By Ellen Scott, Lifestyle and Weekend Editor
As I nod along in conversations about urine therapy, microdosing truffles, and spending £160 on a distiller to rid tap water of toxins, it becomes clear I’m deep in woo-woo wellness territory.
That’s a sense that only grows as we assemble into a ‘sharing circle’ on Thursday evening, sat on cushions on the wooden floor of a barn at Brimpts Farm in Dartmoor.
We pass around a talking stick wrapped in gorse and dangling an owl feather found at a festival. As it’s handed around the 20 or so participants, each person shares how they’re feeling and what brought them here, in two minutes or less.
This is the Waking The Wild Ones Retreat, run by Alana Bloom, Gaia Harvey Jackson, and The Psychedelic Society. I find myself here for a reason simpler than most of the group: I received an email invite, skimmed bullet points about playing, voice work, and ‘sensuality exploration’, and thought something along the lines of ‘that’s the last thing I would ever do, so f*** it, I’m in’.