otherworld, the Aos Sí (the fairies), and those who cross between worlds.
We approach these stories not simply to interpret them, but to notice what they awaken within us. Which images draw us closer? Which unsettle us? What feels strangely familiar? Through myth, imagination and embodied experience, we become curious about the deeper stories we ourselves may be living - and about what has been carried through family, culture and ancestral memory.
In Meeting the Gaelic Otherworld, Irish myth, language and folklore open a doorway into the numinous - the mysterious territories of the psyche encountered through imagination, image and the symbolic life.
Your Host - Eileen Ní Shuilleabháin
I grew up in rural, Gaeilge-speaking Connemara, where Irish was my first language and where landscape, folklore, myth and the older indiginous traditions of Ireland were part and parcel of the world I grew up with. For more than twenty years, my professional work has centred on the inner life. I spent twenty years working in clinical practice as a Social Worker in Adult Mental Health Services. I am a Psychotherapist (MA), Clinical Supervisor and Personal Development Coach working since 2010 in private practice, with postgraduate training in Jungian Psychology and an MA in Irish Mythology and Folklore. My practice now is International.
In my work, I bring these worlds into conversation - psychotherapy and Jungian depth psychology with Irish mythology and folklore, embodied somatic experience, symbols, language and landscape.
Walking Between Worlds grows from this meeting place.
More than a decade ago, I first brought my Deepening the Senses retreat work to the Burren, exploring the relationship between psyche and landscape, myth and embodiment, the senses and the inner world. Returning to the Burren now feels deeply meaningful to me.
Walking Between Worlds continues that journey, while opening into something that has deepened through the intervening years of my own life and work.
I invite you to join me as we enter this extraordinary landscape slowly and intentionally - to listen both outwardly and inwardly, and to discover what may begin to stir when we give ourselves time to attend to the inner world and symbolic life. Together, we will explore how landscape, ancestral memory, image and archetype can become pathways into the deeper territories of the psyche.
I am genuinely so excited to show you this stunningly beautiful place.
Beidh fáilte romhat.
You will be very welcome.
Grá mór,
Eileen
BSocSc · MA Social Work · MA Psychotherapy · MA Irish Mythology and Folklore · Dip. Supervision · Dip. Jungian Psychology · Certified Coach (WCI) in the USA. To learn more about me click here.
Our home in the Burren
For seven nights, we will make our home at the Cliffs of Moher Retreat Centre, on Ireland’s wild Atlantic coast - surrounded by open countryside, within walking distance of the Cliffs of Moher, and on the edge of the ancient limestone landscape of the Burren.
Choosing the right place, and finding a home for this work was central to developing the retreat. I wanted somewhere that would be more than simply a place to stay - it was essential that the place would become part of the experience itself. The Cliffs of Moher Retreat Centre offers a beautiful and intimate setting in which to gather, eat well, rest deeply, and allow the pace of ordinary life to soften. The place itself is just, beautiful.
Our days will move between journeys out into the Burren, the rain showers and changing light of the Wild Atlantic, and the warmth of returning home again - to tea by the fire, nourishing food, conversation, solitude and rest. There will be time to wander, read, write in your journal, soak in the outdoor hot tub, warm yourself in the sauna, or simply retreat to your room and listen to the weather moving in from the Atlantic.
The rhythm of the retreat is one of venturing out and returning home - of wildness and shelter, landscape and inner landscape, movement and stillness.
A Glimpse of our Home for the Week
-
Scroll to explore →
Gathered Around the Table
Fresh Atlantic air has a way of making us hungry.
After mornings together and time spent out in the Burren landscape, we will return to generous, nourishing vegetarian meals in the evening prepared for us by the retreat centre’s chefs, with ingredients drawn from their organic gardens.
Meals will be part of the rhythm and pleasure of our days - leisurely brunches, evening dinners, good food, conversation and laughter around the table.
And between meals, there will always be tea and coffee ready to hand, snacks and baked goods in the afternoons, something to keep us going after a walk in the atlantic air.
There is something deeply restorative about being well fed, with nourishing food, in good company, with with nowhere else that you need to be.
“Every day was still shaped by weather,
but every night their mouths filled with
Atlantic storms and clouded-over stars..”
Eavan Boland - “The Singers”
File | Poet
The Shape of our days
Walking Between Worlds will unfold at an unhurried pace, moving between facilitated time together, encounters with the Burren landscape, story and imagination, and generous periods of rest.
Some days will take us out into ancient places; others will invite us to stay close to home. There will be structure, but also room for the weather, the landscape, to just be-ing - and tending to our own personal experience-to shape the rhythm of our days. The arc of this work, at its center, will be held in ritual. Most mornings will begin with facilitated time together - a space for reflection and meditation, embodied awareness and Authentic Movement, creative work with clay and art materials, and exploration through movement, meditation, story, myth, and dream-work.
Our work will be experiential drawn from my clinical and facilitation experience, honed over 20 years. This work is about inviting us to gently listen inwardly and notice what is stirring, what inner images are taking form, and what begins to reveal itself through body, dream, archetypal image, symbol and story. There will be time to reflect and write, and at times to share within the group. You will always be invited to participate in a way that respects your own pace and experience.
Entering the Burren Landscape
The Burren will be more than the setting for our retreat. We will journey out into the landscape itself, and on our excursion day we will be accompanied by a local guide, exploring ancient sites and places shaped by thousands of years of human presence, mythology and folklore.
Our journeys will take us among ancient stones, holy wells and places associated with the Aos Sí and the Gaelic Otherworld. We will also make our way to St Brigid’s Well, a place of pilgrimage for centuries, where generations have come to pray, remember those they love, seek healing and blessing, and leave small offerings of devotion.
These will not simply be sightseeing visits. We will slow down and spend time in these places - listening to their stories, attending to our sensory experience of landscape and place, and noticing what is stirred in our own imagination and inner world.
Here, deep time is not simply something we learn about. It is something we are invited to experience.
Time To Just Be
Not every moment of Walking Between Worlds will be filled. Spaciousness is an essential part of our time together.
There will be afternoons to rest, dream, read or write; to wander the grounds or the country lanes, watch the Atlantic weather roll in, or simply curl up with a cup of tea by the fire with a good book. The retreat centre’s wellness suite - with its cedar sauna, herbal steam room, outdoor hot tub and cold plunge pools - will be available for you to enjoy during your free time. A time to gaze out at the Atlantic and to rest.
And there will be opportunities simply to enjoy being in the west of Ireland - to walk to the nearby village, find a corner in a local pub, with a book or, if you wish, a pint of Guinness, or perhaps to hear some traditional Irish music, and share conversation and experience something of the everyday life and hospitality of County Clare. Nothing needs to be filled.
Rest, pleasure, dreaming and simply being here are part of the journey too.
Storytelling by the Fire
As evening draws in, there will be time to gather around the fire and enter the world of story. During our week, we will be joined by a seanchaí - an Irish traditional storyteller - who will bring to life stories rooted in the landscape, folklore and oral traditions of Ireland. Tales of the Aos Sí, the Otherworld and the strange and mysterious encounters that have long inhabited the Irish imagination.
There is something different about hearing a story spoken aloud especially so, by a seanchaí. We listen not only for meaning, but for the images it awakens within us - for what captures the imagination, what unsettles, what feels strangely familiar, and what continues to linger after the story has ended.
Around the fire, story becomes something shared and alive - a meeting place between an old oral tradition, the ancestors, and our own deeper symbolic lives.
Is Walking Between Worlds calling you?
Walking Between Worlds may be for you if you feel drawn to step away from ordinary life for a while - to slow down, deepen your relationship with yourself, and explore what becomes possible when there is time for landscape, imagination, rest and the inner world.
-
You feel drawn to Ireland - its landscape, mythology, folklore and the mysterious world of the Gaelic imagination.
-
You are curious about the deeper patterns and stories that have shaped your life, and the inner myth you may be living.
-
You find yourself at a threshold - a time of transition, questioning, change, or simply sensing that something new is beginning to stir.
-
You long for a more embodied, creative and meaningful relationship with yourself and your inner life.
-
You are curious about ancestry, belonging and what may have been carried through family, culture and story.
-
You want to reconnect with ways of knowing that are easily lost in a busy life - to your body, senses, intuition, dream and imagination.
-
You are drawn to a week with room to breathe - time for meaningful inner work alongside walking, conversation, good food, fireside warmth and deep rest.
-
You long to connect with the wisdom of Ireland’s ancient landscape-whether you are coming for the first time or returning to encounter it with new eyes.
You do not need to arrive with answers. The invitation is to come with curiosity and a willingness to listen - to turn to the land, to deep time, to the stories, to the ancestors, and to the deeper heart of yourself.
Begin the Journey
If you feel the pull of Walking Between Worlds, I invite you to take the next step towards joining me in the Burren.
What is included?
Seven nights’ accommodation at the Cliffs of Moher Retreat Centre on Ireland’s Wild Atlantic coast
All professionally facilitated retreat sessions with Eileen throughout the week
Pre-retreat reflections and invitations into the experience in the months leading up to our time in Ireland
Daily brunch and dinner, freshly prepared by the retreat centre’s chefs, with the exception of our evening out.
Tea, coffee, snacks and baked goods available in the afternoons
Full use of the wellness suite, including cedar sauna, herbal steam room, outdoor hot tub and cold plunge pools
A facilitated day excursion into the Burren, with private transportation and local guide, visiting ancient and storied places
Visits to sacred and historic sites, including St Brigid’s Well and other places connected with the landscape, folklore and traditions of the Burren
An evening with a traditional Irish seanchaí, sharing stories from Ireland’s oral and folkloric tradition
Time to experience the Cliffs of Moher, in your own time, within walking distance of our retreat home
An evening out mid-week in a County Clare pub.
Private group transfer between Dublin Airport and the retreat centre at a designated arrival and departure time
Your bespoke Walking Between Worlds journal and thoughtfully chosen welcome gifts that await you on arrival
Generous unscheduled time for rest, walking, reflection, wellness, reading, dreaming - or simply enjoying being in Ireland
Post-retreat 90 minute Online Group Gathering to support your returning home and the continued integration of the experience
Our time together will begin long before we gather in the Burren and the arc of the journey will continue after we return home.
In the months leading up to the retreat, you will receive gentle invitations for reflection as we move through the Celtic Calendar Year - reflection questions to sit with, what is quickening in the inner world, allowing the themes of Walking Between Worlds to begin quietly unfolding before we meet.
Several weeks after returning home, we will gather online for a 90-minute Integration Gathering - a time to reconnect, reflect on what has continued to unfold, and consider how what we encountered in the Burren might find a place within the rhythms of everyday life.
Some experiences reveal their meaning slowly. Our gathering offers a space to return to what was encountered, what has stayed with us, and what may still be taking form.
Accommodation and Investment
Your retreat investment includes seven nights’ accommodation at the Cliffs of Moher Retreat Centre, all retreat programming and experiences as outlined above, nourishing brunch and dinner each day (with the exception of our Wednesday evening where we venture out locally and also provided for), and the other inclusions described above (please see FAQ below for further details).
The bedrooms are so beautifully inviting, warm, comfortable and thoughtfully appointed, with high-quality hotel-quality linens and a thoughtful space to settle in for the week. A choice of shared and private accommodation is available, with private rooms limited. Please note: the entire retreat is strictly limited to 21 participants.
All prices below are per person and include the full seven-night ‘Walking Between Worlds’ retreat experience and excludes flights. Private rooms are particularly limited and will be allocated in order of enrollment.
-

Shared Ensuite
Room shared with one other participant
$5,950 per personAn extended payment plan is also available.
-

Private Room · Shared Bathroom
Private bedroom with bathroom shared between two rooms
$6,450An extended payment plan is also available.
-

Private Ensuite
Private bedroom with private bathroom
$6,950An extended payment plan is also available.
Next Steps…
My Invitation to You
Walking Between Worlds is an intimate, professionally facilitated, Jungian Depth Psychology and Psychotherapy process-oriented retreat in the unique and extraordinary landscape of the Burren, in Ireland. This experience we create together matters deeply to me. Because we will be engaging in meaningful inner depth work within a small group setting of 21 participants, I want there to be an opportunity for us to meet before you decide to join.
If you feel drawn to spending these seven nights with me in the Burren, I invite you to reach out.
I will send you the exclusive retreat brochure before our meeting, with further details about the experience, accommodation, travel and enrollment, to study and consider further, and I will schedule a complimentary Exploratory 20 minute Conversation with me.
This is an opportunity for us to meet and for you to ask any questions you may have, and to explore whether Walking Between Worlds feels like the right retreat for you.
Following our conversation, if we both feel it is a good fit, I will personally invite you to secure your place.
I am excited and I look forward to exploring this experience further with you.
What Meeting the Gaelic Otherworld Participants have said...
FAQ
-
In Jungian psychology, individuation is the lifelong process of becoming one’s true, whole self. Early experiences, trauma, and inherited patterns can lead us to turn away from parts of ourselves in order to belong, moving these aspects into the unconscious “shadow”. This often appears as anxiety, loss of vitality, or a sense that something essential is missing.
In Meeting the Gaelic Otherworld, individuation is approached through myth, symbol, and the numinous. By cultivating a relationship with the inner world — through imaginal listening, story, and ancestral imagery — these forgotten or exiled aspects can be met and integrated, supporting a more embodied, creative, and authentic way of living.
-
In Gaelic tradition, the Otherworld is understood as a realm that exists alongside the human world, often associated with liminal places such as springs, lakes, the sea, and sacred mounds known as Síd. These were places where the boundary between worlds was believed to be thin.
The Otherworld is inhabited by the Aos Sí, a supernatural race imagined not as winged beings, but as living in an unseen, parallel realm alongside humans. In this series, these ancient stories are approached as symbolic guides, supporting the inner journey of reflection, meaning-making, and transformation.
-
The numinous refers to experiences of awe, mystery, and sacred presence that move us beyond rational understanding. These moments can feel both unsettling and deeply beautiful, often carrying a sense of encountering something greater than ourselves.
Numinous experiences may arise through nature, myth, art, ancestry, or moments of deep inner knowing. They tend to awaken a sense of meaning and belonging, softening isolation and reconnecting us to the wider web of life in ways that are quietly but profoundly healing for the psyche.
-
In Meeting the Gaelic Otherworld, you will be invited to explore:
How individuation supports the journey toward becoming one’s true, whole self — not through fixing, but by reclaiming forgotten or silenced aspects of the psyche through integration.
The deep wisdom of the inner world, and how listening inward can restore vitality, meaning, and a more authentic, soul-aligned way of living.
The transformative role of the numinous, as encounters with mystery through dream, myth, nature, and imagination awaken profound inner change.
How Irish mythology and folklore reflect the inner landscape of the psyche, using stories of the Aos Sí and the Otherworld to illuminate grief, longing, desire, and healing as archetypal experiences.
Ways of recognising and tending ancestral wounds, tracing inherited patterns with compassion and engaging their healing through story, symbol, and ritual attention.
How to work with symbol, metaphor, and the unconscious, allowing dreams, synchronicities, and archetypal imagery to become guides for insight and creative imagination.
What it means to enter sacred time, and how a mythopoetic path can support living with greater presence, courage, and creativity.
-
This series is grounded in depth psychology and psychotherapy, including somatic approaches, and shaped through a mythopoetic lens. It draws from Irish mythology, folklore, cosmology, language, literature, and the living heritage of Ireland.
-
The live workshops offer a shared, time-bound experience rooted in presence, dialogue, and community. They allow for collective reflection, witnessing, and the aliveness that emerges when we gather together in real time.
The courses translate this work into a carefully crafted, video-infused format that can be revisited and re-engaged with over time. You can move at your own pace, return to practices and teachings as needed, and begin whenever you feel called to enter the journey.
While the formats differ, the heart of the work remains the same. Both draw from mythology, poetry, and the ancient Gaelic Otherworld, and invite connection with the body and the deeper symbolic, soulful dimensions of the self.
-
All workshops, courses, programs, and products are intended to support personal growth and self-reflection. They are not a substitute for medical, psychological, psychiatric, or therapeutic diagnosis or treatment.
By engaging in this work, you agree to take responsibility for your own wellbeing. If you require professional support, you are encouraged to seek guidance from a licensed and qualified healthcare professional of your choosing.


