Smaller than I had expected, a weary, withered and almost starved mammoth lumbered towards me across a vast plain of dirt, dust and charred earth. There was not a molecule of green to be seen from horizon to horizon in this flat dust bowl of dark earthed desert. I realised that it was the last of his kind walking toward me, brought to extinction through the decimation of his environment. With this recognition he did not stop to be questioned further, but turned and walked me back through time. Back through my own lineage, blood, tribe and clan. Flashes and short glimpses. Miners, builders, travellers in brightly coloured trailers, gatherers, healers, spirit talkers, shamans, medicine weavers, tribal wisdoms, back to the crone adorned in nothing but her own weathered leatheren skin and long grey hair. She stares deeply into the flames of her fire, sharing its warmth with her brethren mammals. Then I am stood in a large light filled cave, the warm fire light flickers upon paintings on its back wall, light pouring in through its mouth from the bright sun, the world outside is verdant and jungle like. I am not alone, a long toothed lion lies regally stretched out along a ledge high above me.
This was my first meeting with the mammoth bones. My serendipitous journey to Lancaster to dance with the mammoth medicine began with an impromptu visit from a couple of dear friends, Jo and Sarah. Sarah had brought with her a rather beautiful gift of a strip of antique white fur, part of her mother’s legacy from her years working in a furriers. None of us could work out what kind of fur this was and so we decided to take up our drums and journey into the spirit realms to see if we might ascertain its origins. As we descended the spiral staircase into my cave of creations, my shamanic womb room or healing studio, my phone dinged to alert me that I had just received a message. Dawn Raven (Oakley-Smith), whom manages the Heartshore Horses and will be co-facilitating a Drum Birthing workshop with me in May, wondered if there was any chance I’d be prepared to manage the cooking for their, “Dreaming with the Mammoth bones” retreat in Lancaster. Not only would I get to attend the workshop between meals, full bed and board and meet the amazing Dawn Swan (Morgan) of Shapeshift Dance that I had heard so much about, but…. I would also get paid. Well…. how could I refuse? I needed to rearrange a few things and it just so happened that Jo was attending the retreat and was happy to offer me a lift. There was certainly some good energy flowing here determined to carry me to wherever I needed to be.
Back to the journeying with the white fur.
I did not take my usual purposeful route into my spirit world, nor did I land in a familiar place, instead I was taken straight to a small, sparse, light and airy copse of woodland. I was looking at a rise in the land, a grassy knoll or hillock, framed by trees, a white wolf walked up the rise of the knoll and stopping at the top he turned towards me and looked me in the eye. stood before this back drop of trees on a grassy knoll, the image stuck firmly with me. He then turned his gaze from me and continued along his path, descending the knoll and walking off into the trees. I knew in that, you just know kinda way, that he was going to the mammoth and that I must follow. This feeling was intense, fervent, having me on the edge of panic at the thought that I may not be able to make it. Each time I asked about the fur my mind was filled with the need to meet this mammoth and all of the associations that would come with it. The feeling was of a momentous time, something that would open doors for me that I was not yet aware were there.
As you might imagine a spring of excitement had surfaced in me, that bubbled up into a bright fountain the closer I got to making the actual journey to Lancaster and the eventual drive down the long driveway to Quernmore Park Hall, home of the mammoth. I was most struck to realise that this feeling, excitement, had not been felt by myself in so long that I had forgotten how it felt.
It was a long drive, 7 hours for Jo and 5 for me, we arrived with an hour to land before the retreat began. For me that meant being shown my room, dumping my stuff and heading to the kitchen to hit the ground running. The wonderful Anna-Saqqara was holding fort until my arrival and gave me as much support as she could during the retreat, but as one of the four facilitators and the retreat’s holder of ceremony she already had plenty on her plate. So it had begun……a journey into the very depths and origins of ourselves, a sensual torrent of expression, gently expansive, restorative and healing…..a deeply grounding experience.
I arrived not really knowing what to expect, I had of course been called in at the last minute to manage the food, so when were asked to focus on a particular block we wanted to shift as the theme for our retreat, I was caught on the hop. This is a good thing, as my cognitive mind couldn’t get in the way by over thinking my way around the real issues. But in all honesty I was not at that time aware of anything in particular and so I chose to focus on what ever was in the way of me fully “hollow boning”, not a small thing then 😉. Working this deeply in a circle requires a willingness to become open and trusting of the process and the people involved, we are the crucible within which the alchemy of change takes place. This crucible requires a special kind of holding and our amazing team of facilitators held us with strength, gentleness, kindness and honesty. Being well structured and boundaried we where given complete flexibility and fluidity to move through whatever arose for us to work, wield, flex and shift, at times facing some very hard, harsh and deep seated pain and trauma. In this we were brought skilfully to the flame, withdrawn at the point of pressure, cooled and re-fired with great insight and compassion. Each one of us left this retreat more purely ourselves than we had arrived. I could quite clearly see this change in some of my compadres, going from a very apparent not really all here dissociated state, to fully grounded, embodied, emboldened, bright and shiny spirited beings.
Every morning we danced, connecting in with our essential beingness, our bodies, our felt senses. Every morning we connected in with nature, allowing the land and the beings that dwell within her to share their wisdom and their gifts with us. Every day we touched into an expression of ourselves we had not visited before. And every evening we journeyed with the mammoth to gain ancestral medicine, to receive teaching and give gratitude.
I have partaken in Five Rhythms Dance on a number of occasions but there is something deeply magical in the dance that Dawn Swan choreographs from within you. I have not felt so alive within my own body before, she rekindled a fire that had become sleeping embers. And what a great way to start the day. without this body connection, and physical shifting of the energies moving with in us I don’t believe that we could have met and transformed our blocks to efficaciously.
Dawn Raven, holder of our boundaries, was our masterful leader into the dreamtime. With her soft strength and gentle kindness she lead us with reverence and honour into our liminal spaces, as we journeyed with the mammoth, journeyed with the land and journeyed with our blocks through vision and word. I think that it is safe to say that everyone found the exercise of reading our expressive words out to our partners, who then allowed those words to move their bodies expressively, was immensely powerful and empowering work, really quite liberating.
“A moment met with presence is never lost ‘though never met again.
Fleeting caresses gently drift across the surface.
Face turned to the suns hiding in the daylight sky, awaiting their turns.
I had forgotten how precious these moments are,
Like snowflakes melting in the palm of my hot hand.
Individual, irreplicable, crystalline moments.
Perfect and pure I could not want for more.
A soft kiss graces my cheek from lips that cross dimensions of realms
in time, in space, in atom and place.
Reminders of a connection never severed nor replaced,
unbreakable, unbinding, liberating, I find
That I have been here all a long.”
Gulli with his bright eyes, bright smile and pure effervescence of being kept us in rhythm, kept us in beat. So perfectly in tune he read our energies expertly, knowing just when we needed to stop and take a pause, a breath held in the silence to honour the heart and the point of break. His grounded connectedness with all and everything and everyone is quite infectious. In those moments when the intensity could drown or overwhelm he held us in buoyancy. And then he taught us the dance of the mammoth, djembe class. Learning the elephant walk, we play a three part djembe orchestra to the mammoth.
Anna-Saqqara was our mistress of ceremony, bringing the sacred into all the work that we did. And bearing the lion’s share of an impromptu healing journey that the mammoth demanded on one of our evening dreamtimes. In that session our four fabulous facilitators were wielded by the mammoth medicine to hold us in a group, sound and energy healing journey, the drums pounded out rhythms of discordances, harassing our stuckness, our blockages from their comfortable purchases and the rattles shook us free. In finale we walked a sacred spiral offering up our block in sacrifice and receiving the blessings of liberation, greater understanding, expectance and gratitude in our connection.
On our second day we were formally introduced to the horses, Aslan and Red Cloud. Although I had wondered around the grounds a few times and looked out of my bedroom window, it didn’t strike me until we gathered to prepare for our introduction at the front of the house, that there right in front of us was the grassy knoll, the hillock that the white wolf had walked up. Once our preparations had been made the horses came into view, with Aslan leading, they walked up the grassy knoll just as wolf had, stopping at the top to turn and look directly at us. I must say I was a bit blown away, especially as when I shared this in circle later I was told that Dawn Swan used to have a white wolven dog who had now passed into spirit. Later when I went upstairs to change I happened to glanced out of my window, only to see that my complete view was the hillock, that grassy knoll.
Aslan had his eye on me from the first time we met, but out of reverence and respect I kept my distance. As we came to our last day, the retreat was over and most had gone home, the “hollow boning” that I had asked for was still in full sway, so up floated some flotsam from the deepest, darkest bits of my bones, so much guilt of betrayal, abandonment and shame around my own horses. Friends that I had said farewell to some 20 years ago now. It is no wonder then that I had kept my distance. Dawn Swan and Aslan both in their grace gifted me great healing, forgiveness and acceptance on that last morning that still lifts a tear to my eye.
Quernmore Park Hall itself is a house full of character. From the outside it is a house, a building, but step through any of its portals and you are instantly transported into another world. A bizarre place indeed, a sort of cross between Flambards and a Downtown Abbey 1980’s spoof complete with resident ghosts that were up and about banging doors all night on our second night in. Mischievous rather than malevolent, they were board tricksters with people to play with. Yet more “hollow boning” as visitations of this kind when I was a child had caused me fear and terror, later in life bringing me to close down a lot of my clairvoyant and audient channels. This time however I need not pull the blanket up over my head, instead I chanted Dorje Phurba mantra and told them to keep to their own space, even if it was under the mattress. The grounds however are a different realm altogether and frequently had me transported into a Jane Austen novel or may be even a bit of Wuthering Heights.
The lands of this place are full of Drala, that primal, pure, natural energy, something quite sacred and powerful. Within the grounds there is a splendid and most beautiful manicured walled garden, forgive me I did not take any photographs there. It is called Eve’s Garden and it so very much is. On one of my morning meditation walks, connecting with the elemental energies and soaking up the Drala, I was drawn along a path that lead me to a tree, tall and lanky with a long limb that swooped down from high above. Before the limb hit the ground it forked in two, each binary swooping upward again as it skimmed the ground. I couldn’t help but think how like a mammoths tusks it looked. And there it stood guard over a giant wigwam of branches that Dawn Swan was building as a Spirit House. As I walked around this house of spirit offering my respect and recognition I realised that we were placed just outside of the walled garden gates. I was reminded of how beautiful Eve’s garden was in all its walled up, regimented, manicured maintenance but that how much more at home, comfortable, wild and free I felt out here in Lilith’s bounteous wilderness.
For me this truly was a transformative experience, the “hollow boning” continues, but the block that was holding it back has gone and I have made some meaningful and honest connections that I know will just keep giving as time unfolds. Off the back of this adventure I have been asked to manage the cooking for EASE, Equine Assisted Soul Experience retreat at the end of June. And of course I will be working with the wonderful Dawn Raven and her empowered herd, birthing drums in the middle of May.
Connections have been made and are blossoming, soon they will bear delicious fruit. Many blessings much love, gratitude and respect to you all.
Louisa Shorney
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