The Journey

The Journey is Embercombe’s flagship programme. Wherever you are on your own personal journey, whether slumbering, awake, or deeply present to your potential, this profound experience will enrich, enliven and lovingly challenge. For some it will be an initiation, for some a homecoming, for some a radical deepening. We gather in this circle of laughter and tears, this liminal space within which so much has been born, found, resolved, and embodied in the world.

With Mac Macartney, Tugba Kirhan, Stephan Pfaff and Joey Waterson

There are three questions that you will be asked to consider:

What do I most deeply and profoundly love?

What are my deepest and most profound gifts?

What are my deepest and most profound responsibilities?

Is this for you?

Imagine feeling like you are truly alive and awake – resilient and confident in your ability to navigate the dramas and difficulties of life. You feel a real connection and acceptance of who you are and are clear at last on what you can offer to the world. Above all you are passionate about making the most of what life gives you every day. That is what we want you to take away from The Journey.

The Journey is a 5-day residential programme drawing together people from all walks of life. Journey participants are people of all ages, social groups and experience. The common ground you share is a deep desire to truly be yourselves in your lives, and to make a powerful contribution to the world – one that is aligned with your gifts, passion and experience.

What You Can Expect

We don’t talk too much about what is involved on The Journey – we like to keep it a bit of a mystery. Facing into uncertainty can give us the gift of greater self-knowledge and the experience of developing an essential life skill.

Many years of working in leadership and individual development has taught us that the journey of transformation navigates the physical, emotional, mental and the spiritual. Like all journeys, along the way you will meet many friends and some familiar foes. Walking towards our challenges the paths merge, bringing our powerful intentions into the world. We move forward.

The Journey encourages participants to embrace their gifts and passions and to bring them more fully into their lives. To ensure participants are supported in this process, Embercombe seeks to offer three hours of coaching on completion of the programme. This offer is made possible and dependant on a group of coaches who donate their time.

Key information:

DATES:
3 – 8 September 2023
29 October – 3 November 2023
3 – 8 December 2023

TIMES:
2pm Sunday – 2pm Friday

LOCATION:
Residential course at Embercombe on our beautiful 50 acre rewilding estate on the edge of Dartmoor, Devon

ACCOMODATION:
Shared accommodation in one of our 2 Yurt Villages

COST:
£1,080 – Regular Ticket
£1,320 – Supporter Ticket

Please consider purchasing a Supporter Ticket if your finances allow it, to subsidise participants who can’t afford the full price.

Limited bursary places are available on application.

Our Catalyst course is specifically designed for people between the age 18 – 25. Take a look before you choose to book The Journey.

Embercombe – Your Stay

Accommodation

You will stay in one of our beautiful yurt villages. Each yurt is furnished with comfortable beds and gas heaters. Both yurt villages have a compost toilets and running water. Full bathroom facilities with hot showers are available in the main building.

Catering

All your meals are included. Organic, vegetarian food is lovingly prepared on site using produce from the Embercombe garden wherever possible. Special diets are adeptly catered for. Please indicate if you require this on your booking form.

Testimonials

Facilitators

Mac Macartney – Lead Creator and Facilitator

Mac Macartney is a writer, speaker, leadership consultant, eco/peace advocate, and spiritual journeyman. He has explored many paths, some unwisely, some with discernment, all with enthusiasm, vigour, and persistence. As a young child, he fell deeply in love with nature and since that time has endeavoured to listen to the guiding dreams, visions, and experiences that have landed in his outstretched arms. In their different ways all have invited him to do whatever he can to shift our world for the better. Mac moves between, learns from, and contributes to, many diverse and contrasting spheres of society – an enriching, stimulating, and often, deeply troubling pathway. Over a period of twenty years he was mentored and coached by a group of Native American teachers. During this training and ever since he has attempted to bring two worlds together – an ancient worldview that emphasises relationship, interdependence and reverence for life, with the huge challenges and equally huge opportunities of the 21st Century. You can find out more about Mac’s work here. 

Tugba Kirhan

Tugba first came to Embercombe in 2018 as a participant on The Journey and has supported the core team in various capacities since that time. Having deepened her relationship with the land and Embercombe’s ethos, she now facilitates on  programmes including The Journey and The Hearth.  With a background in the humanitarian sector, Tugba is a project manager, facilitator, coach, and breathwork & embodiment practitioner. As a native of rural Anatolia (Turkey), where East meets West, bridging is in her nature. Her name, which means “tree of life,” is a testament to her commitment to building a world where all beings can thrive and flourish. Tugba leads with her heart, brings her warmth and sensitivity to all spaces she inhabits, and inspires others who also feel that there must be another way of living a better life.

Stephan Pfaff

Stephan has been involved with Embercombe since 2013. He is an experienced member of the faculty team that offers The Journey and The Hearth and in addition to his facilitation skills he leads and coaches The Journey alumni who return to Embercombe to support these programmes. Stephan is led by a deep love and fascination for human beings and has an insatiable curiosity for the mystery of life. He finds fulfillment in creating graceful situations in which people soften, open, and step forward into deeper relationship with life. He trained in nature connection, constellation work, process work and deep democracy. After living in England for 5 years he returned to his homeland in the Black Forest (Germany) together with his wife and two children.

Joey Waterson

Joey is one of the founding members and elders of Embercombe. He is one of Embercombe’s story holders and fire keepers – at a time when story, that which ties together the past and the future, is one of the most important things we hold responsibility for as humans. He has been involved in offering The Journey and The Hearth since their inception. Joey’s relationship to Embercombe is an expression of his commitment to action and his desire to inspire and support changes that will bring about the world we long for. Tending the land as a source of inspiration and nourishment for all, he holds the great mystery of history, healing and the magical beauty of life.

Sophia Young

Sophia first ventured through Embercombe’s gates with her two children in 2015 when they came to join ‘Grow the Grown Ups’, a family camp considered at the time, a sister programme to The Journey. She fell in love with the place and the people and felt a keen kinship with the land and its ethos. A year later she moved her small family from London to Devon and, over the course of the last eight years, Embercombe has played a pivotal part in all of their lives. In 2018, she took over from Fiona Barnes in running Natural Learning, a weekly home educational group and, since 2017, has been an instrumental part of holding Embercombe’s hearth and managing the kitchen, alongside facilitating on the organisation’s core programmes. At the heart of all her work, she is inspired by a passion of the alchemic and elemental, and with a love of our innate relationship to fire, water and earth. Bringing curiosity, playfulness and simple ceremony to help groups explore the wonder and majesty of the natural environment, she believes that perhaps one of the simplest yet generous things we can offer each other, is to remember how to keep our connection to untamed beauty ignited and treasure our sacred participation within it.

Upcoming Dates & Booking