SANCTUM
a sacred, holy place or a highly private space where someone goes to be alone and avoid interruptions
November 11th-16th
Terra Elaya, Puglia, Italy
a late autumn retreat to slow down, listen & restore wholeness
As the nights lengthen and the earth begins its slow turning towards winter, nature invites us into a different rhythm, a time of gestation. This is what Sanctum is about: deepening, descending, restoring, dreaming and listening to what has been waiting beneath the surface, asking to be heart, acknowledged and integrated.
Long before healing became a form of intervention, many ancient cultures understood that restoration arose from creating the right conditions for our inherent wholeness to emerge, that unfragmented reality that is at the foundation of who we are. In the healing sanctuaries of the ancient world, people entered sacred spaces of incubation, where silence, ritual, inquiry, beauty, dreams, contemplation and the forces of nature worked together to support the body's innate movement towards harmony . Healing was seen in relationship to being aligned with one’s inner rhythms and the rhythm of the earth, it wasn’t a rushed process aimed at fixing, rather an invitation to turn inside and receive guidance, from the well of wisdom within, from the elementals & the gods. Healing needed a lot of rest, nourishment and calling upon all levels of one’s being.
In the troubled and inflammatory world we live in, this rhythm seems to be forgotten, we rush from one experience to the next, we don't give ourselves time to integrate, to listen before we respond, and, at the end of the day, we wonder why we feel so exhausted and depleted? Who is
Inspired by these ancient traditions, we gather at the threshold between autumn and winter to create such a sanctuary together. We will descend inside, in our own inner sanctum, the holy of holies within. In this undisturbed inner landscape ordinary time loosens, we step away from constant doing and enter a more liminal and spacious tempo, where true restoration can happen. Here there is nothing to achieve, nowhere to arrive, only an invitation to listen, surrender and allow.
Our nervous systems are allowed to rest. Our bodies receive the warmth, stillness, and presence they long for. Our psyches dream forgotten dreams and receive the images that will carry us forwards. Throughout time, people sought caves, temples, forests, and quiet places where they could surrender to the wisdom of darkness, not as absence, but as the fertile ground from which renewal emerges.
Throughout our days together we will explore this "yin field", this space of inward gazing and true listening. We will create the conditions for unwinding through meditation, somatic exploration, tea ceremony, storytelling, dreamwork, ritual, silence, contemplation, and deep rest. We will invoke the ancient keepers of the dark fertile void to guide us. This will be a retreat in the truest sense: not an escape from life, but a return to its fullness.
DAILY PRACTICES INCLUDE:
-
Meditation & contemplation
-
Somatic & subtle body practices
-
Dreamwork
-
Tea ceremonies
-
Drum journeying
-
Sound & voice healing work
-
Ancestral communion & practices
-
Self-care and body oiling
-
Purification baths, steams & saunas
-
Storytelling & myth
-
Night Vigil
-
Personalised 1:1 healing treatments & bodywork
FOOD
Food will be a very important part of our time together. Not only will we be eating seasonally and locally, with the freshest quality of food, but we will also restore the ritual and art of food as a way to ground, to be nourished and restore vitality. We will resurrect the true ceremony of eating and feasting, so present on these lands.
We will focus on nutrient dense, anti-inflammatory, foods and will also be serving different herbal tea preparations throughout the day that will support our nervous and digestive systems as well as opening our minds & hearts to greater receptivity.
One of our evenings we will be sharing a special experience of cooking on open fire as was done in the ancient times.
ACCOMODATION
Each room is uniquely designed to support you to feel comfortable and at home.
We offer four different accommodation options: double, triple, quadruple and a bell tent option that accommodates two people.
All accommodation options have single beds, including the tents. Every room is unique in its taste, yet all rooms are spacious and comfortable.
Moreover, all rooms have their private toilet aside from the tents which share a bathroom and outdoor shower.
ABOUT ELAYA
Nestled amongst ancient olive groves, fig and pomegranate trees, Elaya is a home, sanctuary, gathering place & regenerative land project.
Built on the ruins of a 17th century farmhouse it has been restored to preserve its traditional feel. Around the house is a 3 hectare land that is being stewarded and tended to in order to nurture the soil, foster biodiversity, and cultivate ecosystems that sustain life in all its forms.
Our prayer at Elaya is to tend to the restoration of a culture of care and offer a space that recalls the ancient healing sanctuaries present all around the Mediterranean. These were places where people would come to find refuge, restore connection between body and soul and receive visions for the future.
We are also a creative center that values cross pollination of peoples, cultures and the land. We are here to support the re-imagining of a world that is in the right relationship to the web of life.
WHO IS THIS FOR
This retreat is for those who feel the call to slow down.
It is for those who have been holding a great deal for others, for the mothers, for the healers, for the tenders, for activists, the culture makers and shakers, for those who long for a space where nothing is expected of them. For those who sense that rest is something essential to remember, a doorway into true connection and wisdom.
It is for anyone standing at a threshold, after a season of change, loss, illness, burnout, transition, or simply the accumulated weight of everyday life, and who feels the need to pause before taking the next step.
For those who are interested in the wisdom of the body, the language of the dreams, the silence of the mind and the healing that can emerge through stillness rather than pushing.
It is for those that want to learn the ways of symbol, who want to restore ancient rituals, connect to nature and myth, that want to build bridges between the conscious and the unconscious.
Finally it is for the courageous ones who know that there is a sacred rhythm to life, for those who realise that we are living in times of inflammation and that we are called to deepen rather than over-engage, to listen rather than react, to dream and let themselves be dreamed rather than control and impose.
It is for anyone who knows that in darkness, in slowing down, in connecting to the rhythms of the earth there is a fertility that will help nourish your service in the world.
OUR INSPIRATION , OUR DEVOTION, OUR PRAYER
We are not a separate being, we are an interwoven galaxy, an intricate landscape, we are made of many parts and yet all parts belong to the same whole, and our wholeness belongs to the cosmos and earth. Healing is restoring the vision of wholeness, mending what appears to be fragmented. Darkness was always the place of healing, undisturbed, untouched, yet our gaze must be altered in order to see in the dark. We must take on the eyes of an owl and shed our snake skins for the new to emerge. Here we learn to pause, and in pausing we become intimate with what is. Perhaps there is no where to go. Just be. We breathe, we slow down, we surrender and we remember. Simple and miraculous as that. We listen, with our whole being, we listen with our hearts and bodies and minds and souls. It is this type of listening that is so needed today. A listening that is unwavering, that is devotional, that is spacious. What is longing to be heard within you? What ancient story? What silenced cry? What well of joy? As we decompose, like the leaves in the soil, we become good food for the future to move through us, we return vessels for the sacred to express itself through our lives. We follow the threads left by those that came before us, the descent of Innana and Persephone, the wilderness of Artemis, the healing visions of Asklepios & Hygeia, the magic of Isis, we enter the web of spider woman and we practice the vision of owl woman, we remember we are weaving an invisible thread amongst all.
PRICING
THESE INCLUDE ACCOMMODATION + FOOD + THE COURSE.
TRANSPORTATION TO AND FROM THE VENUE IS NOT INCLUDED.
**early bird ends September 15th**
DOUBLE ROOM
single beds + ensuite bathroom
€ 1,280 (early bird)
€ 1,500 (regular)
TRIPLE ROOM
single beds + ensuite bathroom
€ 1,180
€ 1,400
QUADRUPLE ROOM
single beds + ensuite bathroom
€ 1,100
€ 1,320
BELL TENT (2ppl)
*single beds + shared toilet
€ 955
€ 1,100
To secure your spot we ask a €400 non-refundable deposit
Spaces are limited!
if you have any question or inquiry please email us at
ABOUT US
Emilia Cianci is a facilitator and guide, healing arts practitioner, ritualist, birth worker, astrologer and culture maker. The spaces she hold entirely stem from her own embodied experience and what has supported her own healing and transformation.
She drinks from many wells and traditions including Eastern & Western Mysticism, Somatic Therapy & Dance, the Oracular Arts, Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Birth & Death work, Family Constellations, Mythology and a wide range of Healing techniques.
Her devotion is to the path of remembrance and the restoration of soul in its wildest and truest sense. She often sits at the threshold with others, helping them in the process of their own inner transformation.
She is the founder of The Way of the Soul, a school for the Sacred Arts and now is stewarding Elaya, a place where we can tend to the sacred and regenerate both the land and our spirits.
Maria Peres, with 10 years of clinical experience, Maria is passionate for ancient ways of healing. Her practice is rooted in a global pilgrimage of study, from serving in Ayurvedic Panchakarma clinics & hospital in India, to specializing in Natural Gynecology in Brazil. Having integrated Traditional Mexican Medicine and Spagyrics into her work, she is currently deepening her diagnostic expertise through University studies in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
Maria has guided many women to reclaim the health of their own bodies while gaining a deeper understanding of their inner rhythms.
She is the founder of Apoema and co founder of Living as Sacred school and Orada Apothecary, Maria´s mission is to ensure every woman has the tools to walk the path of health, ritual and truthful connection with themselves.
A NOTE ON HEALING Our TREATMENTS
These have a separate cost from the retreat
Throughout our time together you will have the opportunity to receive 1:1 healing and bodywork. This is a way to deepen the journey, to be held and witnessed personally and specifically to your needs. There will be different options of treatments and we will send the info prior to your arrival. The invitation is to book these in advance so that we can organise the schedule around these as well. Although we do believe it is an immense opportunity to receive within such a container, these sessions are entirely optional and the depth of the work will reach you no matter what.
