Wild Woman Beltane Special - with Functional Medicine Coach & Nutritionist

Start summer as you mean to go on - supporting your nervous system, easing tension and guiding your body back into balance!

Join us for an extra special Wild Woman gathering this May that promises plenty of shared nourishment, deep rest, and the kind of connection that only happens when we really slow down enough to hear ourselves clearly.

As well marking the beginning of summer with our usual circle of sisterhood and cosy sauna session, we'll also, very excitingly, be joined by Functional Health Coach and Nutritional Therapist Valentina Riva for a very informative lunch beforehand!

Val will be teaching us all about how we can protect and boost our body and wellbeing from water intake and stimulation of the lymphatic system and vegus nerve, to choices about what we eat, when we eat and what we go on to do afterwards!

A nourishing lunch is included, crafted by us all and guided by Val. While we prep, she will help us hear the things our body has been whispering, teaching us how to support our nervous system, ease tension, and guide ourselves back toward balance.

After eating, we'll move into the gentle heat of the sauna where, in the quiet glow, muscles can loosen, thoughts uncoil, and the body continue its natural unwinding, emerging ready to channel the rising fire of summer!

About your Hosts

Valentina Riva is a certified Functional Health Coach and Nutritional Therapist, with advanced training in the Immunity Method™. A seeker of patterns and a devoted interpreter of the body’s hidden language, she refers to herself as a ‘health detective’ (imagine a Dr House with much better social skills!) She listens for the whispers beneath the symptoms - the deeper stories that shape our well being and the root cause behind our health problems.

Val’s work spans a diverse spectrum of symptoms and experiences from autoimmune diseases and hormonal problems, to digestive issues, long covid, fatigue and migraines. She weaves nutrition, gut health, immune and nervous system regulation, stress management and sleep rhythms into the teaching of healthy daily rituals, drawing on neuroscience to help us shift old habits and empower ourselves with potent transformative practices.

Her work inspires us to slow down, tune in, and discover the wisdom existing beneath the noise. She helps us find balance not by pushing harder, but by listening more deeply - learning to recognise what our body is asking for, what it’s protecting us from, and what it needs to feel whole and strong again. Her goal isn’t to hand us another list of “shoulds”, it is to help us reconnect with our bodies and learn how to listen so we can finally feel balanced, energised, and ourselves again. With her expert guidance, we can tune in, calm down and uncover what our bodies have really been trying to tell us all along.

Pridie Tiernan is a storyteller and ethnobotanist committed to reconnecting us with the plants we once used to nourish, nurture and heal. She weaves a rich mix of oral storytelling into the teaching of wilderness skills; rekindling our relationship with the natural world and empowering us to feel at one with the wild.

As a storyteller, she has spent many years performing stories that create a sense of familiarity and connection with nature, especially in those that gift us the opportunity to explore the concept of the "wild woman" - that powerful, untamed force connected to the natural world that can be both nurturing and fierce, instinctual, passionate and creative. Her work encourages a reconnection with that wildness - rediscovering our feral inventiveness and power - through the sharing of ancient stories and the teaching of practical survival skills.

As an ethnobotanist, Pridie has long been fascinated by the power of plants. Her sensory herbalism, seasonal woodcraft and rewilding workshops, draw our native flora onto centre stage, embracing them as a potent way of gaining insight into ourselves and our place in the world, taking control of our bodies, and tapping into the magic of the natural world.

This retreat takes place at her home in the heart of the Black Mountains—a safe and beautiful space where the sharing of stories and ancestral skills brings people together in community and encourages a change in the way we interact with nature. Here, women can return to that state of ‘awakeness’ we once enjoyed when we thrived in the wild - all senses firing, the herbs and flowers our allies, and the powerful, untamed force that is our wild woman fully embraced and unleashed!