Shine your light 2021
Shine 2021 lit up St. Croix with a beautiful fiery December week of intention, play, community and connection with 11 souls. Arriving throughout the week, retreat participants were welcomed by the island fire community with open hearts and smiles. St. Croix is a beautiful island home for so many fire dancers who revel and hosting new flow artists.
Upon the beautiful North Shore, Villa Larimar the jewel atop Glad Hill. It is Kiki’s residence of three years, and is nestled among the Mount Eagle and East Scenic/Clairmont/Concordia Ridge mountain ranges. The views are breathtakingly expansive, offering a sense of belonging- a place to anchor in and call home.
Day 1 Ground in your Temple Body
Participants gathered over a locally sourced welcome dinner & finished with a grounding cacao and fire ritual to connect us all into the resonance of belonging, oneness, play and connection.
We then all loaded up in vehicles to witness our fire show “Caribbean Night at the Palms” with Moko Jumbies and Purafire local fire dancers! On Saturday, this place would be the stage for our final retreat performance- so the retreaters had the opportunity to see a fire show as audience members. We were all inspired by the possibilities of what was to transpire within this retreat. Inspiration and excitement was palpable as that energy carried over after the show when we danced, played with fire props, and deepened our connections.
Day 2: Authentic Expression
Kiki’s morning movement introduced flow patterns using palm torches. Connecting these patterns within the body before adding fire is an essential component to embody the fire from a grounded place. Embodied learning teaches us how to find that sense of calm presence of our own self so we develop a sense of feeling safe within our bodies and within our community, no matter what is happening externally around us. These universal flow patterns create new neural pathways for our brain and body to integrate a deep sense of self, allowing the fire to be a reflection of who we truly are.
It was clear we needed to light up during class, even if it was only 9am! We embodied presence as we fire danced with palm torches pool side and in the inner courtyard amplifying and igniting our first morning together.
Jason, our retreat kitchen wizard, loving his life!
After a hearty breakfast to fuel us, we dove into a gorgeously curated dance workshop with Gaea to continue to deepen our embodied expression through sensuality and play. With our favorite props as dance partners we met ourselves through dance. Anchoring into one of our four pillars, authentic expression, we deepened into how we can use this artform to truly dance through whatever arises. We noticed how each prop brings out different versions of us, amplifying different emotions. This is a beautiful place to explore how we desire to flow, be, and show up in the world.
From here, we learned “the Ignite Fire Keepers Fire Prayer”, our signature group piece, to deepen into how community ritual spaces connect us to a sense of oneness within our own unique expressions.
A leisurely lunch and break time followed, and after the heat of the day, Kiki led a poi foundations workshop of play with movement patterns - which can be used with any flow prop! Some retreaters reconnected back into their passion to learn poi, and some discovered this flow prop for the first time.
After an afternoon of downtime, pool play and rest, Gaea and Kiki donned official firefighter uniforms and led an integrated Fire Safety Class, the signature Firekeeper’s Initiation Ritual. One of the strongest components of this initiation course is that the role of Fire Safety is a sacred role. When we treat it as such, the community is held in both deep reverence and safety. We can then more confidently express ourselves through and with the fire. (link to fire safety manual and video). Safety is first and foremost the essential component of a strong and thriving fire community. We love sharing the importance of the role of sacred firekeeper to our community as a rite of passage.
We culminated day 2 of our authentic expression with a fire jam around the pool at Larimar, embodying all we learned and deepening our connection to each other. Within the intimate space there was ample time for everyone to play, explore and express themselves with new and familiar props, and to take turns being fire safeties. Our seasoned dancers ignited excitement in newbies and a shared playful passion for fire as a healing artform. So much creative expression emerged within the first fire jam!
Day 3: You Belong Here
“Breath and Expansive Flow” with Gaea started our morning at the pool, using hula hoops to breathe and play within the circular spaces in and around our temple bodies. Stretching and moving with the hoop as our flow partner guided those new to this experience into an embodied awareness of how to slow down and connect into the circle as divine expression, connecting into a state of flow within our nervous system. This slowness with intention offered a sweet opening to deeper states of flow. Olessia, our photographer and neighbor, joined us in capturing some of the divine play that emerged and we delighted in celebrating her with love and gratitude. As our intimate connection with each other grows stronger, we are able to share more effortlessly with others.
Beach time! We broke our fast with a tasty meal & grabbed our favorite prop(s) for a BEACH EXCURSION! A poi-walk hiking or driving down from Larimar to Cane Bay Beach brought us to dip in the Caribbean Sea, then to flow with the elements in a guided silk exploration with Kiki & Gaea.
Lunch at “The Landing” and exploring Cane Bay beach filled up our afternoon… as we planned an impromptu fire jam at the Landing to live music in the open field across from the beach. This opportunity to play & perform challenged us all to co-create a safe container to share our lights with the community of St. Croix. It was beautiful to witness the more experienced dancers encouraging and holding space for the newer ones to continue to build the embodied sense of belonging. We feel what it is to share our light and ourselves publicly. This is an important element to the Shine Your Light Retreat, as there are added variables that challenge the safe container in any fire performance. Being able to react & shift to keep everyone safe is what we do as Fire Keepers - and is invaluable to creating sustainable fire communities.
Deeper conversations, realizations of fears, and release after this public fire jam lended to deepen our connection. We felt gratitude for our held space within our intimate fire community. We felt a renewed sense of how we continue to show up for ourselves first and use fire as a transformative healing experience within the space we hold for each other.
Saturday Dec 4 : Transformation & Ritual Performance
It’s Saturday! Gathering around the pool for Kiki’s movement of “Becoming the Light”, our staff becomes our partner in flow. This helps us all open easier into dancing with others and sharing the space, offering support and playful groundedness in community connections.
One of Kiki and Gaea’s signature workshops of all of the Ignite Firekeeper retreats is “Empowering your Presence” - where we fill up ourselves with ourselves from the vast, infinite Source energy. We share our lights from this space, and there is a deep resonance of healing energy that flows through us. The workshop had each person lining up individually to walk, dance, move towards the mirror in the main dance area, taking the time to connect to their senses, witness themselves and hold their own gaze. It felt as if each person was drinking themselves in! Many emotions came up in this process of truly seeing the reflection of ourselves - a sacred space intimate and unique.
After filling up with themselves and seeing their power in their own eyes, each stepped up to the stage and shared their dance in whatever way they desired. As we witnessed each person take their moment and share from a deep embodied and place of fullness, everyone got involved and we all fell into a cheering, dance united force of beautiful energy! The empowered presence held within each of us was palpable.
This connected energy filled our final Ritual Performance that night at the Palms. After spending the rest of the afternoon preparing, practicing and adorning ourselves for our final show, we loaded up the vehicles and arrived at the venue with a sense of connectedness, belonging and oneness that showed through our playful and expressive fire show.
Celebration and collaboration indeed!
Day 5 Oneness
With such high energy the night before, slow free time before breakfast deepened into brain-body expansion with a focus on props today. Kiki & Gaea “Double Down” with a workshop share their favorite double staff movement patterns, guiding the retreaters into new patterns of flow with pairs of shorter staffs, developing a simple choreography and building on the flow patterns offered in earlier workshops.
After lunch we moved into Gaea’s “Technical Fire Fan” workshop, as we explored many ways we move with the fans as extensions of our hands. She anchored everyone into common language and technical foundations of movement patterns before choreography was created and shared as both a large and small group. By allowing groups to create their own choreography, it was clear to see how many fun and new possibilities of movement there really are! The concept “We rise together” became even more apparent as partners found creative ways to express their oneness.
“Sunday Funday” on St. Croix flowed down to the beach for our culminating sunset fire jam, celebrating our forged connections and sharing our light with the community of onlookers. We anchored into the fire prayer for a sense of connected oneness, then flowed into a high energy fire jam, as the local beach bar played lively island music for us to dance to! Several local fire dancers joined and we continued to expand our lights across the beach and into the Caribbean Sea. We sealed our collective oneness by entering the water with fire and danced under the stars. The thriving fire threads of our community was a sight to behold and a wildly wonderful final jam.
Day 6, Mon Dec 6 : Shine your Light into the World
Our final day together, we reminded each other what it is to shine our lights into the world and how needed each of our expressions are during our final ritual. We shared a delicious brunch and flowed sweetly off onto our own adventures, sharing hugs and love, final flows and skill shares, and promises to stay connected.
Shine Your Light.
You Are the Fire.
Come play with us, in our next retreat. :)
