CEREMONIA
A Healing Insights Equinox Gathering
21 March | 7pm–10.30pm
A Journey Into Yourself.
As the Earth reaches a moment of perfect balance — light equal to dark — we gather to honour the Spring Equinox, one of the most powerful turning points in the natural year. Since ancient times, many cultures have recognised this moment not as the continuation of winter, but as the true New Year: the threshold where nature awakens, seeds stir, and life returns to the light.
Ceremonia is our way of welcoming this new beginning. A space to arrive, soften, reconnect, and step consciously into the season ahead. This is an immersive evening of cacao, music, intention, and community — a ceremony shaped not by substances, but by presence, breath, and the energy we create together.
THE EQUINOX — THE REAL NEW YEAR
Before calendars, clocks, and constructs, humans oriented their lives to the turning of the Earth. They celebrated the year not in the depth of winter, but in the moment when:
* Day and night stand in perfect equality
* Light begins to grow stronger than darkness
* The soil warms and the first green shoots emerge
* Seeds crack open and new life rises
* The outward cycle of creation begins again
The Equinox marks the start of the solar year — a cosmic reset. A return to forward motion, clarity, expansion, and growth.
This is the true beginning.
The moment of rebirth.
The time when nature says, “It is time to rise.”
Ceremonia honours this turning. It invites you to align your inner world with the rhythm of the natural world, so you don’t just mark the moment — you live it.
WHY WE GATHER
We come together to reconnect with what matters.
To pause the noise.
To honour the light we are stepping into and the shadows we are shedding.
To walk through the threshold of the Equinox with intention.
To meet ourselves with kindness.
To sit in a circle where every person is welcomed exactly as they are.
Ceremonia is an invitation to return to your centre, open your heart, and step consciously into your next chapter.
⸻
WHAT TO EXPECT
Opening Circle
A guided arrival with Neil, weaving intention, grounding, and a remembrance of the inner tools we hold to navigate life’s challenges — aligning us with the energy of renewal.
Cacao & Bobinsana Blessing
Served by Ruth with prayerful care, this heart-opening plant combination supports presence, emotional clarity, and a gentle reconnection with self.
Seeds Ritual & Sound Journey
A symbolic planting of what you wish to grow in the coming season, led by Api and accompanied by sounds from Ruth Re-Nurture and CheetahRam.
Live Sets
A deeply immersive musical journey from Api followed by a soulful, expansive set from CheetahRam.
Music to move you, lift you, breathe you open.
Closing Words & Community Time
A final reflection with Neil, then space to share, relax, and connect with the Healing Insights family.
Food. Tea. Conversation. Belonging.
The ceremony continues in the togetherness.
⸻
WHAT TO BRING
* A yoga mat or something comfortable to sit or lie on
* Water
* A journal if you like to write
* Layers to stay warm
* Your open heart
⸻
WHO THIS IS FOR
Ceremonia is open to anyone longing for grounding, clarity, connection, or renewal.
No prior experience needed.
Just come as you are.
⸻
THE INTENTION
To remember.
To return.
To rebalance.
To rise with the returning light.
To step into the new year of nature with courage, softness, and presence.
_____
WHO ARE WE
Healing Insights
The Healing Insights Familia is a living, breathing community of seekers, healers, and wholehearted humans who choose to walk this path together. It is a circle shaped not by hierarchy but by devotion, humility, and shared remembrance. In a world that often feels fractured, frantic and unbearably loud, the Familia is a sanctuary where people rediscover their centre, reconnect with their truth, and rise in their strength through one another.
At its heart is one guiding belief.
In a time of insanity, born of polarity and amplified by the noise of the world, humanity can only return to itself through true community. When we stand together, heal together, and remember together, we rise together. This is the power of our community. This is the medicine.
The Healing Insights Familia is where people are held through their darkest nights and celebrated in their brightest dawns. It blends ancient wisdom with modern understanding, ceremony with integration, soul with science. Whether through retreats, circles, music, plant teachings, or simple human presence, the Familia offers connection, accountability, compassion, and a sense of belonging that many didn’t know they had been searching for.
It is more than a group. More than another offering.
It is a family, a field, and a movement grounded in love, insight, and shared awakening.
Neil Shah
www.stress.org.uk
Neil is the founder and visionary heart behind the Healing Insights Familia, a community born from his lifelong devotion to helping people come home to themselves and to one another. After more than two decades working globally in mental health, emotional resilience and human wellbeing, Neil realised that true healing does not happen in isolation. It happens in community, through shared remembrance, through being witnessed, and through rising together. The Familia is his answer to this calling.
His journey began with personal adversity that ignited his purpose. That purpose became the foundation for his work as a pioneer in wellbeing and a trusted guide to individuals, organisations and communities around the world. Over the years, Neil has been recognised as a leading voice in mental and emotional health, featured across global media and teaching thousands the principles of stress mastery, embodied resilience and grounded spiritual practice.
But beneath all the titles, achievements and global work, Neil’s deepest commitment has always been simple and human. To help people feel safe. To help them feel seen. To bring people together in a world that is pulling itself apart. To create a space where healing is not a solo journey but a shared pilgrimage.
The Healing Insights Familia grew from this vision. A space where the old ways of community are rekindled, where ancient wisdom meets modern understanding, where ceremony is woven with science, and where people are welcomed exactly as they are. Neil describes the Familia as a sanctuary for the soul and a training ground for the heart; a place where seekers support one another, rise through one another and remember that none of us were ever meant to walk this path alone.
Guided by compassion, humility and a deep reverence for the human spirit, Neil continues to steward this growing community with the belief that in a time of collective overwhelm and separation, the medicine we need is one another. Through the Familia, he invites people not just to heal, but to belong, to evolve, to awaken, and to rise in the power of community.
Cheetah Ram
Lewis Dafydd and Chantelle Blackwood
https://www.youtube.com/@cheetahram
Cheetah Ram are partners in life and in music, united through love, devotion and a shared commitment to creating sound as medicine. They offer heart songs, medicine music, mantras, poetry and prayer, guiding people into deep inner landscapes.
Both are walking a path of inner enquiry, shaped by their teachings, travels and lived experiences. These influences interweave through their music, giving their sound a quality that is both intimate and expansive. Their musical lineage draws inspiration from Reggae, Sanskrit mantra, the wisdom of nature, the tribes of the Amazon and their Celtic roots. In everything they do, they aim to embody unity and allow that vibration to radiate outward.
Within the Healing Insights Familia, Cheetah Ram are more than musicians. They are medicine carriers, frequency weavers and compassionate space holders. Their prayer is to create a safe field where people can soften, open and remember who they are.
Their work can be felt as much as it is heard. Their sound is prayer. Their presence is ceremony.
Explore their music here: https://www.youtube.com/@cheetahram
*LEWIS*
Lewis is a musician, healer and space holder whose presence blends strength, humility and an unmistakable warmth. Over the past years, he has travelled widely, evolved deeply and met life’s challenges with grace and resilience, growing into the artist and man the world is beginning to truly recognise.
His musicality is instinctive. Whether through drumming, strings or textured soundscapes, Lewis creates sonic fields that help people drop into their bodies, connect with their emotions and find a sense of inner stillness. His ability to read a room, track the energy and respond intuitively sets him apart as both a musician and a facilitator.
As one half of Cheetah Ram and as a pillar of the Healing Insights Familia, Lewis brings depth, humour, steadiness and devotion. His heart is as recognisable as his beard, and his presence continues to support many on their healing path.
---
*CHANTELLE*
Chantelle is a vocalist, musician and intuitive space holder whose voice feels like ceremony in motion. Deeply devoted to expression through sound, music and poetry, she experiences creative expression as one of her greatest healers and teachers.
Inspired by her life journey, Mother Earth, and her community, Chantelle’s artistry invites unity, encouraging shared song, celebration and authentic expression in all its forms. Guided by the mantra “get out of the way,” she opens herself as a channel for Spirit, allowing sound to flow from a place of deep heart connection and devotion to Divine Mother / Great Spirit.
Her offerings are rich with deep, channelled vibrations, uplifting melodies and heart-led songs and poetry that feel both grounded and otherworldly, awakening something ancient and inviting truth, release, and remembrance.
Beyond her music, Chantelle carries a natural presence, emotional intelligence and a deep sense of safety, holding spaces with tenderness and strength that allow vulnerability to unfold with ease. As one half of Cheetah Ram and a cherished member of the Healing Insights Familia, she brings harmony, intuitive leadership, and sacred feminine wisdom, supporting communities to grow with compassion and authenticity.
Api Ascaso
www.terravibra.com
Api Ascaso is an explorative and vibrant soul whose musical gifts come together to create expressive, eclectic and deeply soulful soundscapes. Her music is an offering to the unseen, shaped by her profound connection to the sacredness of each moment and her belief that music is the language that speaks directly to the mystery.
Her raw, versatile voice carries a rare quality. It seems to move through the soul rather than simply around it, travelling beyond the illusions of time and space. In her sound, you feel the dance between the earthy feminine and the universal masculine. Her voice is both grounding and expansive, tender and elemental.
The drum is the heart of her expression, pulsing with a steady, ancestral rhythm. From there, she weaves in an array of world instruments with delicacy and intuition, allowing each note to arise naturally as part of a living conversation with the moment.
Api’s gift is her sensitivity. She feels the energy of a space with remarkable clarity and lets her improvisation be guided entirely by what is present. Her performances are never repeated, because each moment dissolves as soon as it arrives. Her music is a ritual of impermanence, presence and surrender.
Her work invites breath, introspection and inner journeying. It asks you to explore the mysteries of what is felt but not yet known, to meet the truth beneath the surface and to allow yourself to be transformed by the subtle.
As a leading member of the Healing Insights Familia, Api brings more than music. She brings devotion, intuition and a deep commitment to supporting collective awakening. Her presence strengthens the energetic field of the Familia, anchoring ceremonies, sound journeys and community gatherings with wisdom, grace and an unwavering connection to spirit. She is not only a musician within the Familia, but a guide, a catalyst and a guardian of the emotional and energetic space we hold.
You can explore her work at www.terravibra.com
Ruth Hoey
www.renurture.co.uk
Ruth Hoey is a gifted Sound Medicine Practitioner, Women’s Circle Facilitator, Cacao Guide and Meditation and Mindfulness Teacher. Her work is rooted in a deep commitment to supporting others on their path of healing, empowerment and reconnection. Through her presence, people feel safe to soften, to explore, to release and to rediscover the parts of themselves that long to be witnessed.
Ruth creates transformative wellbeing experiences that weave together ancient and modern healing practices. Her sessions and circles draw from sound therapy, rituals, embodiment practices and reiki, held with intention, clarity and a profound respect for the individual journey of each participant. As a facilitator, she is known for her ability to hold sacred space with gentleness and strength, guiding people towards insight, healing and heartfelt connection.
Working with heart-opening cacao, the rhythms of nature and the cycles of the moon, Ruth helps others to attune to the deeper pulse of their own lives. Her work supports people in aligning with their authentic purpose, releasing old patterns and stepping into a more rooted, soul-led way of being. She offers one to one sessions, group events, retreats and corporate wellbeing experiences across London and internationally.
As a member of the Healing Insights Familia, Ruth is a steady, compassionate and intuitive presence within the community. She holds the energetic field with care, supporting both individuals and the collective to feel grounded, connected and held. Whether guiding cacao ceremonies, offering sound journeys or facilitating deep inner work, her contribution to the Familia is shaped by devotion to truth, feminine wisdom and a heartfelt belief in the power of community healing.
Ruth brings nurturing, insight and soulful guidance to every space she touches, helping people return to themselves, find balance and walk a path that honours their spirit.
www.renurture.co.uk