W E L L
Wild Ensemble for Luminous Leadership
Source the W E L L. Emerge for Change.
The “well” is an ancient archetype for water expressing the essence of wildness and the deep, ancient reaching into earth for the refreshment of pure water. The well also expresses our inner life calling us to dive into the dark and cold for what most sustains and to be in the wild pools below the surface, leaving the known world and moving into the unknown.
In this time when multiple crises of climate change, environmental degradation, social injustice, and personal suffering are completely interconnected challenges drying up the wells of the planet, the secret pools of the deep need great protection for the life giving nourishment of water.
Living in this emergency of the world, the resourcing of the wild brings the ability to live with stress and yet feel intrinsic radiance. By deeply resting, recharging, resourcing, nourishing, we drink from the revitalizing energies of the well to create luminous leadership.
Source the energies, intelligence, sentience and mystery of water for rejuvenation of ourselves, one another & the planet.
W E L L is a vessel for those attuning to the deep, old feminine currents that many are expressing in gender fluidity.
Day Long Retreats
Online & On Land
March 2024
Sundays: March 10, 17, 24
You are welcome to any or all of these retreats.
Each will be as delicious and fresh as pure water drawn from a well.
Gathering at the W E L L Online 10am-Noon:
Attunement, Sharing, and W E L L Practices
Solitude in the W E L L On Land 1-4pm
W E L L Practices in your Bioregion or Home Land
Community at the W E L L Online 4-6pm:
Return for Council Sharing and W E L L Practices
The Retreats
March 6th Sunday Day-Long W E L L Retreat
The FOOL
…the clown, jester, mime, trickster, mummer, joker…
Most often the fool is considered to be stupid, idiotic, and embarrassing. To the contrary, we are making an inquiry into the divine madness of the fool. To fool us all, the figure that occurs at the edge of society may have the most brilliant, creative solution to the dilemmas of our world. The fool lives outside the realm of rules, turning the known world on its head to see the upside-down view, the realm of fresh perception and non-objectified reality. The fool embodies the quantum unknown and multidimensional fluidity. When we tap into this mysterious play of the fool, everything becomes possible.
We invite the Fool in you to the W E L L.
March 13th Sunday Day-Long W E L L Retreat
The BARD
…the storyteller, poet, lyricist, minstrel, troubadour…
We each have a story, and we also have a collective story. In a time when the old story is failing, in a time when social collapse and environmental extinction are in the near edges of time, our hope is in a new story. The role of the bard is to find and tell that new story. From the depths of the well, the images and nuances for this new story emerge. We listen, sense, and attune to the imaginal realm during this weekend in all our explorations, feeling the currents of the personal and the collective story at play.
We invite the Bard in you to the W E L L.
March 20th Sunday Day-Long W E L L Retreat
Spring Equinox
The GUIDE
…the leader, queen, shaman, healer, priestess, mentor, teacher…
The leadership we are intent upon with this sourcing of the W E L L becomes luminous when we move deeply into the dark waters of struggle, challenge, suffering, and grief to find that, amazingly, shimmering light emanates from this hidden realm. When we are willing to dive and fathom to the very source, we emerge with the powers and grace of initiation or a kind of passage into greater maturity. A curious rising happens, and we often feel the call to be a leader, a guide, or a healer to offer the gifts from the W E L L to others.
We invite the Guide in you to the W E L L.
Feel the Wild Belonging of this Ensemble
We honor the upwelling emergence of collective intelligence and want to give space for everyone’s contributions, as we create together.
W E L L Practices
Embodied Improvisation & Co-Creation
As we each find our connection to a sense of place, whether in wild land or in our home sanctuary, the invitation is to engage in the multimodal richness of embodied practices of improvisation to deeply connect with the beings of nature. With our body as guide, we explore creating a space for interdisciplinary theater processes. These lead us to experiment with emergence and co-creation. Movement, collage, drawing, painting, mandala, toning, percussion, and song stir original ritual making. In response to personal and global emergency, these practices activate our imaginations. They allow us to create solutions, innovations, and new ways of being. Awakening change, a possible and luminous future emerges.
Regenerative Living
Find a nature sanctuary, a garden, or a wild haven. Intermingling caring for the earth with creative purpose, integrate practices of permaculture, regenerative agriculture, and indigenous remembering. Living in community with the nature beings, engage in processes to transform the rich and abundant harvests from the land by learning the origins of foods and the ways to make food medicine for healing. Brewing and sipping herbal teas, enjoy tea ceremony with the natural beings around us. With the multi hues of local, organic corn grown bake cornbreads to complement soups made also with locally grown and harvested beans. We can send you some of these ingredients, if need be, harvested from Metta Earth’s organic, biodynamic, and nutrient-dense soils, and guide you in the preparing. With closeness to nature’s elements of water from the well, earth from the gardens, fire from the wood stoves, air from the mountains, and the space of mindfulness, we become alchemists of the wild and are nourished in the richest, most healthy way.
Contemplative Practice
Winter is wonderfully protected and a deepening time for contemplative practice. In the flow of each day, we dive into the knowing of the body for contemplative practice, feeling the rhythm of inwardly guided movement and breath. With the warmth of beeswax candlelight, we find curious companionship with the inner beings and guides. We also invite many other pause moments and attunement processes in the day to help us center in this deep knowing. Opportunities for guided yoga, meditation, and other contemplative practices enrich the days.
Leadership, Activism & Social Justice
Observing and aligning with wild nature, the great natural intelligence of Earth and Cosmos perhaps will touch and guide us. With this approach as an essential devotion, we explore essences of activism. We invite ways to guide the processes of the Wild Ensemble for Luminous Leadership. In returning to our diverse worlds, we may infuse the waters of W E L L into the sacred vessels of our lives—projects each of us alone and together can originate for social justice and leadership.
Refresh in the luminosity of our co-creative leadership.
W E L L Guide
Gillian Kapteyn Comstock
Co-Director of Metta Earth Institute
Gillian Kapteyn Comstock, MA, is the founding co-director of Metta Earth Institute and the Metta Earth project, which integrates regenerative farming, contemplative practices, community living, and sustainability education. Gillian offers mentoring, program facilitation, and leadership trainings.
As a holistic psychotherapist, certified permaculture designer, and advanced yoga guide, she synthesizes disciplines to support cultural renewal. She is dedicated to creating sanctuaries for others to experience vibrant presence. With a passion for discovering the wild in mind, body, and earth, she has led yoga retreats, wilderness quests, and trainings in nature sanctuaries around the world.
W E L L Program Details
Welcome to all those who wish to deepen in the freedom of the feminine.
W E L L Program Details | Winter 2024
- Limited to 12 participants.
- Designed for participation any or all of the day-long retreats.
Metta Earth is interested in economic processes that create paradigm CHANGE. We we would like the Winter WELL to move into an exploration of gift economy versus modern capitalism. Tapping into the wisdom of earth connected cultures, we see this as a form of radical activism, a change of narrative from the current systems that are creating enormous social injustices. We are inspired to actualize regenerative processes together.
A donation for each of the W E L L retreats supports a gift economy practice.
Please attune to your capacity to make a donation.
Gifts in kind & barter are possible also.
If you would like a sense of what the expense is for this retreat, we might suggest $50-75. If you can donate more than this, others are supported who need to donate less.
- Online & On Land
- These day-long retreats have a rhythm of virtual/online gatherings to begin and end the day
- In between, we each go out to find the water, the natural, the wild — wherever that may be — to engage in the W EL L practices
- The beginning 2 hour gathering and the ending 2 hour community session happens online, so a good wifi connection for a Zoom call is important
- Choose a private and spacious room for sharing confidentially with others on the call and for guided breath and movement W E L L practices
- The middle of the day session is in solitude, so find a wild, natural, place in your bioregion or home land