Take shelter with me
The doors will open again in early 2025.
Space is limited as we like to keep our community gatherings small to enable a more intimate, close knit community feel.
Introducing our Shelter Community
I’m calling the wild women, curious movement explorers, teachers, mentors, guides, creatives, misfits, liberators and rebels, read more to find out about our Shelter Community and why I feel that the key ingredient in community is soul.
“Community isn’t solely born from proximity; in today’s world, we choose the communities we want to be part of. It can emerge through common interests, shared passions, collective action, or specific circumstances. For me, “the key ingredient in community is soul, soul is the hidden unity that brings people together. When soul is absent, community falls apart.”
Michael Meade
My own experiences of seeking belonging, especially after facing bullying in school, fuelled my commitment to creating spaces of acceptance and seven years ago I started running monthly Moon Circles initially locally face to face and then online. But I knew I wanted to deepen this connection, to offer more depth and continuity. A more diverse and creative toolkit of practices that mirrored my own evolution and growth AND more pathways to build relationships and belonging. In January 2022, our magical Shelter Community was born. In these circles, we welcome every aspect – both shadow and light. It’s a space to shed shame, to get real, and to build a foundation for a deeper, truer, and more accepting love.
Our journey into community is deeply intertwined with our ability to build relationships. Yet the skills required for authentic connection may not have been imparted to us in our formative years. Whether we learned to keep our thoughts hidden or to forsake our true selves for approval, these gaps can create a yearning for community, a desire that might seem just out of reach.
“The practice of being in a relationship with others is what we are missing. Individualism – personal and national – has created a loneliness amongst humans that is not survivable.”
Adrienne Maree Brown
As a facilitator of circles and community spaces, my mission is to foster a culture that embraces openness, learning, and deep listening. Shelter is a safe haven where we can gather to share, move and dream; where change can happen in a collective space that’s secure and sacred, an enriching place where we can all get curious and take shelter together.
Whilst we are lost in the forest of unknowns, the one constant we can cling to is regular connection that we co-create. This is my intention for Shelter – a community where we can provide that for each other.
“As always Lara has put together a really thoughtful programme to guide us through the year. It’s a space we share as we journey into and explore self enquiry in a very held way.”
Andrea
Live online sessions
The live New Moon Gatherings run as close to the New Moon as possible on Sundays from 7.30pm until 9.30pm (UK time), 8.30pm until 10.30pm (CET), 2.30pm until 4.30pm (EST), 11.30am until 1.30pm (PST).
New Moon Gatherings 2024
- Wolf Moon – No meeting
- Snow Moon – Sunday 11th February
- Worm Moon – Sunday 17th March
- Pink Moon – Sunday 14th April
- Flower Moon – Sunday 12th May
- Strawberry Moon – Sunday 9th June
- Buck Moon – Sunday 7th July
- Sturgeon Moon – Sunday 4th August
- Harvest Moon – Sunday 1st September
- Hunter’s Moon – Sunday 6th October
- Beaver Moon – Sunday 3rd November
- Cold Moon – Sunday 1st December
What Shelter is
Above all, Shelter is an intimate space for women to know themselves more fully through embodiment and in relationship with others.
“If you can dance and be free and not embarrassed, you can rule the world.”
Amy Poehler
Together we explore movement somatically, intuitively and with sensitivity and enrich our experience through play and pleasure, following where curiosity leads.
It’s a space dedicated to cultivating presence and to enlivening and enriching our experience of ourselves, and the world around us in a sensual and sensuous way. An invitation to dive inward to find what captivates us and allow for these threads of intrigue and self enquiry to lead the way.
Physical, mental, and spiritual nourishment requires more than movement alone. Exploring pleasure, play, appreciating beauty, art and creativity are key elements to healing the psyche and in Shelter we expand our capacity for joy, building resilience and ability to hold complexity.
We reconnect with our essence and rewild ourselves, co-creating a safe space that supports intentionality, self-inquiry, reflection, slowness, simplicity. And in our monthly gatherings we build relationships, within and without, with authentic full expression.
The invitation is to show up as you are and share your voice, even if it shakes.
As Michael Meade says, “Community is not living near someone, it’s dwelling deeply with each other.“
Shelter is our virtual fire, gathering around monthly themes woven with ritual and ceremony. We slow down to welcome the sacred into the everyday, and to recognise that it is already there – if we give ourselves the chance to see it.
“To live an enchanted life is to offer our battered psyches the nourishment they need. To be awakened and shaken by the extraordinary within the ordinary.”
Sharon Blackie
How Shelter works
Each month we initiate a new theme in our live online gathering. After we meet, you can explore the theme through self-enquiry at home.
The monthly themes we explore are woven together by threads and elemental seasonal wisdom that is alive. Our gatherings together open us up to magic and mystery, wonder and awe. What is both seen and unseen.
“When women come together with a collective intention, magic happens.”
Phylicia Rashad
To support you, you will receive:
- Recordings of sessions
- Curated playlists and inspiration boards
- A somatic meditation
- A somatic movement practice
- A soothing restorative practice
- A full moon breathwork practice
Access to these resources is via the website portal, which is available throughout your membership.
What you can expect
- Themes that are relevant, seasonal, and explained during gatherings, where we discuss the thinking behind each one.
- Meetings that encourage curiosity and intimacy through sharing, exploring new practices, reflections, insights and questions.
- You will also receive prompts for journaling, art, reflection – to use during and after sessions, when you can review the theme and how it has impacted on you.
- You can expect some challenge as you meet some of your own edges AND a deeper sense of embodiment, awareness of what’s important for you.
“As part of the Shelter Community, I have explored aspects of myself that I wouldn’t have done otherwise. The themes of each month were thought provoking and challenging and the live online gatherings were a great mix of movement, meditation, sharing and seasonal facts/storytelling. I enjoyed the freedom of the more somatic movement practices and ideas, having practiced more structured yoga for many years.”
Sarah
Membership benefits
All sessions are recorded so you can participate even if you miss the live gathering.
Shelter provides a sense of vision and purpose, helping us feel supported in daily life. We share our highs and lows, building inner strength and relationships. Together we increase our ability to navigate whatever comes our way in changing times.
You decide how much or how little you get involved – each month will be different dependent on what’s going on in your own life.
This is an initial framework that I’m expecting to grow and evolve that will hopefully involve collaborations and skill sharing as we develop.
Cost
£30 per month, with a commitment to five months until the end of 2024
“Lara is a wonderful facilitator and is very gifted in both leading and encouraging participation within the community, and in also introducing themes and ideas for exploration. I always feel very comfortable working with Lara and feel that I can both trust and be totally honest with her. She has provided the group with not only live sessions but a whole range of wonderful monthly resources for us to practice in our own time, and I have loved travelling through the seasons with her during this time.”
Debbie
I hope you’ll join and take Shelter with me.
To join simply fill out the application form or if you prefer you can book in for an initial chat.
And if you’d like a taste of what’s on offer before you commit
Why not sign up to receive access to the free Imbolc gathering session which ran on 1st February to sample a taste of what Shelter is all about.
