Meet Your Hosts
Rachel Rickards
Founder & Lead Facilitator
Rachel is an international leader in the field of personal transformation, intimacy, embodiment, and relational intelligence. She is a masterful group facilitator, event producer, and new mother, who has made a lasting impact through her visionary work.
In 2014 she co-founded Embodied Intimacy, which has become one of the most respected organizations globally that offers trainings and events focussed on intimacy, trauma, relational intelligence, somatic education and community. The work of Embodied Intimacy supports hundreds of people each year to come home to themselves, to their body and more regulated nervous systems, and unfold more of who they truly are.
Since 2019, Rachel has led the Belly2Belly Facilitator Training after her teacher and mentor, David Cates, passed the torch and CEO position for this work to her. Belly2Belly offers a simple and yet profoundly healing set of embodied and relational practices, which support people to learn to regulate their nervous systems in a way that can be transformational for their relationships. Rachel has single handedly produced and facilitates most of the events with her extraordinary superpowers in the field of event planning and depth in embodied leadership.
Rachel’s newest passion project launched in 2022, “The Field Facilitator Training.” This is a revolutionary new experiential learning environment for upcoming group facilitators who are passionate about creating fields of deep group-heart coherence and learning how to facilitate group soul emergence. This requires the development of radically new facilitation skills, such as learning to listen to the group field, collective surrender to the moment, as well as dynamic and fluid collective leadership to support the blossoming of the group soul that is longing to emerge in the space between us.
Most recently, Rachel has become the creator and host of the podcast "In Presence We Trust: The Facilitation Podcast". Released weekly, the podcast dives into her cutting-edge work in group facilitation and beyond. Tune in to follow her binge-worthy journey and discover the latest insights into her ever-evolving work in group transformation.
Amelia brings over two decades of experience in hospitality and retreat operations and holds both the practical and energetic dimensions of transformational experiences with precision and love. Weaving together operational excellence with emotional intelligence, she ensures guests and the team feel deeply supported and exquisitely cared for.
Known for her calm and grounded presence and heart-centred leadership, Amelia supports people through some of life’s most tender and transformative moments. She is devoted to stewarding spaces where intimacy, play, and personal exploration can unfold with integrity, warmth, and thoughtful attention to every detail.
Amelia Griffiths
Camp Manager
Spring Camp Team
Jamie Catto
Jamie Catto is an author, film-maker and musician running transformational workshops and events to reclaim all the treasure we edited away into the shadows and facilitate everyone daring to be more real, more fallible, more tender, more intimate.
His mission is to create a world full of “walking permission slips” where we all lighten up and enjoy the unpredictable human path together with humour, playfulness and a healthy dose of irreverence. Jamie’s workshops and 1-1s provide a refreshing approach to inner work with the right dose of playfulness and depth.
He facilitates professional, personal and creative breakthroughs by drawing from his own processes in ground-breaking film production, philosophy voyages and music career.
Evolution and enlightenment happen a lot quicker and easier when we treat the whole process as entertainment instead of “working on ourselves”.
He believes in the treasure of low-hanging fruit and heart-opening, playful intimacy, not stoic reverence and unworthiness before “more advanced beings”.
Through play, creativity, shadow work and intimacy, Jamie creates spaces where we lighten up, open, and allow Life’s Genius to move through us.
Willow Ness
WillowNess is a ritualist, theatre-maker, and mistress of play who works with magic, mischief, and embodied presence. With over 25 years as a theatre-maker and voice artist, and 15 years holding ritual and ceremonial spaces internationally, her work weaves play, dance, voice, and performance to open spaces where intimacy, aliveness, and connection emerge and joy is remembered.
Her spaces favor curiosity over correctness, sensation over sense-making, and laughter over getting it right. Expect creative risk, playful tenderness, and moments where play kicks the door open and something real walks in.
Play-Rites is her living body of work - ritual theatre with sparkle and a pulse, where the body leads and being human is the whole point.
Play is not the opposite of seriousness; it is how we return to wholeness.
Lee Lester
Lee burns to create spaces for collective healing and transformation through the connecting of nervous systems and the opening of hearts.
As an embodiment facilitator and somatic resourcing coach, he leads the Empathy and Awareness team at Pura Vida Festival and regularly collaborates on intimacy retreats, grief ceremonies and ecstatic dances.
His solo work (@embodied.empathy) is dedicated to reawakening people to their innate power as empathy activists, running regular workshops in Berlin and London.
He is a certified Trauma-informed group facilitator (The Field, Soma Mystica) and has studied intensively with Embodied Intimacy.
Denise is a somatic intimacy and embodiment guide who works primarily with men and mixed groups. Her spaces are a blend of depth and play where truth is welcome, emotions are sacred, and the body leads the way. She helps people drop out of the mind and into the felt experience of life and love, where intimacy becomes natural and presence becomes power. Expect a mix of raw honesty, laughter, sensation, and a permission slip to be wildly, innocently sensual and wonderfully human.
Denise Kooij
Summer Camp Team
The Sound Field
The Sound Field is a live music & sound experience that supports groups to experience their own aliveness, to move into new ranges of emotion and energy and surrender to their present moment experience.
Sound and music is thus used to guide groups into live emergence – to basically follow the breadcrumbs to what really wants to happen.
The Sound Field members are Thomas Kiernan, Benjamin Andersen and John Lack.
https://www.soundsoflightportal.com/
DJ Alma ∞ Omega
alma-omega.world/
Maegan Melissa Gorbett dedicates her life’s work to weaving succulent strands of Dance, Music, Embodiment, Transformation, Connection, Community as an offering of joy & purpose. Her drive is to serve the (collective/individual) healing of the past, help in midwifing the emergent-juicy-present of transformative-cultures, all while keeping in mind the wider vision, for future generations to come.
Alma is a DJ, Open Floor Embodied-Dance Teacher, Ritualist, Grief Tender, Holistic Coach, Sacred Activist, Creatrix, Weaver, Rebel-Shape-shifter & Mid-wife for the Soul: for over 2 decades she has been weaving her path of the multi-dimensional/cross-cultural healing realms, alongside her passion & love for transformational-culture, underground-art, embodied-dance & earth-based-ritual.
As an embodied-artist, Alma’s passion is to create & hold spaces wherein we can remember the fabric of our humanity, our connection to divinity/source, and our intricate inter-connection to all of Life: by not bypassing the heart-aches & heart-quakes of life, but by inviting them to marinate and season our reasons for living.
Rick Smith
Rick Smith has been a classroom teacher, an education consultant, and over the past twenty years, has spoken to over 100,000 people in fifteen countries on five continents. His best-selling book Conscious Classroom Management has now sold close to half a million copies, and continues to touch the lives of teachers and their students.
Through years of working with students and then with teachers, Rick discovered simple principles for connection, aliveness, and kindness. The same internal muscle that allows a teacher to stay calm in a chaotic classroom, and that allows her to see the best in her students, regardless of what they look or act like, is the same muscle that allows us to awaken, to lead, to stand up, and to move mountains in the world.
These principles and approaches are at the core in Rick’s current workshops and retreats. When he teaches and facilitates, he engages participants with humor, movement, and connection, offering practical ways for them to know and love themselves, and remember their own innocence, wholeness, and “enough-ness,” especially in all the tight corners of their inner and outer worlds.
Christa Cocciole
christacocciole.com
Christa is a Transformation Doula, standing on three decades of experience as a Systemic Body Oriented Trauma Therapist for groups and individuals.
Rooted in her background in dance and improvisation, she works at the intersection of embodiment, activism, and social innovation — designing participatory processes that engage our whole selves (body-mind-emotions-soul) to show up and nourish committed action.
Her calling is to weave together compassion for the unspoken and a deep respect for the greater ecosystems we inhabit. She carries a deep curiosity about breaking trans-generational wounds by inhabiting our full (pre-colonised) nature. By creating trust-based spaces, she gestures towards our more resourced selves — unfurling inner strength and wisdom — to be radically more present in our agency and imagination for the times we are currently navigating.
Willow Ness
WillowNess is a ritualist, theatre-maker, and mistress of play who works with magic, mischief, and embodied presence. With over 25 years as a theatre-maker and voice artist, and 15 years holding ritual and ceremonial spaces internationally, her work weaves play, dance, voice, and performance to open spaces where intimacy, aliveness, and connection emerge and joy is remembered.
Her spaces favor curiosity over correctness, sensation over sense-making, and laughter over getting it right. Expect creative risk, playful tenderness, and moments where play kicks the door open and something real walks in.
Play-Rites is her living body of work - ritual theatre with sparkle and a pulse, where the body leads and being human is the whole point.
Play is not the opposite of seriousness; it is how we return to wholeness.
Denise Kooij
Denise is a somatic intimacy and embodiment guide who works primarily with men and mixed groups. Her spaces are a blend of depth and play where truth is welcome, emotions are sacred, and the body leads the way. She helps people drop out of the mind and into the felt experience of life and love, where intimacy becomes natural and presence becomes power. Expect a mix of raw honesty, laughter, sensation, and a permission slip to be wildly, innocently sensual and wonderfully human.
Co-Hosts: Summer Camp Counselor’s, Intimacy Ambassadors & Muses
This beautiful group of inspired souls is showing up deeply committed and in full service of this movement. We have grown a mutual love and support of them and they are an integral part of the potency and viability of our success. We are excited to introduce you to, and announce that the following beings will be with us in service of this adventure which looks like anything ranging from: emotional support, assisting, facilitating, photography, musicians, kitchen team and other administrative support.
Winter Camp Team
Christian Pankhurst
Christian Pankhurst is a world-leading authority on heart-centered communication and heart intelligent relationships. He is the creator of the Heart IQ™ Method, a coaching framework that specializes in group dynamics and intimacy development.
Graduating as a Chiropractor in 2002, Christian has worked closely with many world-leading experts in the field of personal transformation. In 2006, after extensive study with mentors from multiple disciplines, he began developing a new approach to coaching individuals and couples that integrates practices from natural healing philosophies, various spiritual teachings, therapeutic psychology, dance and movement modalities, martial arts, embodiment practices, non-violent communication, circling and numerous healing arts disciplines. This grand synthesis provides students with a deep understanding of the human condition and gives them the essential tools they need to help individuals and couples both heal and awaken.
Christian is also the author of 'Insights To Intimacy' - Why Relationships Fail and How To Make Them Work.
Christian lives in the Netherlands at the Heart IQ™ Headquarters - a stunning four-hectare retreat and community center near Groningen. Together with his team, they spread the work of Heart IQ™ around the world.
The Sound Field
The Sound Field is a live music & sound experience that supports groups to experience their own aliveness, to move into new ranges of emotion and energy and surrender to their present moment experience.
Sound and music is thus used to guide groups into live emergence – to basically follow the breadcrumbs to what really wants to happen.
The Sound Field is led by Thomas Kiernan.
https://www.soundsoflightportal.com/
The Co-Hosts: Winter Camp Counselor’s, Intimacy Ambassadors & Muses
This beautiful group of inspired souls is showing up deeply committed and in full service of this movement. We have grown a mutual love and support of them and they are an integral part of the potency and viability of our success. We are excited to introduce you to, and announce that the following beings will be with us in service of this adventure which looks like anything ranging from: emotional support, assisting, facilitating, photography, musicians, kitchen team, and other administrative support.
