The Freedom of Setting and Receiving Boundaries – Reclaim Your Power; A Joyful Loving Retreat April 27-29, 2024

Happy, authentic relating is not co-dependent, it is not independent, it is inter-dependent. In happy, authentic relating, the capacity to know and set your boundaries and receive and accept those of another, in any life situation, is essence-ial. This enquiry is a crucial foundation for living authentically. This is an invitation to travel deeper into loving being. You will have the space and support to explore your boundaries in any aspect of your life –

• your parents and/or children
• your partnership
• your work – colleagues, employers, employees, clients
• your creativity – creating enough space for this and the reflection it needs
• your business, money, investments
• your health
• your sexuality

and more – whatever is of most importance for you at this time. You will leave having overcome resistances and achieved clarity about your own boundaries with significant people and connections in your life.

Join us to

• Untangle co-dependency in your life
• Learn discernment about your current boundaries in different situations, and how to communicate them clearly
• Embody generous acceptance of another’s reality and their boundaries in all situations
• Befriend your past and present fear and loss
• Explore and accept the shadows of wounded masculine and wounded feminine – learn how to recognise and be free of these in your life & relating
• Recognise your attachment patterns and bring healing and find clarity about your weak spots with boundaries
• Know if it’s time to leave a life situation or relationship and be clear about what is ‘right’ for the future
• Prioritise truth and respect while parenting your children lovingly and healthily
• Recognise & open beyond defence mechanisms and triggers
• Dissolve judgement, blame and emotion
• Take clear, clean actions where necessary
• Discover and energise masculine and feminine gifts, beyond gender
• Embrace Stillness & silence
• Deepen Presence and increased sensitivity
• Reclaim your power
• Open into What Is, depth, authenticity, freedom, community, celebration

In my individual and couple session work, the theme of boundaries is one of the most potent for self-transformation, and also the theme many struggle with and can be confused about.

You matter and you deserve to live a healthful, beautiful life. A crucial foundation for creating this is the skill of being open and honest with people by letting them know what is and what isn’t ok with you.

Do you ever find yourself saying yes when you really want to or know you should say no, then feeling burned-out or resentful at having agreed?

Do you sometimes feel unclear about what the ‘right’ approach is in a disagreement or choice?

Do you ever feel that others don’t hear you?

Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed in your relationships and your life?

The conditioned personality is afraid to create or maintain boundaries and can feel threatened by the boundaries of another or others.

If you are not fully able to celebrate all your choices and every day living in your body, living your s-ual energy, living free of repression, denial, blame and resentments, opening to the pleasure and pain of your life fully, fully honest to yourself and others, then your natural-ness, the sweet gift and wonder of your life is compromised.

‘Your’ life can be seen & explored as a clear mirror which reflects where you are living the falsehoods of personality. Living freedom and the natural joy of your being and heart can replace this.

How can you embody empty, impersonal, unconditional wholeness, in all areas of life? Simple, yet not always easy for one who lives in a separate self. Do you long to go deeper in your life ? Do you wonder how you can expand your capacity to give & receive more love every day? Do you wish for nourishment, holding and authenticity? Join us!

This is vulnerable, supportive space to bring the whole of your being. Do you value freedom, living alive and awake, beingness, depth? Do you value the uncompromising clarity in all areas of life which these make possible?

Come join us if you wish to enjoy sustained aliveness and learn how to re-connect with it every day. Come join us if you wish to learn to choose heart, full self-responsibility, consciousness and care in your life.

Enquiry & exploration in this arena of boundary-setting and receiving others’ boundaries, in a held, safe, intentional circle, is the quickest, surest way for you to heal into wholeness. Heart-opening vulnerable choice-fulness is the gateway. Boundlessness is, always, anyway.

To whatever degree it is realised, this work deepens friendship & harmony between you & your lovers, partners, spouses, children, parents & friends, colleagues, neighbours & all you meet. You will more deeply embody the love that is, at the core of all existence, and beyond it.

Come live an expanded celebration of your humanity, the unique gifts of being you, the man or woman you are, with the stories you have lived & the life you are wishing to co-create.

Join us – Meet men and women who are as passionate as you about authenticity, living love, and releasing the conditioned trances and more obvious distortions our wounded culture has created.

You find safe harbour to lovingly embrace any worries, confusion, helplessness or dilemma, any holdbacks to clarity, and inspiration arising from the depth, to find, live, your natural joy and pleasure, your nature, again.

We humans, we men and women, are all things – unlimited, powerful and yet vulnerable, sometimes fragile. You cannot live an awake life of presence and love unless your relationship with all the colours and necessary choices of being human, of being man, of being woman – in self and other – is resolved.

I have wanted for a long time to dedicate focused retreat time to this key theme, which can lead to confusion and much pain and yet, when these are disentangled, brings a lightness, clarity and freedom beyond words.

healing my difficulties with male contact, trusting men, trusting myself, exploring boundaries. I gained courage to continue working with my therapist in a very vulnerable area of love and attachment. I’ve been able to see and feel when I go into animus-ridden behaviours and, through developing compassion for myself, have begun to change this…Openness and honesty in communication, embracing vulnerability, experiencing different identity states, confronting and challenging fears – who couldn’t benefit from this? … having this safely contained and well-boundaried space can benefit anyone who wishes to become more intimate or just better at listening, understanding and appreciating difference. Joy is an inspirer and living role model of what she teaches~ Marian, East Anglia

Best few days of the year by far! ~ Stephen H., Buxton

It was inspiring to hear the feelings and experiences of the women in our separate women’s circle, and then deeply moving to witness the men being so surrendered and open. I loved all the various structures, which I found very freeing, encouraging me to move beyond convention and restriction into a place of joyful expression and connection. How beautiful! I want to say thankyou to both of you for being such loving, insightful and supportive facilitators ~ Anne Fearon, Cardiff

I saw this as more than experiential healing in ‘being my woman’ but also the opportunity to safely play with the contrast between Masculine and Feminine energy, which scares me. I gained clarity when I finally linked my lack of desire/passion with my wish to feel innocent in my body and its desire ~ Amy R., Stroud area

Love is all there is. Love is what ‘we’ are. This is the direct experience of awakeness. Once glimpsed, there can be a yes to aligning every aspect of life with that unknowable.

Better relationships with others begin with a better relationship with your being &, crucially, with life, otherwise you are continually unconsciously projecting your own wounds outside & getting a clear reflection of your unsorted problems – in relating that does not fulfil your hearts’ desires! Avoid serious mistakes that can sabotage your life & which most men & women almost inevitably suffer from.

Listening to life, with Joy’s expert guidance & safe holding, allows you to move beyond patterns into beingness, which brings you freshness, clarity & love. Problems & conditioned patterns take hold in the fear-based, illusory separate self. Yet, through its challenges, and its joys, love’s deepest pull initiates us into largeness. Discover how to co-operate with this evolutionary opportunity built into relating and sexuality. Facing the fear of loss if we have boundaries that are true for us is profoundly healing.

You will open where you have been stuck, un-nourished or fearful & in embracing the one solution, (there is only one), find a joy that doesn’t depend on anything outside of you, yet magnetises what is right for you.

Are you ready to do the inner work to deepen your availability to life?

Are you looking for connections beyond deals, pacts and comfort zones?

Would you like your life, whatever your lifestyle, to be one of consciousness, tenderness, passion, pleasure, beauty & freedom?

What if you can discover how your life, whatever your lifestyle, can serve the highest potential of your humanity – embodied freedom?

Do you wish the healing power of truth, depth & presence to replace ambivalence, compromise & disappointment?

If so, this all-new Retreat is for you!

Dismantle false veils of trance, apparent separation & old myths about love which limit intimacy. Depth, vulnerability, playfulness, transparency, powerful intentionality, clarity, self-love & naturalness grow in you, naturally, as intimacy with What Is grows.

Go deep, then light, with Joy Hicklin-Bailey. Joy is a highly experienced psychotherapist. Joy’s approach is radical, it goes direct to the root, to essential nature – this is the core beyond story, thought & feeling, this energetic transmission invites you to return to over & over again. All problems dissolve then. Being and Loving are one.

What you can discover is that who ‘you’ are is What Is, already, beyond your story. The story of relating, what was or what might be, naturally changes as you let go into Only This

This is for you if you are single, in a couple, or with a partner and choose to attend alone. Your gender preferences and chosen lifestyle, LGBTQ, fully welcome. This is for ALL, for you, who want more emotional & physical intimacy with themselves, with beingness, with future partners or their current partner and more clarity in any or all areas of life. Ultimately, this is about the relationship to ‘your’ self, to being. Heart-opening, vulnerable relating is the gateway to the Boundlessness beyond knowing. That is, always, anyway.

The big circle and the men’s* circle or the women’s circle are your beautiful anchors and exploratory ground for this beautiful work of self-realisation. (* Facilitated by Tim Langford)

There will also be initiation and ritual. This retreat can at times involve physical contact, if desired (rich no-shared-touch options always available) . Your own chosen boundaries are fully respected & supported in any situation. Carefully designed, safely held structures, sensual aliveness in consciously boundaried, sometimes playful encounters, short same gender circles, whole circle, small mixed circles, pairs, dialogue, Q and A, and individual practice, deep sharing, Meditation, silent alone time, bodywork, laughter, dance and more in great company. A gorgeous fusion.

Cutting edge explorations, light-filled transmission of awakeness. & world class facilitation. Deepen intimacy Empower aliveness Soften into the unconditional love of Life Embody formless being.

Imagine what would happen if you renewed your passion for life, your love of being. What that might lead to…… Do you long to learn how you can live awakened intimacy with your own being, with others, with existence?… then join us at this all-new Retreat!  Limited places, book your place now

Are you ready to deeply live the truth that all that is real is the love that you are?

Step more fully your own life; and release what is no longer needed. 

Join the men and women who choose to sit in circles of healing and awakening because you, like them, value heart over mind.

I was blown away by the level of connection, intimacy, courage, honesty and presence that I experienced – not to mention openings and healings that happened. It was powerful, and truly special ~ Rachel Irvine-Fortescue, Minchinhampton 

The retreat helped me focus and feel into where I  am  current lifestyle situation and what is important for me what I love and what is possible/ dare to dream  and what I wish to preserve / include going forwards. .I came away despite illness feeling positive and energised. I mapped out / revised my life mission statement , hearts desires and values ..working on goals and that now sits on my desktop … to be energised and made real. It’s Ok to be vulnerable and sometimes unsure of my ‘art’ my working life and private life . Its ok to re-evaluate take time out and reconnect with self.  Through circle sharing comfort in realising the same obstacles are in the way for most people / shared insecurities doubts etc. Secret Garden allows and encourages / guides people to get clear on what they desire, where they are and where they would like to be ~ Mike Robinson, Notts

Dive into authentic community. In times of uncertainty and conflict on the planet, we need community and connection more than ever. If you have been drawn and wish to discover what Secret Garden is, or wish to meet old friends and replenish what you have received and learned from the circle in the past, join us. All are welcome. This is very beautiful work. You will benefit from deep immersion in that which is beyond you, a dive into stillness and silence. You emerge back into ‘ordinary’ life inspired, nourished and fuller from new insights and ways of being, so that you radiate presence and tenderness to all around.

Fundamental to all Joy’s retreats is the core principle that life is energetic and unconditional. Life has its natural laws and also simply responds to the signals you give out, whether those signals are conscious or unconscious.

Join us because you intuit that every human conditioned response or so-called problem dissolves in the heart’s silence and that any intelligent action, when needed, comes from that freedom and stillness.

Come join us if you are ready for what lies beyond the personal, if you value freedom to be over personality and defensiveness, if you are ready to drop your most precious old stories, trances and ideals for the sake of What Is. 

the beginnings of having a closer connection to (my wife) and also being a little bit more present with others including my work colleagues and family…time in the circle (individually) and as part of a wider connected group to experience what is happening…. a chance to be more real. It is inspiring to see how other people have insights and understanding about themselves ~ Chris H., Surrey

Thank you so much for such a rich retreat, it feels extraordinary what you have created. What Joy creates means that transformation can happen in an instant when and if people are willing and step into the potential that is there. The circles are full of love, deep insights and potent learnings, laughter and humanity. ‘Me’ and my life have changed immeasurably since beginning work with Joy. For much of my life, I have doubted love existed, now I feel I want to dedicate my life to growing it ~ Hettie, Stroud

a catalyst for fundamental change in how I look at life; I have found time to love myself more, have placed greater priority towards strengthening relationships within my family & other friendships and am pursuing a pathway which is heartfelt than mind felt. I also saw huge benefit in how circles are successful when well facilitated and held with love. It was also useful to see some individuals further along the awakening journey “fine-tuning” themselves vulnerably, while also modelling “best practice” for others…the importance of being present; dropping judgements; being aware of our own shadow/triggers and their impact on others & embracing the pure beauty of being truly intimate with others ~ Paul Collins, Glocs.

Are you ready to resolve your inner & outer conflicts, face current challenges and create more pleasure as love, doing what love would do?

Would you love to have an authentic spiritual community, supporting you in learning how you can be authentically, happily you and allow that to support you to live awakened intimacy?

Are you ready to create real & profound change by working deeply with that which isn’t love within your being, and discover the awesome power & joy of compassion, tenderness & joy as you embody your pristine and unfettered soul?

Are you ready to get more real, simple & vulnerable in your communications so that you can receive less of what you don’t want & more of what you choose? 

… then this retreat is for you! Suitable for all who wish to live an easeful, chosen life, rather than a conditioned one. We recommend you book early – numbers are strictly limited for this event. Book Your Place Below, Now.

Best Early booking til midnight on day of deadline, unless the very limited places have gone.

Being around a pretty conscious bunch of good men & women should provide a fertile zone of learning, listening & applying lessons. And so it was ! ….I feel more at home in my life & am taking responsibility for my part in making it work well.  My shiatsu practice has gained … & I have more clients now. Warmth..inspiring…richness…real intimacy…an adventure I have valued and gained deeply from. I thank you, Tim & Joy ~ Kalandar Warren, Stroud

Top quality healing & growth for the separate self, whilst all around the whisper that the separate self is not real. This Love-infused combination is pretty special. Joy: profoundly loving, profoundly insightful, funny, earthy. Penetrating insight combined with unconditional love. Tim: wonderfully human, wonderfully encouraging, funny, clean; a beautiful – road-tested – masculine light, full of love. The down-to-earth humour of you both is worth its weight in gold. I feel constantly, quietly, encouraged and celebrated through being part of the Secret Garden community ~ Stephen Hancock, Devon

I’m feeling different, it’s subtle but real. I feel happier with what is, & am noticing so much love & beauty around me every day. My deepest gratitude to you dear Joy for all that I have learned & am learning from you ~ Karen Scott, Narberth 

This is cutting-edge ~ Steve, Isle of Man

Ensures time/space allocated for what really matters, and … a deep connection with my being. Joy’s unique offering is her wisdom, intuition & insight. Tim’s unique offering is his heart and human-ness ~ Kim Rossi, Notts

I am less frightened of men, I have more understanding of them and appreciation of their nobility, vulnerability and strength. I have learnt and healed so much from deep sharing with men, in paired structures and on the forum. I am beginning to enjoy my femininity, and finding, expressing and loving my softer, sensual, womanly self.  I am also much more aware of my unhealthy if not destructive patterns of relating in all intimate relationships, but particularly with men and on my way to changing them. I thought I had ‘missed the boat’ and would not get another chance at a relationship with a man, but I have much more openness, willingness and trust about that now. Sharing from gender circles – hearing both the men and women talk vulnerably, openly and honestly about themselves and the other. The pair work and reflections on them. Witnessing the courageous people who come with their partners speaking deeply, honestly, vulnerably to heal and sort things out between them. Listening to Joy and Tim talking about their relating with breathtaking truth and love. Every minute in circle and out of circle in this community has potential for deep learning. The informational learning about breath and body and archetypes in relation to relating, sensuality and s**uality was all really helpful. Anyone who takes the chance and dives in to being present, alive and speaking openly cannot fail to be impacted by what is on offer here. Then it is our choice how we take learnings about love, relating, being alive into our lives. The values of truth, love and depth are lived, and demonstrated by Joy & Tim. Exquisite, finely tuned facilitation by Joy on any matter – it is the only place where I feel all of me is truly accepted and where I trust the feedback I am given completely. Joy & Tim speak of and demonstrate simple and profound truths in a completely practical, down to earth way. Secret Garden helps me stay grounded and awake in my life by simultaneously facilitating me to live closer and closer to my nature whilst ensuring I take my self less and less seriously (sometimes anyway). Somehow, in ways I don’t understand I am clearer and stronger in how make more and more conscious choices about every aspect of my life and how I spend my energy and am simply more open to experiencing more of life. More open to joy and peace than before. And when the times come that are dark and ugly, (less often) they are ok too ~ Hettie P. Stroud

Course Fees

Add your course place to your basket, below. There is delicious catered supper on Saturday evening & also catered lunch on Sunday and Monday. We work with a local, very experienced caterer who loves to produce gorgeous & nourishing food, using organic ingredients where possible. Please see details in ‘Description’ below.

This is a non-residential course. If you wish to book very good value b & b (with hot tub & beautiful views!)  just select that option below. Please see details in ‘Description’ below.  Note the friend discount is applicable if you bring someone new to Secret Garden.