April 24th - May 1st, POSTPONED
Starts Friday Evening
Near Glastonbury

The Beltane (May Day) week is set in the heart of the beautiful Somerset countryside near Glastonbury (the mystical and ancient centre of Britain) in a breathtaking valley nestling between two sacred hills.

£...   Fully Residential, including shared room & gourmet vegetarian food
£...   Great camping, including all meals
£...   Non-residential, including lunch

During the weekend we will learn and practice the ancient, shamanic and extraordinary Mongolian overtone chanting- an ethereal, magical and powerfully meditative vocal yoga; vocal purifications and transformative breathing practices; sacred chants, mantras, dream work, and a practice to heal the ancestral lines and transform family curses into their corresponding blessings.

A glorious week of continuous singing and chant. Each week intensive has a different theme.

We will be journeying through HEALING MANDALA of WHITE TARA. We will experience the union of the sacred masculine and feminine, bliss and emptiness. Beautiful continuous chants and practice. The mandala process developed by Jill also has a unique and profound psychological healing process embedded in deep spiritual practice.White Tara's gifts available to us through this work, include Healing and long life, enlightened achievement, karma-free, appropriate and fearless action; happiness and fulfilment; the immediate granting of wishes; luminous wisdom and enlightenment. This extraordinarily powerful week enables us to become effective in relation to who we are, our abundance, relationships and fulfilling our passion in the world- the practice enables us to heal ourselves and overcome all obstructions to these aspirations - we will be working with fearless action in new beginnings.

Many people including almost all Tibetan Buddhists from the most sophisticated to the simplest, including the Dalai Lama, maintain their deep connection with the Great Goddess Tara, the feminine manifestation of the divine, known as the Mother of the Buddhas, and who acts swiftly and confers compassion, enlightened action, liberation, emotional and physical healing and long life, and is able to bring enlightenment in this lifetime. Through working with the extraordinary energies of Tara we are able to ease the blockages to achievements in work, in life and in emotional and physical health, bring about abundance, order and flow in our lives and work towards achieving the essential state of reality and become enlightened. In Tibetan Buddhism, the ultimate liberation is to transform the elements of the body into the essence of their substance - the rainbow colours and ultimately achieve the rainbow body.

This week is held over the festival of Beltane or May Day (which we celebrate joyfully) , a festival of fecundity when the forces of heaven penetrate the earth (represented in traditional England by the Maypole). We will harness these forces using sound as the bridge between the worlds to connect to the source of power through the instrument of our own voice and purify the body, the elements and past karma.

Click here for a delightful account of the mandala process we will be doing.

Jill only does one weeklong residential retreat of this kind a year so people come from all over the world. They fill early- so do book soon. Each week intensive is different.

Oct 24th - 30th, POSTPONED
London

The Samhain (Halloween / All Saints / All Souls) week takes place in London, in Belsize Park, in a beautiful garden setting close to the 1000 acres of Hampstead Heath.

£... Non-residential. Inexpensive accommodation is available for booking direct with the venue. As many people will stay there, early booking is essential for this.

During the weekend we will learn and practice the ancient, shamanic and extraordinary Mongolian overtone chanting- an ethereal, magical and powerfully meditative vocal yoga; vocal purifications and transformative breathing practices; sacred chants, mantras, dream work, and a practice to heal the ancestral lines and transform family curses into their corresponding blessings.

This is a glorious week of continuous singing and chant. Each of Jill’s week intensives has a different theme.

Within the October week intensive, held over the festival of All Souls, there is a mandala ceremony, which each year is dedicated to a different practice. THE MANDALA is the representation of the geometry of consciousness, though which we journey throughout the course of the week . All Jill's mandala ceremonies comprise a series of continuous chants, spiritual practice and joyful deep transformative inner work, where the group becomes a living sonorous mandala and travels through itself as a pilgrimage

This mandala is a healing practice, known as the Chöd. This practice which is known as "the summit of all spiritual paths", harnesses the feminine wisdom energy. Chöd means to cut, sever or release, and is designed to cut all our clingings to the ego, to cut through all our fears, obstructions, karmic obstacles, hindrances, blockages, anxieties, illnesses, phobias negativities, self delusion, reactive patterns and addictions- to cut through all that holds us back from fully engaging in life as luminous beings- all that holds us back from full realisation. This practice which generates fearlessness, certainly and compassion is also done for healing mental and physical sickness and contains aspects of both the phowa or essential practice for directing the consciousness at the moment of death, and also the rainbow body, the transformation of our physical body into light.

Click here for a delightful account of the mandala process we will be doing.

The continuous chants that we do over several days, include different mantras and chants repeated every half hour. In the mandala process, the group itself becomes a living mandala, as well as mapping and becoming familiar with the geography of the bardo or post mortal journey, making the spiral pilgrimage to the centre, through the different aspects of our own psyche or the journey to enlightenment. This October we will be working with our fears, in all their different forms and manifestations, and transforming these afflictive emotions into their corresponding wisdoms, magically working with, and resolving the particular issues which concern each one of us within a sacred sonorous and mantric environment. All Jill’s mandala ceremonies have a magical and sonorous period of working with our deepest, and hence unconscious, afflictive reactive emotions so we can see them in the light of illumination and transform them through deep understanding into light and joy. This leads to extraordinary blissful states shared by both the individual and the whole group, as well as an astonishing transformation of both the speaking and the singing voice, experienced by both non singers and professional singers alike. Many say they have worked on their voices all their lives and nothing has achieved changes like this work.

The mandala also represents the alchemical balance of male and female (the union of these two is the ultimate spiritual path, sought within many traditions.) This ceremony is equally good for those continuing the work or starting for the first time, and is for anyone seeking liberation now. We use chant to free us from the afflictive emotions which maintain us ego bound, depressed, unhappy and frustrated, and liberate us into a state of joy and release from the entrapping games of the mind.

This mandala process is also the practice of the teaching of the Bardo, which is described as being the encounter with the enlightened transformations of the unconscious delusions of our minds. We learn how to recognise these luminous states and to distinguish them from the comforting phantasms which lure us back into realms of illusion, and finally recognise our projections and dissolve the sense of self into the light of reality.

At this period of All Souls, and offered as an optional part of this retreat on one of the evenings, is a requiem mass held especially for us and for our ancestors at Jill's local church. During this service we will be able to sing and light candles for, and chant the names of our ancestors. In this way we bring together diverse and powerful ways of understanding and actively participating in this liminal moment in the year.