I’m quite new to 5Rhythms and Movement Medicine work but right from when I started to dance the Rhythms it felt like coming home to something I had forgotten rather than “learning” something new. I saw the Wild At Heart workshop advertised and thought – “That would be nice – dancing with other men.”

Bois Le Comte is a lovely place. So peaceful and silent – no road noise, no train noise, no aircraft noise – you would have to go along way from so called “rural” Hertfordshire where I live, to find that kind of peace. The Dance Temple is a magnificent room – high ceiling and a magnificent solid oak floor. The countryside around is very beautiful – rolling pasture land and forest.

What can I say about the workshop itself? It was wonderful! The dancing was great – with amazing music from Ya’Acov and his assistants Peter Brown (thank you for the Weeping Song – one of my favourites) and Michel Wery. The Ritual work was inspiring and deeply healing. I shan’t describe it too much as that might spoil it for you if you make the same journey one day. But I did see the energies of blocked despair, rage and loveless-ness leaving the bodies of my brothers. I felt those energies leaving me. It was powerful and moving. The Sweat Lodge (my first) was humbling and beautiful – I felt lots of unnecessary, convoluted thinking leave my psyche as I sweated with my brothers and in its place I felt a deep knowing and confirmation of my path in life.

To have witnesses and fellow travellers as open and loving as the men in this group was very healing in itself for me. I, like a lot of men I suspect, have a lot of hurt in me where I have felt my self judged and condemned by other men – indeed by the whole culture of how we men are expected to be in western society. The circle we formed through the workshop was so healing – the masculine strength, honesty and integrity so powerful that I really feel that it has gone a long way to healing the hurts I have accumulated in my masculine energy in the forty two years I have been in this masculine body. I have found a huge change in my confidence since I got back to England, a confidence to just be me without fear of what other men might think or judge about me.

I will go back for any other Wild At Heart or similar that Ya’Acov runs. I’m signed up for Ritual and excited about that coming soon.