Creative Expression
Expressive Journaling: Tending the Fire Within
With Jenn Forgie
"I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back..." —Oriah Mountain Dreamer, "The Invitation" Designed to ignite your vision, spark creativity, and fuel your soul, […]
Sketch by Sketch: Connecting with the World Through Drawing
With Emma FitzGerald
Learn to sketch without fear of making mistakes! Join celebrated author/illustrator, Emma FitzGerald as she leads participants through a series of exercises that build confidence and improves observation skills, while allowing for the happy accidents that make a drawing that speaks from the heart. Using pen and watercolour paint, and working both together and independently […]
Write From Your Heart
With Susan Musgrave
“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional” - attributed to the Dalai Lama. It is hard work, when we are grieving, not to suffer; suffering — personal and universal — has become a condition of how we live. Writing, especially poetry, fiction, journaling and memoir, has always been a place where we can count on being […]
Contemplative Mind, Spontaneous Brush: Ink, Colour and Japanese Washi Papers
With Heather Midori Yamada
Relax body, breath and mind with short guided meditations and simple perceptual exercises. Follow brushwork demonstrations using Japanese sumi ink, watercolour and acrylic on various Japanese washi papers (provided). Inspired by the natural beauty of Cortes Island, we will explore mixed media approaches of layering, tearing and collaging. Deep intuitive and directed studies lead to […]
Watercolour and the Art of Seeing
With David McEown
Explore watercolour’s magical flowing spontaneity and essential techniques as you paint directly from nature. Enhance your perception, way of “seeing”, and connectedness to the earth with this travel-friendly medium. Enjoy dynamic watercolour demonstrations; exploring paint as a form of meditation and play. Uncover the secret hydrodynamics of watercolour paint and the brush work manipulation of […]
Resonance: A Deep Listening, Somatic Retreat
With Kiko Pace and Charlie Gates
Join Charlie and Kiko for an offering of deep listening and sonic exploration as we gather in the belly of Spring on Cortes Island. From sound meditations, reflective journaling, meditative movement practices, and dreaming, we venture to explore and expand our relationship to ways of listening, receiving, and generating creative awe. During our time together, […]
Dance of Connection
With Bettina Rothe
Come home to yourself, find connection and nourishment in community, and with the land. Together we take refuge in our primary language "rhythm", and find belonging in the dance. Expand your repertoire of how you can connect with others on the dance floor and in life. Release old patterns of relating that no longer serve […]
Awaken Your Senses to Creativity
With Zebith Thalden
Allow the natural landscapes of woodland, garden, and marine habitat be the location of your creative inspiration. We will spend time mindfully witnessing to expand the senses. From this awareness, we will then sketch both the profound and uniquely subtle elements of the environment. We will transform our observations into the visual, translating sound into […]
Embodied Practices for Collective Thriving
With Roula Said, Julia Aplin, Shannon Litzenberger and Andrea Nann
In this time of intersecting social, political, and planetary crises, how do we embrace and honour all that is arising in us as bodies? What if we listen closely to what we feel in our hearts, what we know in our bones? Can we resonate care and connection across our differences, tuning into our sense […]
Singing in the Vocal River
With Rhiannon
Hear your own song and learn new ones as you find your place in the world of music and invention. Co-create vocal magic in a safe, dynamic circle of singers, delving into the possibilities of spontaneous composition and the language of storytelling. Working alone, in pairs, and in ensemble, meld intuition and invention with skill […]
Freedom Begins with Letting Go
With Chelene Knight
Join award-winning writer and creative practitioner Chelene Knight for a transformative journey into letting go and deepening your understanding of self. Through emotionally rich and immersive activities, such as letter writing, discovering personal connections in meaningful objects, guided meditations, and discussions on abstract ideas like love, loss, and grief explored through literary greats such as […]
Tapping the Stream: Summer Writing Retreat
With Shaena Lambert and Betsy Warland
Tapping the Stream is a 6-day writing retreat - free from interruption - to explore the direction of a work in progress, as well as to foster creativity through community with other writers. This unique retreat combines self-directed writing time, a one-on-one session with both Betsy and Shaena, several morning craft intensives (focusing on subjects […]
Murmuration
With Margie Gillis and Rhiannon
The culmination of 30 years of teaching side-by-side programs at Hollyhock comes next summer with this long-awaited collaboration! Join Margie Gillis and Rhiannon for their first joint-retreat at Hollyhock, MURMURATION. Murmuration is the form where body and voice meet, movement and sound, in equal measure. The starlings move in the sky by the hundreds and […]
Dancing from the Inside Out
With Margie Gillis
Move into your body’s experiential wisdom and reveal the soul in motion. Refine your sensitivity to the connection between thought, feeling, spirit and body as you listen in to your body’s inner wisdom, impulses, conversations and emotions. Becoming sensitive to and engaging with this inner life provides information both for expanding well-being, as well as […]
Witching Ways ~ Reviving Femme Folk Wisdom & Sensuous Power
With Heather Wolf
As the present meets the past, there is a collective wound of the feminine that we experience personally, ancestrally, and relationally. Yet, if we go back far enough, we also inherit lineages of wise women healers, known and unknown. These ways are in our bodies, as old as time, deeply of the earth, the hearth, […]
Healing Family & Ancestors: Ritual & Resonant Family Constellations
With Jill Purce
Transform inherited patterns into magical blessings, bringing harmony, joy, and order into your daily life. Activate the unconscious field of the ancestors, making it a rich source of wisdom and illumination. This healing program uncovers and restores aspects of the psyche that are normally closed to therapeutic methods, transforming negative patterns into natural blessings. Jill’s […]
Becoming One with the Spirit of the Drum
With Gordy Onayemi Ryan and Zoë Ryan
Activate the Fire in your hands, the Beat in your feet, and the Song in your Heart on this soulful journey in Rhythm in the iconic Olatunji Hall. Drum, dance and sing to increase the flow of vital energy in your body and open your ears to the beauty of rhythms and songs from many […]
Painting Nature, Here and Now
With Jeremy Herndl
Is it possible to have a conversation with nature? When we set up to paint outside we can take the time to notice that things are moving and changing before our eyes. Being here, immersed in colours, sounds and scents and through the reciprocity of looking and painting we connect with place, ourselves and each […]
Science, Art, Sound & The Sacred
With Merlin Sheldrake, Cosmo Sheldrake and Rupert Sheldrake
Explore the entanglements between science, art, sound, and the sacred in a beautiful, wild setting. Our imaginations are a critically important superpower and perhaps our primary means of survival. In this workshop, we will spend time both indoors and outdoors -- in gardens, on seashores and in forests -- connecting with the more-than-human world and […]
Writing with Intuition: A Journey into Creative Consciousness
With Sarah Selecky
Join author and creative intuitive Sarah Selecky to learn the magical art of writing from your whole self, using intellect and intuition at once. These skills live in the heart of story and poetry, yet they're rarely taught in traditional writing programs. While academic courses focus on craft and technique, they often overlook the mystical […]
Between the Human Animal & The Animate Earth
With David Abram
How can we open a fresh and unshakeable solidarity between ourselves and the other animals, plants, and elemental forces that compose this breathing biosphere? The deepening contortions of climate change – intensifying droughts, monster floods, flaring wildfires and heart-wrenching geopolitical cataclysms – all ensure that our species is tumbling toward a sea change of immense […]
SoulCollage®: An Enchanting Path to Inner Wisdom & Creativity
With Kimberly Lee, J.D.
Set out on an enlightening journey of self-discovery, guided by the power of your own creativity and intuition. In this immersive workshop, you’ll uncover and access inner wisdom through the inspiring SoulCollage® method. Developed by the late Seena Frost, MA, and based on the work of Carl Jung, this enchanting personal practice harnesses the magic […]
Slow Art, Somatic Practice, and Creative Rest
With Shauna Kaendo, Registered Art Therapist | BFA, RCAT
Being in conversation with art, process, and ourselves. The theme for this therapeutic arts program is Mapping the Sensory. We will get curious about the sensory experience of art making. Through creative meanderings with solo and collective art processes we will work on slowing down and paying attention to what arises in the process of […]
Ecofluency: Rhythms of Remembrance
With Saskia von Diest and Ruby Singh
Join Dr. Saskia von Diest and Ruby Singh for an immersive retreat that invites participants into a reweaving of rhythms between inner and outer landscapes, through the elemental wisdom of Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Ether. This workshop-style retreat integrates intuitive Nature communication, poetic expression, sound, movement, and contemplative practice to support participants in attuning […]