The Journey
Deeply Held Retreats in Expanded States of Consciousness
The Journey
Deeply Held Retreats in Expanded States of Consciousness
The Journey Retreats are deeply held journeys into and through expanded states of consciousness.
As psychotherapists, transpersonal therapists and ceremonialists, we recognise the growing need for a bridge between worlds as this work becomes more widely available. We are needing to be held in the depths of our psyche, not just the heights of our spirits. These retreats are not about escape, transcendence, or peak experience alone. They are about integration. About meeting what lives underneath. About allowing the body, the psyche and our soul to come with us as consciousness opens. We believe expanded states become truly transformative only when they are carefully and skilfully held.
The Journey Retreats are a return. A coming home to yourself, to your light, your essence, through precise, delicate and deeply held explorations in expanded states of consciousness. This is intimate work. Potent work. Work that reaches beyond the personal and into the collective.
The Journey
The Journey is a series of immersive retreats held throughout the year in Europe and Costa Rica, facilitated by Deborah Maloney- Marsden and Phoebe Sullivan.
Our work is rooted in a deep respect for lineage, both the Western psychological traditions we are trained in, and the ancestral and indigenous lineages of the medicines we work with. Deborah and Phoebe are both trained and highly experienced clinical psychotherapists. Between them they hold tens of thousands of hours of clinical practice. This is not ‘wellness’ language - This is clinical depth.
As transpersonal psychotherapists, we understand how the nervous system adapts, how the psyche develops defensive structures, how we learn to survive. Every pattern we carry, every suppression, every repression, every way we have learned to make ourselves small, was once necessary. It kept us alive. And now it keeps us trapped.
The Journey is a process of deep restructuring. We are dismantling the entire adaptive structure - the parts, the protections, the survival strategies, the somatic imprint that organised themselves in response to what happened to us, what happened to our parents, what happened to our ancestors. This is deep ancestral work. It is not just your experiences, we are moving. It is the trauma held in your lineage, the patterns passed down through generations, the ways your body learned to hold what your ancestors could not process.
Life needs us, and longs for us, in our true essence.
The work is intimate and potent. Together we enter the places we avoid, the patterns that bind us, the wounds that organise our lives, and the protections that once kept us safe but now keep us trapped, hidden, disconnected from ourselves, life and each other.
As we move through expanded states of consciousness, held in a carefully structured therapeutic and ceremonial container, material that has been locked in the body and the psyche becomes available. Old survival strategies, early relational wounds, collective conditioning, ancestral patterns - all of it can be met, processed, worked through. What has been repressed can move into consciousness. What has been held can move through and out.
This is not quick work. It is not always comfortable work. But it is transformative work. As the psyche restructures, as the nervous system reorganises around truth rather than fear, as ancestral patterns are released and integrated, something shifts not just in you-the individual but in the collective. You become capable of living from your true nature, clearer, braver, stronger, more whole. And that ripples outward touching all in your life, this is the brave work that is the foundation for collective change.
When we begin to loosen the grip of the restrictive patterns, conditioning and shame, something deeper comes online. Our unique Soul’s blueprint. Our essence. Our light. Because in your essence, without the stories, the shame, the conditioning, the "too much", the “not enough”, the trauma and the wounding, you are light. You are confident. You are radiant. You are gloriously and wholly you.
From here, we reconnect to our power as Truth. We begin to live through our hearts rather than a fear-programmed psyche, and come into right relationship with ourselves, with each other, with the Earth and with consciousness itself. This work isn’t about going anywhere. It’s about bringing more of ourselves here. Embodied. On this earth. In service to life itself.
In this way, the work becomes collective. Life is not neutral in this. It longs for us to take our place, to express what is uniquely ours to bring.
We know this. Parts of us remember it, even when it feels far away.
This is the intention that weaves through all of our work. This is why we do it.
The Time Is Now
We are doing this work at a very important time in humanity and consciousness. Our individual healing is contributing to the collective shifts that are so necessary on this planet at this time.
Each of us carries a unique blueprint, a particular light. Through stories of shame and repression - both personal and collective - this has been suppressed and held back. We have learnt to dim our light. We have learnt we don't matter. We have learnt it is not safe to shine. And yet life needs us, and longs for us, in our true essence.
Expanded states of consciousness offer an opportunity to move beyond the protective layers of the psyche - the fear-based programmes, the generations of collective conditioning, the defences that were necessary and are now in the way. This is where the personal work becomes collective. As we come back into our essence, our truth and our power, we become capable of living through an open heart - and that ripples outward.
As this field expands globally, we recognise the responsibility it carries. Transformational spaces into expanded states must be impeccably held. That matters deeply to us.
Application
All retreats are application only. Not for exclusivity. For the integrity of the work and the group. This work requires readiness, self awareness, openess and courage.
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