John Cantwell

“Opening & Closing Ceremonies”:

To enter and leave in ritual makes a difference. We might arrive curious, yearning, adventurous, seeking to receive in important ways. The Opening Ceremony will offer a welcoming, inclusive and experiential gathering where we respect how we are arriving and where we respect the energies of the vision for Wellness Festival. Our ritual will also respect the myriad energies of the physical and non-physical realms that will hold and answer to our curiosity, yearning, adventurousness and need to receive. Above all Opening Ceremony will open places for everyone in the circle of community for these sweet and significant two days. Closing Ceremony will be a celebration of how we have been moved, formed and renewed by 48 hours of visiting the well of wellness. It will invite free expression of gratitude to all the beings physical and beyond the physical, who were in place and generously came forward so that we could receive. Closing Ceremony will provide a ritual of legacy where we leave behind a sacred imprint visible in this world and the Otherworld, speaking of our heart-centred celebration. These ceremonies will be traditional, in and of Nature, calling forward the elements if Fire, Earth, Air and Water.

“Shamanic Journey: Into the Irish Tradition of Stones, Ancestors and Healing”

Immram is an old Irish word for a ‘wonder voyage’, a mystical odyssey where the traveller discovers and returns with resources of healing, unavailable in the ordinary world. The Irish word for ‘healing’ is leigheas, a word also used to speak of ‘retrieval’. This Shamanic Journey with John Cantwell of Slí An Chroí, Native Irish Shamanism, will introduce keynotes of the Irish tradition. Embracing Nature’s energies and sensuously offering yours in return, your immram will flow with the support and guidance of the Ancestors. John has 20 years of experience holding and shaping sacred space for shamanic practices, a space that is safe, grounded and warm. As part of your Wellness Festival, the Shamanic Journey will invite you into lasting personal and collective healing. It will bring you into the beauty and power of nature at Lisnavagh. It will inspire a retrieval of wholeness and a remembering of how we can be, here and now, connected, belonging and gracefully wild again. Bígí linn!

“I believe we are all by nature, self healing organisms and that shamanic practice calls us to do so for our own betterment and that of the Earth. The level of connection and sacredness we can experience when we do this, for me can only be called spiritual. I am made to feel safe by shamanism as it asks me to learn only from my own experience while it hands me the means to realise my destiny. When I sit with shamans from other cultures, despite us often not sharing a common spoken language, our conversations are full and dynamic. Such is the language of our hearts.”