Soflty Woven Residential Retreat with Rosemary O'Brien, Emma De Salis Young & Lucy Wylde

A residential retreat for womb bearers to restore & weave ourselves home through Earth, Body & Song.

Dearest Kin, 

Lucy, Rosemary & Emma welcome you to join us for a 3 day residential retreat where we will come together to cocoon ourselves into the softness of autumn, spending an intimate and nourishing time together with like-minded womyn awakening what our hands have always known, how to spin and weave fibres, how to tend to our womb and how to sing ourselves home.

This retreat is a dreaming for a deeper connection to our bodies, to our cycles and to the earth itself so that we can unravel what it is to step into right relationship with our earth mother once again.

Our Vision

Softly Woven has been birthed from the inspiration of the journey of what happens when weaving, song and the womb become interwoven with the added depth and magic of womyn coming together to remember these ancestral and simple ways of tending to ourselves, our wombs and each other. 

As we start to cross the threshold through Samhain, there's a transition that begins that asks us to soften into the belly of winter. These can be found through the stories embedded in these lands as the Callieach (Goddess of Winter) awakens and our dreaming begins.

During this intimate retreat, we will be inviting in the themes of softness, spaciousness, connection to each other and the land, deeper connection to our wombs, our hearts and our voice, learning the ancestral crafts and gifting ourselves a womb belt/ altar cloth. 

No experience is needed for this retreat as we welcome you to come and learn with us, to gift yourself space to come and be exactly as you are. 

Our intention for this retreat is that you leave with skills that you can journey with over winter, weaving, song, womb massage, yoni steaming, herbal medicines to deepen your practices and relationship with yourself and these lands where these medicines and allies reside. 

What will I receive from this retreat?

• Accommodation in a dorm room with other women
• Seasonal & Locally Sourced Organic meals that are Gluten & Soya free Curated by Wild Goose Kitchen (dietary requirements needed, these meals will include meat options)
• A Gift Bag to take home and continue with these practices, including a Dartmoor Hand-crafted Loom, Dartmoor Wool, Herbs for steaming and more tba (Worth over £100)
• A chance to create a womb belt to wrap your womb in over winter and dive deep into the holding that this special piece can bring to your life.
• Free use of the sauna when it is lit
• Learning womb care practices from massage, yoni steaming and other ways to bring yourself back into balance with your womb and your being.
• A deepening of sisterhood as we journey together over these few days.
• And so much more…

What activities will be offered over our time together?

• Creating a dye bath with Madder and other herbs with Rosemary
• Spinning Rituals with Rosemary
• Crafting and Weaving with your loom either a womb belt or altar cloth with Rosemary
• Womb Massage with Emma
• Yoni Steaming Ceremony with Emma
• Womb/Heart Voice Journey with Lucy
• Gentle Morning Practices with Lucy
• Ceremonial concert with Lucy & Emma
• Tending to the sisterhood (Anointing ceremony) with All
• Blessing our Belts & Altar Pieces with Rose & all
• Women's Council & Integration circles
• Free time to explore the lands/ Use sauna/ rest/ integrate

Meet Your Facilitators:

Rosemary Riedel O’Brien is a multidisciplinary craftswoman devoted to the ancestral arts of weaving, spinning, and natural dye. 

For over seven years, she has worked intimately with these traditional practices, cultivating a body of work that honours both heritage and the living rhythms of the natural world. 

Her creations are rooted in a deep reverence for earth, energy, and the unseen threads that connect all beings.

As an inspirational soul craft mentor, Rosemary shares the sacred language of fibre through both online offerings and in-person workshops. 

She guides others in creating meaningful, handwoven pieces such as medicine shawls, womb wraps, blankets, and altar cloths—objects imbued with intention, story, and symbolism. 

Her teaching invites a return to slowness, presence, and embodied creativity.

Rosemary also produces bespoke collections and commissioned works, each inspired by the quiet muses she encounters in nature. 

Living and working on a smallholding on the western edge of Dartmoor, she balances her creative practice with motherhood and a life closely intertwined with land and season. 

Through her work, she seeks to preserve ancient wisdom while weaving pathways for connection, healing, and remembrance in the modern world.

Soften into Rosemary's offerings here:

www.wildroseweaving.com

Emma De Salis Young is a bodyworker who specialises in women’s health. She runs a full practice offering Womb Continuum Care, fascia based manual therapy for all stages of a woman’s life, from menarche to birth to menopause.

Her work is devoted to female physiology, with the intention to restore alignment and vitality so we can experience the full capacity for life that is possible through our bodies. 

A big part of her work is education, reclaiming the wisdom of traditional ways of tending to our bodies with our own hands, plant allies, and elementals, so we may remember the power we have to support ourselves and each other through all the thresholds we walk as women.

She teaches women about their wombs and cycles, and offers understanding and guidance through many of the physical challenges that women experience in today’s culture. 

Emma is also a musician, a harpist and singer, and loves to craft, spin and weave, flowing with the creativity that comes through the womb.

She lives off grid in Pembrokeshire, her ever deepening relationship with the land supporting this prayer that as women we may come home to our bodies, and to the earth.

Soften into Emma's offerings here:

www.emmadesalisyoung.co.uk

Lucy Wylde is a musician, a space-holder, breath worker and weaver of women’s gatherings, creating earth inspired sanctuaries where women can soften, reconnect and remember themselves in one of the oldest ways of communing, through a village. Her path has been shaped by lived-experience, sensitivity, and a devotion to ancestral and embodied ways of knowing. 

She walks between the modern world and older rhythms, weaving together music, movement, ritual and conversation to create spaces that feel safer and alive. 

Through her journey, her voice has always been a pinnacle point to what she brings to the world and after studying the voice at University and then going on to study Voice Therapy, her knowledge of the voice extends through both worlds of contemporary and therapeutic. 

As a singer-songwriter, Lucy has an extraordinary ability to craft songs that are both intimate and universal, weaving heartfelt lyrics with melodies that linger long after the final note. Her music brings a warmth and presence that moves the soul, making her performances not only enjoyable but profoundly meaningful.

Her visions of Medicine Woman Gathering was born from a life of listening and a deep initiation into early menopause by the age of 31.

This work is rooted in a deeper call of what happens when women gather and how the power of our healing when we come together is something that’s unfathomable to anything that has been experienced in her lifetime before and yet the deeper the call, the more uncovering we experience within ourselves and each other.

Her commitment to gathering the women & bringing us home to the lands and to each other as a village is very much Lucy's heart-work in this lifetime. 

Through Lucy's own herstory with her womb she has gained extensive knowledge in diet, nutrition, early menopause and general health and wellbeing that will be very much entwined in this retreat to support you and your own journey of optimal health and wellbeing.

Soften into Lucy's offerings here:

www.lucywylde.co.uk

Food

We will be gifted with a full-board of nutrient-dense meals that will align with the cycles of the northern hemisphere (Autumn/ Winter) and gift us with knowledge of what to eat to support our system during these wintery months.

Sauna

The sauna will be lit during our afternoon ‘resting’ phases which we are all welcome to use. Please make sure to bring extra towels for sitting on.

How to get there:

Directions of how to get there will  be offered once you have booked your space and no later than a month before the retreat begins. 

We have direct rail links from Bristol & London which you are welcome  and encourage you to get the train (to Totnes) and we can arrange for a pick-up service.

Every part of this retreat will be dreamed with the intention of creating space, integration and wisdom that we can carry throughout our lives. 

This retreat is for all who were born with a  womb, inclusive of those who have had a hysterectomy & inclusive of non-binary and other folk who are interested in deepening their connection to their womb. 

Regardless of what phase you see yourself on your womb journey, we welcome you.

We always want to make sure these retreats are accessible for all, if you are in financial difficulty, please reach out and we will do our best to support you.

Unfortunately, this site is not accessible for wheelchair users.