Bio-Leadership Recharge & Mini-Quest Retreat in The Netherlands
This easily accessible and thoroughly refreshing Bio-Leadership retreat is for those who are working hard, with and/or for nature, and need a pit stop and a space to take stock and reconnect. It is about helping you step back from the busyness of life and make time to catch a breath, recharge and find perspective again - and to enjoy good fires, good walks, good talk and good meals with kindred spirits.
As John Muir said - make time every now and again to let nature wash your spirit clean. It’s all about that - connecting lightly with Bio-Leadership stories, friends and allies, and taking good things back to life and work.
Information
This is an opportunity to let go of the thinking, to slow down, to make time alone with the goodness of nature and to enjoy heartful and supportive conversations and stories with peers.
The journey is partly inspired by our wider ‘nature quest’ programmes. We offer very little content, instead putting emphasis on the ‘being’ side of our work. We will go on walks, we offer practices to support light awareness and rest, and at the heart of the experience is an overnight ‘solo’ - time alone in a profoundly supportive way.
The journey is also about connecting stories - meeting fellow Bio-Leaders and making room to share stories, insights and support with good meals and good conversations around the fire. In this way, we go back to that ancient form of work as a community - making time to speak honestly, to listen deeply, and to seek guidance from the wisdom of nature and honest lessons from each other.
‘If we listen to nature in a particular way, then a new form of knowledge emerges’.
We believe that the world needs new qualities to navigate this moment in time. To build resilience, connection, awareness, adaptability and care, we need to practice it ourselves. This is an opportunity to do just that.
Location
This retreat will take place in Yurgen Forest an hours drive from Amsterdam. This is a beautiful woodland in an esturine landscape. Yugen Forest is a beautiful piece of land, being stewarded with awareness and care for the natural systems by a young team with high ambitions. All profits flow back into the ecosystem restoation work they’re doing - so by supporting this programme you’ll be supporting that work.
Hosts
Din Van Helden has been learning, co-designing, facilitating and consulting for the last 20 years in the field of Organisational Development. Entrepreneur at Grounding, many of you know her as a Lead of the Fellowship programme where she’s been nourishing the ground fr the last 4 years. Din aims to enable the conditions for life to thrive, evoking levels of connectedness – at the individual level, as well as in the quality of relationships between people, in order to create a positive impact on the systems we are participating in. She has studied with respected elder, John P. Milton and leads profound Nature Quests and has been leading retreats and nature connection work for over a decade.
Ella Wiles is a host and development lead for Bio-Leadership and has run the Fellowship programme since it’s conception in 2020. She is dedicated to urgent action knowing we need to develop life-centred practices and awareness to lead differently. She has worked in a series of sectors from human rights, research to materials reuse, managing social enterprises and mobile tech start-ups - all with ambitions to help people and the planet. At the core of all these sectors she has learnt the importance of our relationship with nature and each other, overcoming the fallacy of separation is at the core of her work.
Practicalities
We’ll be fed delicious nourishing vegetarian food by the team, eating outside under canvas in the woodland.
The experience is stripped back and basic. Bring your own kit to camp. We will eat fresh home-cooked food and talk around the fire. We will sleep out on land and in the woods. The maximum number of participants is 16.
Day 1: Arrive and land in the forest, eat under the stars, share a inquiries.
Day 2: Breakfast and movement, circle to step out into a 24 hour solo.
Day 3: Return from the solo to breakfast and a round circle of sharing and grouning movement.
In the spirit of work being done when one returns after retreats like this we also offer an integration point following the event online with other participants.
Costs
We aim to keep prices as low as possible, whilst keeping the programme and community quality as high as it can be. This is a balancing act. We believe that a strong community on these retreats is a diverse one, so we’ve created the following 5 categories to support access to the programme and create vibrant conversations.
Please find the category that accurately matches your position.
Larger Business: £850
Individuals from ‘for profit’ business with a comfortable income and able to contribute to the programme and community.
Emerging Business: £750
Individuals from small businesses, social enterprises, NGOs and small start-ups able to contribute to the programme and community.
Standard Western: £550
Standard rate for individuals paying for themselves, on a stable - low income, including self, employed, those from the charity & NGO sector based in ‘the Global North’.
International Access: £450
International Access Rate places extend accessibility across sectors and global regions, for folks who wouldn’t be able to do this programme without access support, perhaps having never done a programme like this before.
These places are less than cost price to run the programme so are subsidised by other places.
Scholarship: £300
We want to make the Fellowship accessible to folks with limited proportional income from ‘the Global South’, those who are working hard to bring about change and urgently need support of this programme and community.
Costs cover the space, all food and drink and session hosts. It doesn’t include your travel to and from Yurgen Forest, we’ll do our best to connect participants for lift sharing.