During retreats I practice acupuncture, teach yoga and run specialist workshops on the body-mind connection.

Alongside organising my own yoga and wellness retreats, I also facilitate on Moinhos Velhos’s juice detox retreats. The practical aspect of the retreats feature yoga, meditation, various workshops and a fabulous array of therapies including Physiospect, Massage, Acupuncture, Shiatsu and Reflexology and facilities like the salt water pool, hot tub and sauna. All of this takes place in the most beautiful setting with – for those of you who are interested in subtle energetics – the centre situated in a valley rich in naturally occurring quartz crystal and located on a synchronic line in the Earth (a synchronic line can be likened to a ley line).

However for me what sets this place asides from many others, is the emphasis on also taking care on the less tangible (but equally important) aspects of our human experience. One of my favourite sayings, passed down via my own acupuncturist, Ken Shifrin, is:

“What is essential is invisible to the eye” Antoine de Saint-Exupery

And it’s this level of the unseen which is also abundantly catered to at Moinhos Velhos. Can you see someone’s ‘Spirit’? well in some respects no, but you can certainly see the – often absent – glint in the eye that a healthy inspired person radiates. Can you see someones emotions? Again in some respects no, but my goodness you can observe someone’s gait and disposition, feel their presence and get a good indication of what they are! Can you see someone’s thoughts? Again in some respects no, but for sure, similar to someones emotional expression the energy of them radiate through so many levels.

Image: Moinhos Velhos Pool and Yoga Temple

So guests find themselves undergoing these powerful physical level letting go processes, which of course you can see! And the Spiral walk meditation is one of the many things I use here to help to cater to the more subtle levels of a person’s being, and assisting the letting go on the mental and emotional levels.

The ceremony begins with participants sitting on the outside of a marked spiral, with the invitation to meditate on a candle with the intention to allow to come to mind all the things which they would like to let go. I tell people they do not need to start making intellectual lists in their mind or wracking their brains, as my goodness, these intentions of what we would like to let go of in our lives is with us everyday, in the back of our minds, in our feelings.

The use of Fire is prevalent in many cleansing ceremonies; Fire essentially transforms dense matter or energy into a more fine form – and the things we often need to let go of have a heavy presence within our energy field. I’ve sat through many ceremonies of various modalities from different cultures around the world which particular work with Fire in this way. It’s been a big feature of the Native American style ceremonies with which I also engage. When the participant then feels the impulse to do so, they will then walk into the Spiral, clockwise (the direction metaphor of heading down into the Earth, where of course we bury and compost) carrying with them their candle to the centre, where they deposit it. In the centre there are new, unused candles, and a large lit candle.

The large lit candle symbolises pure essence – beneath the many levels of our personality and character traits is our connection to soul and spirit, (contained within our Heart) which in itself also part of the pure essence behind all life forms, radiating from the one light, from which all life is evolved. It’s this spark of light within you which actually provides your ‘best potential’ blueprint, the blueprint for who you are and all you can be. And yes we lose our way from time to time, so taking a new candle, lit from this central flame is a metaphor for reconnecting to our better self!

So here I also hit my psycho-spiritual babble alarm, you are probably wondering, how on Earth does he know this? ‘The one light from which all life is evolved?’ Well what can I say, other than I’ve done a lot of meditation and other practices where a lot of these things which might have once seemed like ideas seem to become more like a knowing – and I trust my sources! And again when we are working with the intangible, the way our western minds operate tends to be one of skepticism! So feel free to take that as an invite – read it as a concept, go off and explore meditation and other spiritual practices, and then come back to me in 15 years and tell me if it makes more sense then!

So, there we are at the centre of our spiral, having given away our old candle, and lit the fresh new one, so what next? At this point we then walk back out of the spiral, anti clockwise (the direction metaphor which leads us to the Inspiration from the skies above) and allow in the new visions of what we would like to create in our future. And in exactly the same way that I encourage participants not to rack their brains to think of things they wish to let go of, it’s the same with the fresh visioning of future! Again our dreams, our visions, our feelings are already in there, in our Heart, if only we allow ourselves to let them come to the surface. Because we don’t often, as it can be too painful, life beats us up a little bit and we become firefighters of what life throws at us, and daring to dream can just seem too increase the gap between our dreams and our reality.

But this is what the spirit of this ceremony and the spirit of Moinhos Velhos does, what I see is it brings you closer to your human potential, it raises the bar of what you think you are capable of as a person, and re-awakens in you your dreams. And yes that can be painful, but only if you then seek to resist and try to maintain the status quo when you return to your life on the outside. That’s where the pain is. The much more efficacious route is to embrace your dreams, what’s in your Soul and try and navigate the fast lane towards your bliss!

Image: Spiral Walk Meditation at Moinhos Velhos

Once you have made it out of the spiral, the invitation then is to sit back down with your new candle, a piece of paper and write or draw what has come to you on your visioning walk. Or, if you are not so much of a cerebral person, you can just put your hands on the paper and transmit through your hands your feelings into the paper (the arms and hands are energetic extensions of the Heart, so your deepest feelings of your Heart transmit through what we reach out to)

And my experience of doing this many times is that sometimes what people experience on the visioning journey out is most unexpected! Because folks, that’s the wildcard, as much as we like to think we have control over what we create, the great mystery of creation often has different ideas and the choice is to also embrace that as part of our reality too.

At the end of the ceremony, I invite participants to take away with them the new candle – to light in times of need, to rekindle the sacred energy of the ceremony, and also the piece of paper. And to put the piece of paper somewhere they will see it often. Because when participants are back in ‘normal’ life then the mind tends to get much busier with the everyday logistics, and we need reminders of that which is important to us – that which is in our Heart. So catching a glimpse of that piece of paper, ideally placed somewhere where you place other significant objects is a great idea. An ‘alter’ of your dreams and whats important to you.

This kind of ceremony is also great to do at New Year (ideally actually at the solstice) every year, as alongside the bigger context of what you would like to let go of and embrace in your life we also do a yearly cycle in exactly the same way.

So, if you would like visit a retreat that is truly for the Body, Mind and Spirit then come and pay my retreats at Moinhos Velhos a visit! If we are unavoidably out of reach for you, then receiving the style of Acupuncture I practice, 5 Elements, or practicing the yoga I teach, Dru Yoga, are also other great ways of tuning into your Heart as both modalities emphasise the Heart as the overall guiding and controlling force within us.