It all begins with an idea.

"Nestled among the prairies and pastures of Kent, just minutes by car from Canterbury, The Quiet View, a centre for contemplative spirituality and a community retreat garden, offers a haven from the ordinary. Here, ponies drift across the fields like constellations, grazing on grass and hay, while visitors are welcomed into a sanctuary rich with symbolism, meaning, and connection. Guided rituals and practices nourish the dreamscape of the weary soul, preparing each guest to return to Monday morning with renewed clarity and insight.

During the last weekend of March, my mindfulness teacher, Lorraine Millard, who brings forty years of experience as a psychotherapist, led a Transpersonal Psychology retreat in this space. The theme of the weekend was Approaching the Self. Ten extraordinary women from diverse walks of life gathered around the Yurt on Friday evening to embark on a shared journey.

Like guides with unseen helping hands, Lizzie and her partner John, who run the centre, ensured that everything we needed to feel supported, nourished, and resourced was lovingly in place.

Through guided imagery, mindfulness-based practices, creative arts, rituals around the labyrinth, and the gentle holding of compassionate space, the soil of our subconscious was tenderly tilled and invited to speak. As we reached into realms beyond the self, meeting the Mystery at its threshold, listening to dreams, attuning to body, mind, intuition, and the inner Sky, the witness within, we began to pave the path toward the realisation of the Self. Not as a journey with a fixed destination, but as a reverent tending toward.

Across the two nights of the retreat, the celestial stage was rich with planetary phenomena. The sky was lit only by stars, the silver orb of the moon absent, having entered its new moon phase, inviting us into quietude and to listen for the whispers of what was ready to be received.

It so happened that the moon crossed the sun’s ecliptic for the second time that month, creating a partial solar eclipse, where, in certain parts of the world, Sun and Moon could be seen dancing in shadow and light.

It is said that eclipses are portals - thresholds through which great change is summoned from the depths of our being, calling us to align with a path that honours our wholeness. Perhaps it was the archetypal energy of Aries, in whose constellation the Sun and Moon met, that infused our intentions with the awe and curiosity of a newborn entering the world.

Courage stirred within us: a deep, embodied knowing that we are enough, that we belong, even when we feel the need to make ourselves small to fit the shape of the world. A wisdom rose alongside these celestial events - one that becomes accessible in the realisation of the present moment: that we are standing at the edge of the unknown, and somehow, we are held in that.

Friday evening marked our arrival. The Yurt greeted us with the warmth of its fireplace, the fragrant scent of wood, and the lingering trace of incense, as we stepped into the kind of silence that invites us to bow and listen. One by one, we gathered, each of us carrying a story, an identity, a lineage of teachers and ancestors, and an intention: something that had called us there.

Also present, from beyond the veil, was Lorraine’s own teacher, Barbara, whose wisdom had shaped some of the practices we would experience. Lorraine began by introducing us to the foundations of Transpersonal Psychology and its place within the evolution of psychotherapeutic modalities. At the heart of our discussion was Jung and how his vision diverged from Freud’s. Where Freud emphasised sexuality as a drive for pleasure, Jung recognised it as an expression of life force, carrying within it an innate longing for meaning.

Lorraine then guided us through our first practice: a journey inward through imagery. We were invited to explore the question Who am I? - to see ourselves as travellers on the path of life, and to meet ourselves anew. Not through the lens of who we think we are, or who we’ve been conditioned to believe we are, but through who we feel ourselves to be, allowing the subconscious to speak and be heard by us, the listeners. Following this exploration, it was time to walk the labyrinth in silence. We were free to move however we felt called - running, shifting pace mid-way, tiptoeing along the edges, even walking backwards. However we wished to walk the path, we were free to walk it.

Each of us held a small toy candle: a symbol of light in the darkness. As I reached the centre, I closed my eyes and heard, as if from a distant place, words settling into the stream of my awareness like autumn leaves:

"Asia, you are powerful. You are strong. You are worthy. You are valiant. You are a warrior of light, and you always will be."

The night cradled our dreams, and by the following morning much was shared in the circle held by Lorraine about their intensity and symbolism, setting the stage for Saturday’s practices. That day she guided us through imagery and creative arts, inviting us to explore our sub-personalities, the many divisible yet interconnected parts of the psyche.

In the imagery, I encountered three or four of these parts of myself. Lorraine placed before us a box of art materials, and we each chose intuitively, selecting what felt most alive for translating feeling into image or form. As I worked with colour, texture, and gesture, I noticed both a sense of freedom and a kind of blindness, something I was able to explore further later on.

We then carried our exploration outside, gathering in pairs or small groups to listen to one another without judgement as we shared our experiences. I sat with two other women beside a wooden angel-shaped sculpture, weathered by time, standing watch over a golden field. The vulnerability of sharing the different parts of myself, those that feel unconventional or unacceptable, in the presence of two listeners allowed me to sit with uncomfortable feelings and a sense of not-knowing.

On Sunday, Lorraine opened the day with a mindfulness-based guided meditation inspired by Dan Siegel’s Wheel of Awareness practice, designed to cultivate kindness and compassion for ourselves and others. I have never met another mindfulness teacher who guides in the way she does, treating each practice as both an art form and a transformative process, grounded in ethics and trauma awareness. It feels like listening to someone who listens. This meditation in particular was a reminder that we do not simply live on the earth, but that we are the earth - its peaks and valleys, its sand and dust, its greens and blues.

One of our final practices invited us to step, one by one, into the different dimensions of experience: the body, the observer, our intuition, our feelings, and our thinking - and to rest in the perspective each one offers, before integrating it back into our day-to-day lives.

I thank Lorraine for the opportunity to learn from her. Her compassionate holding extends far beyond the room we were in, and her kind voice reaches beyond the practices themselves into our inner worlds, illuminating what lies within to be treasured and offered back to our people, to the earth, to the world."