PLEASE NOTE: places for May are now full. An additional
Facilitating the Feminine will take place at Bodhi Khaya, SA, November 2025: you can apply here.
FACILITATING
THE FEMININE
Reimagining individual & collective action
through nurturing the feminine
The complex challenges of our world are born from extractive ways that have over centuries come to dominate most cultures. Creating a different world means changing our approach.
We invite you to explore the feminine softly,
through other ways of being.
Facilitating the Feminine is a 5-day retreat-based course,
rooted in the Aura methodology.
We invite participants to simple ways of knowing and being differently, with the possibilities of influencing their contexts, holding their own women’s circles, and impacting their actions in the world.
Where women come to be, to see beyond the eyes
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When & where
5th - 9th May 2025
4-night stay with all meals provided
Arrive 4pm on 5th May
Depart 11am on 9th May
At Bertha Retreat, Boschendal, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Please submit your name here if you might be interested in a future
UK-based Facilitating the Feminine retreat-based course.
Hosted by
Renata Minerbo
Jasmine Jacob
Eve Annecke
Ross van Niekerk
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Join us on this embodied journey if:
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You are a mother, activist, artist, professional, community worker, unemployed, academic, consultant, journalist, teacher, volunteer, or anyone else who would love to explore ways of being that are nourishing, nurturing and regenerative.
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You are someone who would like to change things.
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You would like to start a women’s circle.
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You’re a woman based in South Africa.
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You’re curious, and can’t quite put your finger on it.
Please submit your name here if you might be interested in a future
UK-based Facilitating the Feminine retreat-based course.
The change we are
is the change we create
Through the ancient art and practice of women’s circles, the Aura methodology embraces
and enhances parts of ourselves that are too often suppressed. Our intention is for the Facilitating the Feminine retreat to empower participants to work differently, to host women’s circles of their own, and to offer Aura methodology to their families and communities to amplify and enhance feminine ways of being as pathways to radical transformation.
Many of us dream of a more beautiful world and seek to create that reality. With enthusiastic intention, we set about creating vision and mission statements, strategy, outcomes, evaluation plans, reports and management systems. All our imaginings, poetics and inspiring aesthetics are translated too hastily into ‘words everyone can understand’. Without noticing, we unconsciously become drawn into replicating the very systems we so fervently wish to change.
This neglect of the artistry and poetry innate within all of us often leads to deep burnout. Exhaustion, martyrdom, and feeling hopelessly inadequate in the face of everything we
are expected to be sullies even the simplest and purest of our
efforts towards change.
In this mindset, we can never do nor be enough.
A path we walk together
Facilitating the Feminine explores ways of being that radically subvert the status quo, offering time and space to explore perception, and, in becoming different ourselves, to notice the world simultaneously responding differently towards us.
Aura has been working with extraordinary women activists for the past five years, and as seasoned activists ourselves who have made countless mistakes along the way, our intention is to accompany you on a journey that is co-created: an inner and collective exploration where the more-than-human landscape of Boschendal becomes as much a teacher as the women with whom we journey.
Can the feminine, with its infinite mystery and wonder, truly be ‘facilitated’?
We make no grand claims. Only from experience, we do know that softening our hearts, gazing into feminine principles and attending to simple wellbeing practices can be counter-intuitive yet powerful pathways to change.
In ourselves, and in our actions in the world.
Fall in love with the world again and again.
Create enchantment in everyday life.
Act in the world in flow, discernment and beauty.
Work with radical change, and modest effort.
Putting our analytical minds aside for a while, this is time to experience, to be present, and to rest.
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Is Facilitating the Feminine for me?
Listen for that quiet voice within; that curious urge that won’t go away. That feeling might be all you need to know.
If you do feel drawn to this experience, follow that energetic pull you might feel in your body,
because in the end, that’s usually the real reason we sign up for something different.
Some words from our fellows
“
The fear of exploring our potential is something we’ve been conditioned to believe, but it’s incompatible with our revolutionary soul. As Margarida Alves, an inspiration for women’s movements in Brazil, said: “We feel fear, but we don’t use it.”
Whenever I feel afraid, I remind myself that while fear can help us understand ourselves better, it should never limit our potential.
― CLAUDELICE DOS SANTOS
Facilitating the Feminine, 2023 Circle
“
Focus on the body. Quiet the mind. Feel it on your skin, taste it on your tongue. Put your bare feet in the mud. Focus on your posture, on how your waist feels, on the tightness in your shoulders.
Hear your body. Switch off the cerebral: focus on your body's reactions to life.
― MUSA GWEBANI
Facilitating the Feminine, 2023 Circle
Participants will encounter...
Hover on the images below to discover more of the content
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What does it cost?
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Our dream is to make all our retreat-based courses accessible and diverse. We ask for a financial contribution to honour your commitment to this process, and as a gift to other women unable to afford the full price of this experience.
Please choose an option that best suits you:
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R0
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up to R50
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between R50 and R250
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between R250 and R500
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between R500 and R1000
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between R1000 and R5000
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over R5000
While this retreat is subsidised by BTE, each and every payment will go towards another woman being able to attend in the future.
We truly value each and every payment, and we trust that you will pay what you can.
No woman will be turned away for lack of funds.
Illustrations by Nomita Khatri