Facilitators

This course is taught by Simone Silver Path with Nikki Wilkinsun as co-faciltator.

Simone Silver Path
I am a BACP Senior Accredited Psychotherapist and trainer and have trained in Person Centred Therapy and in Psychosynthesis, a transpersonal therapy. For the last 40 years have worked in social care and in private practice. For 15 years I was the manager of a children’s psychotherapy service in the North East and it was there that I developed the original training course, which was then called Holding the Space. This way of working was taken into residential children’s homes and I developed a two-year training course for residential workers in the North East of England and in Scotland.
I have been apprenticed to sacred medicine ways for over fifty years. I first trained in Council many years ago and have since completed a number of trainings with the Ojai Foundation. I have also trained with the School of Lost Borders in the Four Shields and in wilderness work and have co facilitated with one of the schools co-founders, Meredith Little. I am trained in sacred ceremony and ritual and have spent many years training in shamanism. I am also licensed practitioner Five Element medicine, a Taoist system of healing.
For many years I was a peace activist living at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp and I stood against Margaret Thatcher in the 83 election. I did a number of speaking tours across America and Europe organised by the peace movement and the Quakers.
These days I work in private practice offering psychotherapy, sacred ceremony, shamanic healing, soul retrieval, plant spirit medicine and wilderness therapy. I run training courses in shamanism and occasionally work as a celebrant. I teach a Women’s Moon Lodge in the sacred ways of ceremony and ritual. My most recent work is the sacred journey of the Seven Gates based on Five Element medicine and the Taoist journey of descent into the self. This is work developed in the Silver Lodge, a women’s lodge of elders that meets for three days over the eight festivals to create ceremony. We are a group of old women who do not obey the rules.
I live in Northumberland a wild and beautiful land where I walk with my little dog Poppy and continue to fall in love with life.
Nikki Wilkinsun
I live in Southern Spain and have an MA in Creative Arts Psychotherapy from the Higher Institute of Psychological Studies in Madrid. I have also studied Wilderness Psychotherapy and am dedicated to our reconnection with nature and the Sacred Ceremony of Council. I have taken Council and the Creative Arts into a men’s prison here in Spain and I teach the way of ceremony in workshops, celebrating the eight festivals. As a creative arts therapist I work with young people and with adults in my private practice. I run workshops in Spain, the UK and in India and I run courses in the educational sector for teachers and students as well as running online courses.
I trained as a teacher of dance for a number of years in Barcelona and sacred dance is my passion. I have studied dance for many years and have performed and taught dance here in Spain. I have also studied shamanism and the way of ceremony and I celebrate the eight festivals of the year. I am a conscious movement facilitator and have been dedicated for over 20 years to helping others to tap into a path of wisdom, the elements and nature, enabling people to come home to themselves.
I also work as a Celebrant, accompanying and honouring the major life transitions of Birth, Coming of Age, Leaving Home, Marriage and Death; I facilitate these powerful rites of passage. I am the founder of Free Spirit Movement, a practice dedicated to enabling people to reclaim their inner strength and radiance of spirit through dance, the arts, therapy, coaching and mindful movement.
My book, The Spinning Stones, a practice of stone divination, is available through Amazon.
I live in Mojacar with my family and I love to walk in the mountains and practice yoga and meditation every morning by the ocean. I live with my husband and my cats and dogs and I have a daughter, Aisha, who is the beat of my heart. I am in love with the whole of life and celebrate that daily.