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SUSSEX DOWNS GUIDED PILGRIMAGE

april 22nd - 9am - 2pm

£45

You are so welcome to join me for this time - it is less a ‘walk’ more an opportunity to become intwined with that earth body and star heart that is your soulful inheritance, a time to get still, to listen deeply, to walk into a sense of the sacred - to see yourself as nature itself and to find joy and laughter and a home-coming in that re-membering - an opportunity on this Earth Day to begin to dig a little deeper into what it means to love, and how we can be of service to this beautiful planet. So we may go well and in love - always.

The Journey

Meeting in Fulking we’ll make our way to the foot of the South Downs. Here our pilgrimage starts with an Earth Honouring Pipe Ceremony and a short time of communal sharing & Sacred Sounding. 

Our journey will then take us on a 6 mile route through the heart of the South Downs. There will be times of dedicated silence, opportunities to walk barefoot on these beautiful hills and a Tea Ceremony high on the hills connecting with extraordinary Sheng Puer Teas from wild ancient trees. 

We will finish up our pilgrimage back in Fulking and there will be an opportunity to visit the Downs Spring at its source, offer a prayer, and immerse in the waters. 

Bring food to eat along the way, we’ll have a rest time where those that want to can have lunch. 

Bring water to keep hydrated - think about where that water comes from, maybe choose some spring water to nourish your body as you walk. 

How we walk

Every step an embrace. We walk into sacred Union with the earth, going gently, listening, watching, so our movement through the land is something generative, something that brings life and blessing to all things. Our movement becomes as a prayer or dance, something of beauty. We do not move into these places for what we might take out of the experience, but rather what beauty we can bring to it, from the way we move through the landscape, what we can give to the moment through our presence. So we can be in a place well, in good relation with all things around us, known and knowing.

We are not walking to get away from where we are, like a refugee, rather we are walking to be more at home with who we are. Each step bringing us closer to our natural soul, our indigenous ways, belonging to our homelands.

As with life, and as an Elder once told me - “it doesn’t matter what path you walk, what matters is the heart you walk it in.” 

Matt Hopwood

I have spent my life walking pilgrimages through these lands - from an early age along the great pilgrim routes to my journeys from sacred sites to Holy Islands with my project A Human Love Story. I have walked many thousands of miles, seeking hospitality along the way, opening my heart to the love stories of place and people, learning how to be stiller, get smaller, more present. And the journey continues, the layers still shed, I am still a baby re-membering my Indigenous soul, that constellation heart that is connected to all things. 

HONOURING TRADITIONS & TEACHERS

We humbly sit at the feet of our wisdom teachers; our sharings come through their endeavours and from their lineages. In particular we are in awe & gratitude to the Lakota Nation, Elder Wallace Black Elk and Simon Heather, Martín Prechtel & the Tutuzil Mayan community, Spotted Eagle and the Blackfoot Tribe, Don Miro Quesada and the Pachekuti Mesa Tradition, Brooke Medicine Eagle for the Moontime Initiation, Jessica Huckerby for her Womb Yoga, Sheila Whittacker, Taoism & the ancient Tea Practices of the Chinese masters, Fred the Forager & Pam Montgomery for their herbal wisdom teachings, Mimi Kuo Deemer and her Qigong teachings, and the myriad of indigenous elders and traditions that inform, inspire and guide our practice. We honour their rich and deeply powerful embodied teachings, ceremonies and initiations. We do not seek to mimic or misappropriate the wealth and depth of their wisdom tradition but rather gently honour the golden threads of their sacred teachings. Perhaps through this process we might touch the blossom of their wisdom tree and bring some small expression of their spiritual love and power into our lives where we are. In this way we perhaps have the opportunity to, one day soon, become members of a rainbow nation, an inclusive kaleidascope of traditions, of lovers surrendered to the divine flow of these transformational times.