Rituals and Rewilding the Self: An Interview with Women’s Circle Facilitator Gaia Harvey Jackson

Interviewed by Lauren Thompson 

Gaia Harvey Jackson is a facilitator of women’s empowerment, ecstatic dance and authentic connection. In May 2017, she founded the Psychedelic Women’s Circle and has since developed a number of popular workshops, including: Rave Ritual, Slow Dating, Window to the Soul and Awakening the Wild Woman. 

With a background in performance art and interactive theatre, Gaia uses movement, dance, voice work, meditation, tantric practices and ritual as modes for transformation.​ Her mission is to connect humans to their primal nature so that they can live richer and freer lives. She aims to help people find their authentic expression and deepen their understanding of self through creative embodiment. Her work is heart-centred and brings people together to form meaningful connections and communities.

She joined The Psychedelic Society in 2017 and has been instrumental in developing the London events programme and venue, building it up from three events a month to over fifty alongside an incredible team of collaborators. 

Weaving together many practices in a unique style that is both playful and profound, Gaia talks to us about her inspirations, her understanding of ritual and what she’s learned in her years of facilitation and women’s work.

What drew you to facilitating women’s circles and person-centred events?

I think what drew me to women’s circles was mainly my own experience of attending lots of very transformational workshops at a time when I was struggling with some serious challenges in my personal life.

Through experiencing many different tools for transformation and reaping the benefits of that, I really wanted to be able to share these tools and techniques with other people. At that time, I wondered why we are not taught to understand our inner world and cope with our emotions.

How would you describe a women’s circle to someone who has never been to or heard of one?

Women’s circles vary from facilitator to facilitator. I think at its absolute core, a women’s circle is a space for a group of female-identifying individuals to sit down and share their personal lives in a way they might otherwise not be able to in their regular lives. It’s a chance to really be seen, heard and witnessed by others. 

There are so many different ways a women’s circle can look. My own, for example, are very embodied. Often, I choose a theme and we’ll explore that theme through various different methods such as sharing circles, movement, dance or guided meditations. There could be a particular ritual to give that theme more power. For example, if we want to let go of something, a past habit or negative behaviour, we might create a ritual setting for someone to speak out loud what it is they’re letting go of and use a symbol like fire to be able to then burn or transform that thing. In those moments, I think what gives that action power is the witnessing by the group. 

Ritual is a massive part of the work that you do. What is it that you feel ritual brings to those events?

A ritual is an experience in which you are temporarily lifted out of your ordinary state of being and given a container for a transformation to happen. Ritual has been a part of society for as long as society has existed and it provides many things; one level of it is the ritual of belonging. In our modern day, we’ve lost a lot of the sacred in our rituals. But it can still be seen in something like a football game. A football game is a ritual. It's coming together, being witnessed, being seen. 

In the context of women’s circles and spaces for deep transformation, it gives you an opportunity to go deep into an emotion or experience. A ritual will have a clearly marked beginning and end – there’s a safety to that. A lot of people feel afraid to go into more challenging emotions like grief or anger because there’s this fear that once you open the lid, it might never stop, or you just don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s something about having this time parameter, a marking of beginning and end that really holds you in this experience of transformation and allows something to move through you, allowing it to shift. 

Rituals also often use symbology, which is a powerful tool that the mind and memory use to hold onto peak experiences – for example, going from girlhood to womanhood or marking a death. These are important life-changing moments, and ritual plays a big part in helping us mark them, giving them the honour and weight that they deserve. 

How has moving online over the pandemic changed the work that you do?

It’s changed it massively. I definitely had a big resistance to going online at first. It was a few months after the pandemic first hit that I started to offer work online. I started holding a simple sharing circle by donation, just to keep the community there and offer a support network for people to be able to share because I recognised that people were really isolated. Having a space and an outlet where you can share honestly with other people is so integral for mental health. From there, I transferred an offering I’d originally planned to be in-person to an online space. It worked surprisingly well. I have to say I’ve been surprised at how deep we can still go, even online. 

A benefit is that I’ve been able to reach people in remote parts of the UK and internationally. That’s been powerful, being able to connect women all over the world. 

What would you say are the main themes of the work you do, and why?

Rewilding the self. What I mean by that is learning to let go of the social script for how we’re supposed to think and behave, what we should or shouldn’t do. Slow down, get in our bodies, get in our senses, and respond to the world from a place of presence and emergence. That’s done through a variety of techniques, and includes a lot of connection with nature and embracing the weird and the ugly. That place of uncertainty – ‘the swamp’, as I sometimes call it. 

Some other themes are around working with the shadow and taboo subjects, like menstruation, sexuality, rage, shame, and grief. I often use the framework of archetypes to explore these taboo subjects and gain insight. An archetype is essentially a collection of character traits that are personified, for example the Mother archetype or the Warrior. When you say them that way, you’re instantly given this strong visual symbol. You can also get a sense of the energetic quality of that archetype. I find them powerful to work with, in that sense.

What is it you enjoy the most about working with women, and what have you personally learned from it?

I love how relaxing women’s spaces are. I love to work with mixed groups as well, but I notice that it's easier to go deeper when it's just women. It’s a very obvious thing to feel. Any woman who’s been in a women’s circle knows that feeling, and it doesn’t necessarily make sense. 

What I've personally gained from it is a much deeper appreciation for women and female friendships. Often I’ve had closer male friendships, actually, because of experiences of bitchiness and rejection in girl cliques growing up, which created mistrust and disinterest toward my gender. So personally, working with women has healed my relationships with other women. It’s made me realise how fucking awesome and powerful women are. 

Who and what would you say have inspired you and your work the most?

Big shout out to Graell Corsini: she is one of my mentors. Her approach is so playful and very much weaves in women's work with Celtic mythology in a really beautiful way. Also, Jewels Wingfield, who I first learnt the sacred womb mandala from, which looks at how to work with your menstrual cycle and how it can actually be your superpower. Also, the work of Jean Shinoda Bolen, who wrote about archetypes in her book Goddesses in Everywoman. I lifted the wisdom from those pages and brought them to life in my work. Glennie Kindred writes loads of books that I love about cyclical living, the wheel of the year and Celtic tradition. It was through reading her books that I began to dabble in ceremony. She gives you a lot of tools around Celtic ceremony, but there’s a real emphasis on making it your own and what’s meaningful for you, which I love. 

On a broader spectrum of inspiration, conscious sexuality and tantric practices have been absolutely key for me in my personal life and feature heavily in my work. Ecstatic dance and five rhythms, developing a more conscious connection with my body and with dance, singing and voice work, Buddhism… the list could go on. 

Would you say there’s an element of social activism to the work that you do?

This work is about creating a new culture. There are many people out there doing this, but I think that as a society we really need to be shifting our culture towards one that creates space for more of who we are. 

Mental health is a huge problem around the world, but particularly in the UK right now. A lot of that comes from people bottling things up and not having an outlet. It's absolutely imperative we create spaces where people can acknowledge the things going on for them and be seen and witnessed. We need to learn to let go of judgment around that and be equipped with tools to understand ourselves and our minds. We need to learn to process our emotions in a way that's healthy, rather than numbing or suppressing them as we often do through alcohol, television, shopping or whatever our particular numbing strategy might be. 

There is a definite air of social activism in the work I do around menstrual cycles and cyclical living. I hope the more people who hear and learn about this work may start implementing it into their family life and work life. I heard of people who printed off the menstrual map I created and stuck it on their fridge or taught their teenage daughters about the menstrual cycle in a way that I was certainly never taught when I was growing up. Living in accordance with our menstrual cycle means slowing down and taking time off for your bleed, rather than fighting against the natural rhythms of our body and trying to be productive all the time.

Can you tell us a bit about your current offerings and plans for the future?

My current two big offerings are the Wild Woman retreats and the four-month-long Facilitation Training. The training is for women who have been to women’s circles before or who perhaps have been to quite a lot of personal development workshops and are at a stage where they feel they really want to start offering this work to other people. This training works on a community level and equips you with tools to lead a workshop, as well as tools to work through your demons, your self-doubt and what it is that holds you back from being able to step up into that leadership position.

I’m also about to start doing some support work with a company called Big Sis, which is an amazing organisation that works in Plymouth to bring better education to people about their menstrual cycle.