• A little introduction to Tarot

Maxim Voloshin

“Where there is a will - there is a way” - a popular idiom, which is as complex as it is true.

There are times in life when identifying what is that will is as difficult as finding the way towards pursuing it. Then sometimes, we are just seeking reassurance in what we already know is the right path. Tarot is a practice that aims to answer our philosophical quests through 78 cards, which unite in various spreads to create personal and nuanced meanings.

A little introduction to Tarot aims to ignite your curiosity about this beautiful, spiritual practice. Come along to explore how can Tarot enrich your journey in life.

• Alchemy - The art of energy transformation

Nic Perrin

A workshop that brings us to the power of the heart, shifting us from material to energy.

This workshop is a series of practical experiences that explore the key pillars for a soul to mystically and magically engage with the world of miracles and infinite possibilities.

• Astrology Meetups

Let's chat about the Cosmos! Dive into the mysteries of the Sun, Moon, Planets and Stars – with experienced astrologers on hand to offer their skills and insights.

For experienced astrologers, novices and anybody interested, the format of each meetup will take shape according to the wishes of those who attend – and might include short presentations on astrological themes, discussions, games and more detailed work looking at birth charts.

• Authenticity Speaks - Inspirational & Intuitive Speaking

Nic Perrin

In a world that is mind based fuelled with fear, judgement and criticism. We transcend this status quo into a playful heart centred space where stories, messages, intuitive heart felt sharing ll the space with no preparation or planning.

This experience allows the group to be seen & heard for who they are as a divine magnificent being. Allow the wisdom and truth from within to be expressed out into the world while being held to your edge within a loving and accepting space.

• Awakening Achilles - how to initiate your gay spiritual warrior

Kai

Kai will share with you a fusion of cutting edge and ancient techniques for turning the highly specific LGBT wounds of internalised shame and guilt into spears and shields with which to break down and through all that stands in your way.

Using a mixture of guided visualisations to bring LGBT archetypes into your life, enhanced chakra initiations and strategic use of crystals.

• Balanced Boundaries for Queer Healers

White Rose

Queer spirits are called upon to heal deep wounds. Many of us take on professional roles of medic, therapist, counsellor, masseur, bodyworker etc.

When we live and love in small LGBTQ communities, how can we manage the professional boundaries expected of us - given that these are so often built upon straight, cis, heteronormative assumptions?

I invite queer therapists and healers at the festival to join a shared reflection on these issues; can we turn the balancing of professional boundaries into a radical act (of love, of protest, or both)?

Structure: I will begin by introducing my own experience as a therapist living in Faerie community, working with LGBTQ clients and remaining visibly/sexually/politically Queer whilst navigating the personal and professional boundaries I encounter in daily life. I will offer exercises to help participants reflect on how they balance their own professional boundaries in queer spaces - both the challenges posed, and the opportunities and potentials that arise.

There will be a strong element of co- creation. We will end with a group sharing, with the intention of finding new ways of balancing ourselves against the boundaries we encounter.

• Cacao Rope Meditation

Shadi   Love Dragon

This meditative cacao ritual allows for deep connection to the subtle life force energy field of the body through partnered sessions of serving and receiving rope contact and movement.

This is a playful yet sacred interactive workshop that can deeply activate powerful sensations of the subtle energy body, stimulated by drinking a small dose of ceremonial cacao brought from Guatemala.

Shadi is an experienced cacao practitioner and is accustomed to holding space for and guiding cacao rituals, while Love Dragon is a skilled dancer, body worker and facilitator of body-positive workshops all over Europe. Together they created this short and very empowering interactive ritual, very much about creating deeper awareness and presence with the subtle energies that the body creates when we deeply listen.

This workshop could possibly be open for teenagers as well, when accompanied by an adult. It is not a nude event but shirts or pants may be removed to create a deeper connection to the ropes

• Creative Writing Workshop: "Super Me - Your Role"

Evangelista Sie

You enjoy writing? Great to have you here!
You are not a writing person? A warm welcome to this activity!

In this activity, you can reflect upon the roles that you play in everyday life, take off the roles you don't like and keep as well as create and own the one's that feel right for you. We will work with:

  - creative writing methods,

 - superhero*ine music,

 - sharing and exchange with other participants,

 - within a safe and empowering community of writers

• Creative Writing Workshop: "Super Me - Your Story"

Evangelista Sie

You enjoy writing? Great to have you here!
You are not a writing person? A warm welcome to this activity!

In this activity, you can explore your superhero*ine powers and strengthen your authentic writing voice through

  - creative writing methods,

  - inspirations for your writing,

 - sharing and exchange with other participants,

 - within a safe and empowering community of writers

• Earth Medicine

Justin Luria
The world is on fire. We are decades away from environmental collapse leading to the end of civilisation, and our societal drive for more and bigger and better (with no regards to the consequences) shows no signs of slowing down.

The psychopathy, woundedness and trauma at the heart of western culture is being revealed. And to boot, it seems almost all modern attempts at spirituality are recreations of the western dominant culture, with its excessive focus on the self, personal gratification, and growth, all without end. Growth without end, in the body, is cancer. So it is also in the world, and that is what how we live has become.

How, then, can we proceed, so as not to reincarnate the traumas and distortions of our culture into our spiritual path?

This workshop is a space to welcome the worry, disquiet, discomfort, anguish, trouble and turmoil from a life lived in the daily presence of horror and atrocity, local and global. By coming together to move, dance, talk, celebrate, make ceremony, drum journey remember and speak to our ancestors and the land, we can perhaps sew the seeds for the beginning of a healthy, heart-centred, inclusive path of spirituality that reveres and honours all life. It's not easy, but maybe it's mandatory; something we do not for our own sake, but for those yet to come, who will inherit all of the consequences of how we lived our lives.

This workshop may contain (but cannot guarantee) disco.

• Ecstatic states open gates

Rhodri Karim   Shokti

Chair of the Bristol Psychedelic Society Rhodri, and Radical Faerie Shokti, invite you to a discussion about mulit-dimensional reality through the mingling of spiritual wisdom, pagan magic and psychedelia

• Experience Shiatsu - touch from the heart

Andy butterfield

Shiatsu is therapeutic bodywork that uses stretches, joint mobilisation, acupressure and holding to bring the body into a state of deep relaxation, supporting and balancing vital lifeforce energy.

In this physical and experiential workshop, you will work individually and with partners to learn simple shiatsu techniques that you can practice at home with loved ones. Come and experience how movement, stretching and touch can both enliven and deeply relax us.

You will remain fully clothed so please wear warm, loose, comfortable clothing.

The workshop is available to anyone, but you should be able to sit or kneel comfortably on the floor. If possible, please bring a cushion and a blanket.

• Exploring the Fluid Self

Samicee

Exploring the Fluid Self - an exploratory workshop on gender identity, expression, romantic attraction, sexual orientation and more.

It will introduce that our identities exist across a spectrum for those who maybe have not heard this and affirm for those who have.

I aim to create a safe space for ALL to explore that perhaps we all express some level of gender variance outside of binary categories regardless of how we wear our identities in this world.

The activity will involve group discussion and one to one sharings with opportunities to expand how we see ourselves in the wider queer and spiritual community.

• GENDERNAUTS

Sal Harris

The Gendernauts project is raising awareness of gender diversity and the multitude of ways in which we experience and express our worlds.

There is validity in every flavour of language... verbal or non- verbal, let’s see how many we can try!

The workshops themselves are a creative untangling of gender identity and expression; a multisensory experience looking at what gender means to each of us, and how to express that when we take away conventional labels. We explore gender through colour, paper, mess and meditation, and look deeper into the limits of the binary gender system by experimenting in a safe and fun space. Consider it the co-creation of a sandbox, with gender instead of sand! 

The sessions can be appropriate for:

– Those who are questioning or struggling with their gender identity.

– Those who enjoy discussing, analysing or playing with gender.

– Those who want to have a clearer understanding of or empathy for gender-diverse experiences.

– Freaks, weirdos, queers and question marks.

• Gong Bath to relax and unwind

Tom Shanti

Gong Bath to relax and unwind.

Tom offers restorative Gong Bath and sound meditations to those who are affected with physical and emotional challenges, including cancer, stress and many others.

He is also offering one to one sessions at the festival.

• Grounding/Moving and Seeing/Being-Seen

Ian Howie

What if it is interesting or useful to develop our awareness of our bodies as we move in the world, particularly as queer people?

This workshop uses ideas of breath and grounding, and how they relate to the experiences of being seen by other people, and seeing other people. Can we stay grounded and also in touch with our fear, excitement, ideas of relationship, or whatever else is happening for us as we move in the world?

We will do some simple (but possibly deep) exercises to do with somatic awareness of the body, and play with different ways of seeing and being seen, with and not-with the eyes.

No experience is needed, just an interest and motivation to try this stuff out in your own way.

• Heart Song

Noam Paz

In this workshop we will experience shifting our body’s vibration through our authentic voice.

Our human body is an amazing musical instrument. Each one of us has a unique voice, that has the healing ability to transform held emotions like sorrow, shame and fear into vitality and joy. Through the practice of breath, meditation, touch and vocal work, we can become our own healers, cultivate spiritual and emotional strength and reconnect with our inner vision and creativity.

It is a special opportunity to share personal and communal emotional healing, addressing the collective sorrow and challenge of the LGBTQ community worldwide, past and present.

• Hermitude Interlude

Tessa Wills

Come take some time out to creatively reassess, reorient and utilize community to connect deeper to yourself. Artist Tessa WIlls invites you to find your own Hermit practice in this workshop where we will design creative practices that deeply nourish us, inspired by the Hermit archetype.

The Hermit project started in 2013, and is a queer creative resilience participatory art project: a queer reformulation of retreat with tactics of hermitude. Reckoning with the underlying question of how to positively utilize the impact on our lives of political/social/economic stresses and strains, particularly as they relate to our interior worlds through aesthetics. Cultivate your creative energy and discern who it belongs to and where to send it. Hermit Practice is an process that guards against erasure of your creative practice, and fertilizes private dream worlds as part of an arsenal of resistance. Hermit practice cultivates creative practice is a part of your suite of activities for resilience and resistance, to support transformation into something uncatchable, unfathomable, wild, personal and interpersonal. This is how you bring glitter to a knife fight. Maybe this is how you confound the game, and follow your own path instead. We will do some work together and once you are inspired, you will leave to do your hermit practice. We will regroup and debrief at the end, capturing what of this project can resource you in your day to day life.

Queer Hermits sent me this feedback from the last project:
 “this is exactly the medicine we need right now”
 “I now remember there is magic in the world and i am a part of that magic”
 “I leave feeling conscious. I choose aloneness, not loneliness”

• How To Be A Good Ally

Samicee

How to be a trans* ally - a safe space again to ask the "You Can't Ask That" questions, and some take-aways for practical steps cisgender LGBQ+ allies can take away

• Inner child meditation

Antonio Hernandez

Guided journey through relaxation and meditation to connect with our inner child.

It is somewhere inside us but we tend to forget where and to talk to him or her. We will take a break from our adulthood to come back to our childhood and listen to sharing children have to tell us.

• Kirtan

Nik Parmer

A call and response musical meditation that takes a minute to learn, and makes you feel good just as fast.

The practice goes back more than 5000 years and can be practised by anyone. You do not need to be a good singer, a practitioner of yoga, or a follower of any religion or set of beliefs to experience the power of kirtan.

An open mind and your voice are all that is required! Combining music, mantra meditation and full body, mind and heart participation, kirtan offers a rich, immersive experience that has the power to change the world, one heart at a time.

• Laughter yoga

Jay Woods

Laughter yoga is a hilariously funny, high energy octane workshop that is suitable for all ages.

From the very young to the old, all will feel the wonderful benefits. When we laugh, either faked or real the body releases chemicals that makes us feel amazing, endorphins are released which also gives a deep and happy glow from within. The residual effects of a really good belly laugh can last more than a week in the body and can be a massive eliminator of depression, as laughter simply busts the hormones responsible for stress.

So, with enough regular laughter your complexion will look sparkly, you will feel younger and more exhilarated and stress hormones simply won't exist!. The only prerequisite when coming to a laughter yoga session is the willingness to join in as a group, make new friends and most importantly to laugh. Everything else you will find will simply fall happily into place.

• Living a life of purpose

Nic Perrin

This workshop explores the art of freedom, abundance and joyful expression whilst transcending the material matrix limitations that most humans get stuck in.

A practical experience of the tools necessary to free yourself and to live your truth, highest excitement and calling to share who & what you are out into the world.

• Living with goddesses 1

Lindsay River
Lindsay has been working magically and spiritually with goddesses since the mid seventies. In this workshop she will tell stories about how she found the particular deities she works with, considering ancestral goddesses, animal goddesses, goddesses unexpectedly 'calling' to you, goddess traditions shared with other pagans in a group. Lindsay will touch on the ethics of working with goddesses from outside one's own culture.

Human beings need images of deity in female form (they have been suppressed for so long!) For some people belief in a Great Goddess has replaced a monotheistic God, and others work in a bi-gendered system with Goddess and God in balance. Lindsay works somewhat differently, primarily by engaging with goddesses from their myths and historical cults. She will look at ways of working with goddesses without necessarily basing our understanding on notions of 'the feminine'. Participants will have a chance briefly to share their own experience of female deities. We will also talk from a queer perspective, welcoming transgender and androgynous visions of 'goddess'.

This workshop will be open to all ages, though it may be rather 'wordy' for younger children.

• Living with goddesses 2

Lindsay River
Storytelling with the goddesses! You are encouraged to come and share with others your favourite myths and stories that feature female deities or heroines *.

Some also will be provided in summary for us to read out in turn. Sharing these stories may introduce a goddess to you who will become important in your life – for it is through stories and myths that Lindsay herself found some of the deities who have become vital, emotionally restorative and powerful in her own life.

* Children are very welcome at the workshop, though parents should be aware that stories told could possibly include distressing aspects of (sexual) violence, for these do exist in goddess mythology – we will ask people to give a content warning if that is the case, and this would also be useful for adults.

• Rainbow Awakening

Damien Rowse

Rainbow Awakening is a method of meditation retreat developed in Tiruvannamalai, south India. The consciousness will naturally return home via the innermost chamber of the energetic heart in an environment of pure rest and pure love. So we undertake meditation retreats out in nature huts as couples. As a group we support couples to begin with short retreats of three days then three weeks, three months and finally three years.

For this group event at Queer Spirit, single people are welcome. We will tell our experience of couple retreats so far, ranging from a few days up to six weeks. The routine for these longer retreats involves yoga, meditation, raw food and making love. There will be a practical component where participants can experience for half an hour the first Phase of such a retreat. It is non-sexual energy sharing, keeping your clothes on as you feel comfortable.

Most people are not ready to contemplate longer retreat as a pair. So this introduction can meet people where they are at and give them a taste of this amazing process. Couple retreat has been practised in many cultures around the world including ancient Buddhism, Paganism and in several indigenous cultures. Our retreats are alcohol- and drug-free, as the body is able to rely on the loving energy and rest that it needs.

• Rainbow Witchcraft

Mark Black

Introduction to paganism and the craft with open discussion and learning, and how the craft differs for those walking the path from our LGBTQA family.

Non witches, new witches and those already walking their witchy path are all welcome.

Depending on time, topics that may be covered include - Religion / Introduction to Religion / Overview of Paganism /Base Line Fundamentals / Pantheons / Deities /The Turning of The Wheel / Paths Within Paganism / How to Choose your path / Pagan Ethics / Manners / Black and White / The 3 Fold Law / The Witches Creed /Metaphysics / Correspondences / Luna Lore / Elements / Symbology / Collective Subconscious / Energy Work / Auras / Chakras / Ritual / Tools & Regalia / A witches Sacred Space / Basic Circle Construction / Casting The Circle / Basic Safety and Protection / Spellcasting / Meditation.

• Rope Flow Meditation

Love Dragon

Sensual relaxing partner meditation based on Bondage but leaving the paths of BDSM to explore slowness, softness and quiet.

• Sacred Mantra Crystal Alchemy Session

Mignon Mukti

Join Mignon Mukti for a blissful journey back home to ourselves with the power of sacred sound.

Using mantra, toning, crystal bowls, medicine drum, meditation and sound healing. For centuries sound has been used as a transformational healing tool.

Using the ancient power of mantra to open our hearts. We then take a journey of sound healing using crystal bowls, drum and meditation. And then experience the joy of singing kirtan and chants from a diverse traditions.

Awaken your bliss with this one off workshop for our queer community.

• Shacharit Chanting

Yuval Franck

Join Yuval for a spirited and embodied introduction to Shacharit chanting, an ecstatic Jewish morning prayer tradition.

There’ll be space to dance, hum, sing, chant and clap as we express our desire for peace, love and goodwill in the world – using repetition and togetherness to induce a meditative and connected state.

• Shamanic journeys..

DK Green

Let the spirit, beat, song and resonance of the drum carry you forth, let's see what we find together. Guided, then free fall.

Suitable for beginners as well as more familiar shamanic travellers. A great way to start (and end) the weekend by freeing your spirit for it's journey.

You will need comfortable clothes and a blanket/cushion to recline on/in. Feel welcome to bring something significant to you to place on the altar space before we begin.

• The power of Mantra

Noam Paz

An introduction to Bhakti yoga and the science of mantra.

Since the beginning of time, mantras has been used by the mystics and medicine people to awaken hidden powers, to heal and to manifest reality. Through meditation, breath work, singing and stories from the yogic mythology, we'll experience the deep effect of sacred sounds on our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well- being.

• Trans* mythology and storytelling

Samicee

Reclaiming our sacred identity an exploration of where transgender and gender non-conforming people have always sat historically in cultures separated by time and place through storytelling, myths and archetypal deities.

This is aimed at people of transgender experience or questioning, but open to all.

There will be opportunities to speak from the heart, listen, grow and even an opportunity to co- create a shared ritual of affirmation of our reclaimed sacred nature.

• Witches Drop In

Mark Black

A safe, comfortable and friendly space for sharing, discussion and collaboration.

Bring your BOS’s, Tarot, crystals, runes or whatever else grabs you.