Women’s Skills Retreat

A gathering for women to learn earth skills in community.

May 24th - 27th, 2024

Willits, CA

This is an intimate one-of-a-kind gathering for the woman who wants to activate presence to her heart, mind, and natural surroundings.

Three days of immersion will bring together the offerings of Traditional Archery, Backcountry Skills (knots, shelter building, fire building, etc), The Practice of Council, and Sharing Song. 

Archery; Awareness, Presence, Focus, Stillness, Embodiment, Flow State, Discipline 

Backcountry Skills; Observation, Connection, Empowerment, Trust, Grounded, Play

The Way of Council; Listening, Heart Space, Collective Intelligence, Community, Threshold

Song Circle; Vocal Activation, Harmony, Resonance, Prayer, Joy

In this weekend retreat:

Archery

Wayfinder Archery cultivates an environment to know thyself via the practice of shooting arrows with great intention, awareness, and discipline. Traditional Archery has been a hunting, warfare, and Zen practice of many lineages for thousands of years. Mikhel offers education and insight in regards to Traditional Archery’s preservation in Turtle Island, acknowledging the lineage line from Ishi to her current day teachers.

All skill levels are welcome on the Range. Whether you are beginning your relationship with the bow & arrow, or want to expand and develop your skill set, Mikhel and her crew welcome you with strong energy, great humor, and epic fun & insight. Through mindful form, precision focus, a steady stance, and a clear mind & open heart, Wayfinder Archery provides a space of self-discovery, embodiment, power, and authenticity via the art of shooting arrows.

Back Country Skills

Want to feel more empowered getting out into the backcountry? Join us to learn skills to help you feel more confident outdoors and how these skills and mindsets can support the way you move through the world. One of the first skills you need to learn is selecting a space and building shelter.  Where are we creating home and how do we select the right type of home for our needs? The class will teach you basic tarp shelters and campsite selection. Ever feel like your in a bind? We will also focus on learning knot fundamentals and incorporate practical application of learned knots for outdoor and daily life. In addition to learning how to tyinging knots and building shelters, we will learn fire making, thermal regulation, and packing packs. 

The Way of Council

A circle practice that has roots around the world, spanning diverse cultures, religions, and time. Council is a practice. A community practice that recognizes every voice needs to be heart, that each individual has a gift, a story to share, that together we each bring a piece that creates the whole. When we sit in council, our community heart resonance, and collective intelligence, creates a space to awaken our deep relational heart-mind. This is a way of communicating that encourages listening, as well as expression that is honest and present.

As a non-hierarchical circle, council connects people authentically and therefore can strengthen relationships, deepen our inter-connected consciousness, and build stronger, healthier, communities. At its core, council is a heart practice.

Song Circle

Joining our voices in song around the fire is a form of remembrance. Our voices are our own unique and personal instruments, and when we use them we amplify our humanity & destiny.

We will also dance :)

Schedule Example

7am Yoga

8am Breakfast & Check in

9:30am -12:30pm Skills Class

12:30pm-2pm Lunch Break 

2pm-5pm Skills Class

5pm-6:30pm Dinner 

6:30-8:30 pm Council

8pm Fire & Song 

What’s Included

  • Organic Dinner & Breakfast (Friday night - Monday morning)

  • Two 3hr Traditional Archery Workshops

  • Two 3hr Back Country Skills Workshops

  • Daily Facilitated Council & Community Circle

  • Nightly Song by the Fire and Somatic Dance

  • 3 Morning Yoga Classes

  • Camping or Bus Bunking

  • Hot showers & Composting Toilets

Why this Gathering?

We need spaces that mirror to us our strength, as women of the earth. Community spaces that help us see ourselves in our true essence and aid us in alchemizing what holds us back and limits the true self; shame, disconnection, low self worth, limiting beliefs, unprocessed grief, ect. While this space is focused on earth skills and community connection, the practices can surface internal conditions, conscious and subconscious, that are on a timeline of transformation. The underlying intentions for this gathering are to uplift the unique evolution of each individual's life. This space is grounded in self responsibility for our own experiences, feelings, thoughts, and beyond. 

Learning and practicing earth skills invite us to see our internal landscape with new awareness, if we wish. Archery, knot tying, fire building, circle practice, singing, all ask us to come to our edge and expand. And with any expansion, there is contraction. Things must fall away, whether we want them to or not. This skill share container is in service to the expansion, transformation, and empowerment of women who want to walk the earth rooted in their bodies, hearts, and purpose, with awareness and presence to the world. 

Co-created and Facilitated By:

Mikhel Neshat

Mikhel Neshat hails from the Motherland of Austin, Texas, though California has been her home for 16 years. She’s led a wild and varied life, traveling the world at a young age and consorting with a colorful cast of characters who have inspired and influenced her to live a life by her own design. Mikhel loves Archery! … and a bunch of other stuff too;)

Cheyenne Sequoia

Cheyenne is a wise-wild woman who learns from the cycles and seasons of life and death. She follows the call(s) of the soul to digest our modern times (separation, grief, loneliness) with earth-based connection. A council & circle facilitator, community organizer, ecological consultant, avid journaler, and tender of the wild, Cheyenne is inspired to connect in community ecosystems as a medium for remembrance, activation, and embodiment of soulful purpose. From a European lineage, Cheyenne leans towards her Celtic ancestors and their earth-cherishing traditions to bridge her own elemental relations. She is a student of cyclical wisdom, rites of passage, ecological regeneration, creativity, and resilient community. With visionary and intuitive cultivation she lives in service to a mission of collective soul purpose and earth connection.

Janeva Pearl

Janeva is a playful youngest sister, aunt, daughter, partner, friend, and cat mom. She feels most at home in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California. Some of her favorite delights are a good day’s work, wander, or adventure outside, meeting and connecting with people, and developing skills for greater self-sufficiency. For her, the natural world has always been a place of refuge, work, and play. This love and time in the outdoors has allowed her to cultivate her skills in outdoor livin’ and knots. Janeva has camped and back-packed all her life, taught teens outdoor adventure & survival in Utah and completed a 28-day wilderness survival course. Spring through Fall she’s outside climbing trees as a seed & cone collector and plays, ahem, works in the creek doing wet meadow restoration using beaver mimicry. Otherwise she’s crafting, & tending land and animals. She’s looking forward to sharing her experiences and empowering other women to feel more confident and comfortable outside.

Anna Lee

Anna is a multifaceted, multidisciplinary artist, including a visionary painter, natural builder and photographer.Her belief in a new way for humanity is what seeds her creations and allows her to continue to express herself and visions through her love of pigments and clay. Her long history in crafting with clay is what lead her into natural building, paired perfectly with her background in carpentry, coming from a family of builders. She continues to grow her craft and prides herself in simple, elegant craftswomanship  as she designs and builds the spaces in her visions. She really enjoys allowing the clay speak for itself and allowing it to teach her as she deepens into her craft. She also is passionate about the power of gathering women together in circle, whether it’s for sharing circles, healing, or song. She has long supported communities of women in coming together for healing, inspiration and support. Her love of art, song and story is a common thread for her creations and when she’s not painting or building, you can find her behind the camera turning her vision of her subjects and models into reality. She is so fulfilled in supporting those she is photographing, to reveal their true inner light and capturing the beauty that innately shines through them.

Offering Value

We offer a $50 discount if you want to pay your remaining contribution in cash after the deposit.

Solidarity = $557

Suggested if you make less than $40k/year or have been affected by systemic inequality

Sustainer = $667

Suggested if you make between $40k and $100k/year

Supporter = $777

Suggested if you make more than$100k/a year or are feeling abundant and want to see this vision thrive!

Review our refund policy here

*Please reach out if finances are a barrier.

Limited scholarship and work-trade available.