Dancing Moonlight is a retreat centre and nature sanctuary in Co.Galway.
Facilities include the earthen round DreamLodge, a hand-crafted 20 ft yurt 'SkyLodge' built from the surrounding woodlands, a large greenhouse, glamping and catering.
18/04/2025
Yesterday, I spent most of the day in the woods here, finding whole new parts I still haven't ventured through before.
At first in the morning, coming across the newly opening luminescent bluebells....the smell was so fragrant in the cold morning air. And the bumblebees were enjoying them too, making the flowers bounce with their furry bodies.
Just before we left the woods in the morning we were truely gifted, finding the rare Model mushrooms. We harvested just a couple, and sauteed them with shallots, garlic, white wine and red Russian kale, on rye bread toast, yum! It was my first time trying them and they were sooo delicious!.
In the afternoon and evening I was wandering around thick woodland, literally getting dizzy, tracking old walls now immersed, doing my best to locate the best areas for future Hazel coppice coupes.
I feel so blessed to have this woodland under my care and stewardship 💚
11/04/2025
Jo is offering this beautiful day a second time as it was so well received ❤
webb
22/02/2025
This outdoor classroom all ready and waiting lifted my heart this morning....waiting for participants to arrive for round two of the weekend workshop introducing people to Hazel coppicing....more stories to follow!💚
09/01/2025
I have been teaching and guiding nature connection work for over ten years and am giving away a place on my yearlong online (and in person in your local ecology) until January 31st!
I co-guide this course with Peter Cow .life
The phrase ‘Ecological Homecoming’ came to me when I was looking to describe the journey of returning home to nature, when we find a felt sense of belonging to this incredible biosphere we call home….this emerges out of repeated deep nature connection experiences where we have a sense of two way communication with other-than-human-beings. When I had this experience it healed me of a deep loneliness I had, which I hadn’t identified but had felt throughout my life until then.
To enter into this seasonal giveaway we ask you to do just one action:
Somewhere on either instagram or facebook create a post sharing the story of an experience or moment where you felt a sense of Ecological Homecoming, and share a link to our course saying that you are hoping to join. Tag us so we can read and receive your story, and tag three friends you'd like to share your story with who you feel would appreciate it and receive it with care 💚 https://bringingithome.life/ecological-homecoming/
If there is someone you know who you feel would like this opportunity and is not on either of these social platforms we are very open to other creative ways they can share with their community : )
On instagram we are bringingithome.life and on facebook we are Bringing It Home.
Then we will be asking the great mystery (via a hat with names!) to pick someone for us….
Sky 💚
19/12/2024
I will be selling my handgrown, hand harvested and handmade natural skincare products for the first time today at the wonderful
Come get some
✨ Winter Glow Serum - apricot kernel oil infused with rosehip fruit & seed and calendula, blended with cold-pressed rosehip seed oil and essential oils of Frankincence and Rose Geranium.
And pair your serum with one of my 🌸 hydrosol flower waters 🌸 distilled from my garden and the wild - choose from Rose, Rose Geranium, Tulsi Holy Basil, German Chamomile or Bog Myrtle.
💆🏼♀️Or treat yourself to some deep nourishment whipped Shea butter cream - with cold-pressed rosehip seed oil, Rose Otto & Bettroot in my night cream, or with wild-harvested St.Johns Wort, Lavender & Frankincence in my hand & body cream.
All my ingredients are naturally or wild grown, organic and unrefined 💯percent natural and pure.
Come check out this lovely new eco-market this evening from 5-8pm and get some yummy food and drinks too served up by the talented crave kitchen ❤
09/12/2024
The Celtic Wheel of the Year
An offering for women 🌓
I'm feeling all warm at the thought of returning to the wonderful , after guiding The Menarche Journey there last year in November.
I'll be offering two sessions on the Celtic Wheel of the Year. We will be exploring the archetypal energy of each of the 8 directions on the compass, both from a pan cultural perspective and an Irish indigenous perspective. I will be offering invitations and resources for the week between the two sessions, to support you to align with the specific opportunities & gifts of the Mid-Winter time.
The cycles of nature are core to every life form on Earth, including us. Each of the stages in the wheel of the year carries a particular energy essential for life to regenerate, and when we consciously move through these stages we can find our wholeness. The 8 directions are a compass home.
I will be offering some teachings at the beginning and then there will be time for sharing, personal reflection time, and an imaginal meditative journey.
You are welcome to come to either or both but ofcourse you will get the most out of it if you come to both.
With gratitude for the crystal clear blue sky today, and the brightness of the Winter sun,
Maria 💛
25/11/2024
It's hard to believe it was a Winter wonderland here just a few days ago...
I'm most grateful for the moment of waking up with a thick blanket of snow, the soft thuds as it slided off high places, the electricity being out....and all three sources of internet unavailable.
And nothing left to do but stay in bed and feel the quietness if a world slowed down.
For me this is the most precious thing, when nature steps in in this way we can't control. Everything stops, and I didn't have to choose for it, it just happens.
I know slowing down is a choice, but I also live within a world that makes that choice a difficult one to make.
Thank you mother nature for the gift of beauty and slowness 🤲🏼❄💙
13/11/2024
Learning to split Hazel is such a beautiful and versatile craft.....and can be very frustrating to learn, and equally rewarding when you get that split right down the pith!
Last week I hosted a very inspiring and connective 2 day course in learning all about how to restore Hazel coppice, grade the material and work with Hazel, thought by my friend and very knowledge teacher Mike Carswell.
Hazel will split and twist like Willow, but is stronger so can be used for projects that need that increased robustness. Traditionally used for making portable sheep hurdles to corral sheep, and for many other items such as hatching spars, hedgelaying posts and pegs, and baskets of different descriptions and uses.
I look forward to trying my hand at making a Hazel creel basket, more to come!
With a heart full.of gratitude for this incredible tree and all the wisdom they hold, and the beautiful native woodland I am lucky enough to steward 💚
07/11/2024
Feeling grateful for the abundance of apples and pears....although a smaller harvest this year 💛
When I harvest apples something strange happens....my heart becomes so full of love it actually starts to feel like an apple 🍎
I first truely feel in love with apples the first year I pressed them, when on the night of Winter Solstice I sat around a fire with other land mates drinking mulled apple juice from my family orchard of Dutch heritage trees. I experienced it as golden liquid sunshine on the darkest moment of the year, and it filled my heart with gratitude and wonder.
I will be expanding the orchard with Irish heritage apple trees, bringing both of my ancestral lines together!
The Gort na nDarach apple and pear juice will be available to buy in a few weeks, we need more wonderful businesses like this who really see the value and support local producers....thank you!
17/10/2024
Im looking forward to hosting and joining this lovely class again.
Combining therapeutic essential oils with embodied vinyasa style yoga for enhanced breathing, relaxation, release and transformation... come and join this special Samhain taster class! 🍁
All levels welcome!
Places are very limited so book in time. ❤️🙏
Booking is with Glenna over
01/10/2024
I'm so looking forward to this one! 💚💚💚
Hazel is a tree I've been intimately connected with my whole life, from building many many hazel stick and moss huts when I was a child playing in the Hazel woods all around our home, to building a yurt from Hazel in my 20's.
I'm born in the moon cycle of Hazel in the traditional land-based Irish yearly seasonal cycle, and dearly love the native Hazel woods at Gort na nDarach. As part of tending to the biodiversity in our woods I have been in conversation with Mike Carswell for a couple of years now, planning how to restore an area of Hazel coppice, and applying for the funding to do this through the native woodland conservation grant. The woods we care for are about 9 acres and has all the indicator species of an old growth native woodland...plants like crab apple, pignut and wild buckwheat.
Coppicing is a traditional practice of land tending that cares for the needs of nature as a whole and humans as part of that whole. As we receive a harvest of Hazel rods, we create a disturbance that allows more light in...allowing for early successional plants to have a place to thrive again. Coppiced trees also live a longer life!
My hope is that by creating more light the baby Oak trees that the Jays plant can have a chance to grow 💚
Please join me for these invigorating and inspiring days, learning how to work with this versatile indigenous Irish material 🙏🏼
28/09/2024
We had a wonderful and productive mini meadow restoration Meithael yesterday 🌾
With sythes, a strimmer and some fire we cleared about a third of our meadow.....cutting back the grass and brambles that have began to take over. Over the past few years, with a lack of cutting, the grass has started to take over, becoming big bunches and 'thatches' and leaving less and less space for other species. Although there are still many beautiful flowers - such as buttercup, plantain, knapweed, stitchwork, cuckoo flower, meadowsweet - the number in species has been declining.
Cutting meadows once a year, in late September, allows for maximum habitat and seed setting, while keeping the grass in check. Amazing how much work it is to step in for the animals who in an intact ecology would be doing this work through eating and walking!
This is a Labour of love and community connection! 💚
20/09/2024
Crystalline wonder this morning ❄
I ended up with a cold breakfast ☺
19/09/2024
I'll be hosting and co-holding this offering on Sunday, it fills me with purpose to support women's healing in this way 💗
When we heal ourselves we heal the world, we are not separate, we are part of nature as a whole together 💫
I was so in my joy a couple of evenings ago when Ebanie joined me to roll Rosebay Willow herb leaves to make fermented 'Ivan Chai' and to remove the twigs from my dried chamomile. We spoke about our desires to grow our place based enterprises....for me my herbal plant products and for her creating new mandala cards with the wildlife that live here.
It's been a long standing dream of mine to have small scale land-based economy here at Gort na nDarach, that can bring truely regenerative sustenance to human and other resident beings alike.
I found myself saying 'all I want to do is live here and create with my lands from the land, with others in the community', and that is my deepest truth 💚
What elements are in your life that are place based?
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Dancing Moonlight is a retreat centre and nature sanctuary, located a 30 min. drive North-West of Galway city. Dancing Moonlight is located in a hundreds of years old stone built village, Oakfield (translated from the Irish Gort Na Darragh). Oakfield is part of a gentle mosiac landscape of native Hazel woodlands and cow pastures, near the shores of Lough Corrib in the Southern wooded fringes of Connemara.
The facilities at Dancing Moonlight include the DreamLodge, a hand-crafted 20 ft yurt built from the surrounding woodlands (built by Sky), a green house teaching and living space, glamping accomodation and camping facilities all held in the loving embrace of the surrounding woodlands, wildlands and fields. Dancing Moonlight is also available for rental as a workshop venue.
The DreamLodge is for dreaming... personal and collective. It is for all activities that enter the dreamtime, that place that exists beyond time and the physical, be it meditation, story-telling, dancing, ceremony or other practices of deep listening.
The Yurt could also be called the SkyLodge as with its white canvas, beautiful natural Hazel & Ash frame, and octagonal wooden floor of light coloured pine, it is bright and light and compliments the earthen womb space of the DreamLodge.
The Greenhouse means you can always be outside under the sky, regardless of the Western Irish weather!......It is a place to lounge and enjoy, cook and eat together. It can also be arranged to hold classes and workshops.....from hands-on crafts to yoga, protected from the elements and yet surrounded by the beautful outer landscape.
Catering is also available at Dancing Moonlight and prioritizes fresh, local and organic, providing salads freshly grown on-site within the growing season. Vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free is joyfully and lovingly prepared. Food is infused with wild edibles when available and wild-crafted/home-grown teas are also provided.
