A 7-week deep dive to nourish the soul
THE DESCENT
The Descent is a seven week experience that offers weekly, in person and virtual group experiences, to fully support a fruitful descent into the medicine of the winter in Portland, Oregon.
This healing series is for women desiring to enrich their winter experience, refine rituals, and be immersed in modalities that support deep restoration and self-study this season. Emerge from winter refreshed, connected and ready to greet the fullness of spring.
We’ll dive into the healing modalities of Breathwork, Meditation, Yoga Nidra, Yin Yoga, a Restorative Sound Bath and enjoy communal meals and a private group Sauna experience at Connect Wellness. We’ll weave through the winter themes of stillness, the unseen, dormancy, “the womb” and the season of death.
Be warmed by the embrace of community, as we dive deep into the life-giving nature of darkness, and nurture the innermost layers of our being this winter.
Let community and connection be the foundation of your winter this year.
THE EXPERIENCE
THE FULL OFFERING
BREATHING INTO THE DARK
We’ll journey into four gentle yet profound, excavation style breathwork ceremonies. An opportunity to dive beyond the mind and into the unconscious realms of the body and soul to liberate what’s ready to be seen, felt, loved up and processed. The Breath practice helps us to bring light to the “unseen” patterns and expressions of our lives that keep us stuck, stagnant and confused. A modality to explore the undercurrents of our beings, touch altered states of consciousness and remember our wholeness.
These ceremonies will be held at a yurt in a forest enclave in Vancouver. We’ll be warmed by a fire crackling in a wood stove and the soft ambiance of glowing candlelight. If we’re lucky we’ll be soothed by the pitter patter of afternoon rain on the yurts surface. A very special experience.
Breathwork sessions will be supported by a range of restorative modalities to help us nourish and dive deeper into our winter bodies. Every other week we’ll experience a new healing class, including yin yoga, sound bath, and yoga nidra. Monday morning meditations will support our journey consistently throughout the program.
TESTIMONIAL
“Every year as the days get shorter, I start looking forward to The Descent. The inward-turning and deep reflection, the support and guidance of such wonderful teachers, and the nourishing communion of a circle of powerful women in the candlelight.
This will be my third year, and through it Natasha has taught me how to unlock the magic of winter. A time of deep turning inward, slowing down, and conserving energy — just as Mother Nature shows us. Now, I have a special relationship with this time of year, one attuned to nature’s rhythms, and one that will sustain me through all of my winters.
There is so much wisdom within the walls of The Descent — so many brave, strong, soft women on their own journeys to deeper authenticity, freedom, and love. All of us sitting around the fire, speaking from the heart, journeying through the breath, eating and crying and howling together around the fire. I truly can’t think of any better way to spend the dark season"
by Katie Blount
TESTIMONIAL
“The Descent offered a warm cocoon of connection through the darkness of the winter months. Each Sunday, as I drove away from the city and toward the yurt nestled in the quiet of the forest, I could already feel the pull inward toward the places within me asking for attention. Within the sacred embrace of our circle of women, guided by Natasha’s gentle and steady care, I found space to meet the many layers of myself. Week by week, through the abundance of nurturing support, I felt myself soften and strengthen all at once. From the breathwork sessions and restorative yoga to the nourishing potluck meals by candlelight and moments of shared laughter and tears, every detail wove together into a deeply restorative experience. This season offered a rhythm of deep care and reconnection. The consistency of returning to this practice and community through the heart of winter became a guiding ember, helping me move through the darkness with more compassion and clarity. I emerged into spring feeling grounded, resourced, and profoundly connected to myself.”
by Raina Jung
NATASHA STEWART
Natasha is a Somatic Coach and Breathwork Facilitator. Her academic foundation is in Public Health, receiving a Bachelors of Science with a focus in Health Promotion and Health Behavior at Oregon State University. She studied under Gabor Mate’s program Compassionate Inquiry and is currently continuing her education with Somatic Experiencing by Peter Levine.
Natasha is passionate about fostering nurturing and transformational spaces, for both individuals and groups, to tap into their innate healing capacity and unearth material blocking their most authentic expression and connection to life. She leads retreats locally and internationally, is trauma-informed, and provides a compassionate, judgement-free and gentle presence for clients to dive into the full spectrum of their human-ness and comfortably journey into the body and beyond this material world.
She specializes in guiding clients into altered states of consciousness, facilitating over thousands of transformational Breathwork sessions, a specific type of breathwork that provides deep experiences of altered states and connects you with your Inner Healer.
A PATH TO EMBODIMENT & CONNECTION
Transformational breathwork uses a circular conscious connected breath as a bottom up approach to healing, helping you move beyond your thinking mind and into the waters of the body, encouraging emotional processing and often a deeper understanding of your true wants, needs and desires.
This technique is supportive for releasing heaviness and stress, aids in regulating the nervous system and often tapping into altered states of consciousness.
Breathwork helps access parts of the subconscious that are hidden or suppressed, gifting the opportunity for newfound clarity and a fresh perspective on life.
Breathwork can be both a life-changing experience and a dependable tool for personal growth, inspiring creativity and life direction.
SUPPORTING FACILITATORS
OLIVIA ASHTON
Virtual Meditations with
Olivia's style of guidance is compassionate, loving, direct and clear - deeply informed by nature, the ancient teachings of Zen Buddhism, and her personal devotion to Sacred Self Love.
Meditation uncovers the innate clarity of our Awareness and creates space for our internal wisdom to arise. Through practice, trust is born, insight arises, and we deepen into ourselves. We cultivate the ability to quiet our minds, and widen our capacity to FEEL and artfully dance with the full spectrum of our human experience. From anguish to ecstasy — it’s all included. Through stillness, we come home to ourselves + into deeper intimacy with all things.
She guides from a wide variety of meditation styles including concentration practice, resting in open awareness, loving kindness, body scans, visualization and intuitive journeying. She is delighted and honored to share this life-giving practice with you.
“The space that Olivia creates as a meditation guide is truly magical. It is warm, inviting, loving, supportive, healing and overall wonderful. Olivia is a true light and I feel so lucky to have gotten to experience her teachings over the past several months. Having this space has allowed me to consistently practice in a way that I wasn’t able to before. Meditation was something that I had always wanted to incorporate into my life but was challenging for me so I tended to avoid practicing consistently. Olivia’s way of guiding is so welcoming and gentle. She helped me to see that there isn’t one correct way of meditating. This gentle way of guiding allowed me to just be, rather than focus on what I may have thought I was doing incorrectly. Olivia’s guided meditations were something that I would always look forward to in my day and I couldn’t recommend them more. She radiates pure love and you will see this in the space she creates for meditation.” - EMILY S
Sound Medicine
BRIANNA SAS
As a longtime student of daoism as well as a doctor of East Asian Medicine, Brianna is deeply inspired by the cyclical & seasonal nature of the cosmos, and the restorative and healing potential that comes from communing with the earth in deep awe and reverence.
Daoist medicine teaches us that our bodies are direct and perfect reflections of nature and that magic unfolds when we gather in intentional and sacred ways ~ to lay on the earth and rest together and nourish and soothe our nervous systems alongside each other.
Brianna weaves her knowledge of music through her lifelong study of clarinet as well as her daoist medicine practice into her sound medicine offerings ~ a gentle tapestry of guided meditation, chimes, crystal singing bowls and other subtle instrumentation as an offering for individual and collective healing. It is her deepest purpose to nurture and cultivate soft landing spaces and offer full permission to rest deeply, soothe our nervous systems, be held by the earth and remember our bodies’ ancient and innate wisdom together.
Restorative Yin Yoga
XOCHILT HOOVER
Xochilt is a Nike Global yoga instructor and teaches on platforms like Nike Training Club and Netflix. Her teaching style is meant for everybody and is always evolving.
Xochilt has 500 hours of training in yoga covering subjects ranging from anatomy, the subtle body, yin, intelligent sequencing, and trauma informed yoga and mindfulness.
She's completed the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction(MBSR) Foundations course through Brown University, studying the intersection of social justice & yoga taught by Michelle C. Johnson, as well as a 70 hour training in Mobility & Sequencing led by Matt Phippen & Kate Gillepsie of Movement Method, Co.
Xochilt's classes emphasize using more than just the physical practice to connect with oneself. She believes journaling, meditation, breath-work and movement are each equally important and vital to a holistic yoga practice. She prioritizes accessibility, simplicity, and mindfulness in each style of class that she offers.
Yoga Nidra with
EMILY WRIGHT
Yoga Nidra is a systematic process of deliberate relaxation that combines breath, body-scan and imagery-based techniques to serve as a powerful antidote to overstimulation, burnout and exhaustion.
Yoga Nidra is an accessible go-to practice in any wellness toolkit for sharpening cognition, bolstering creativity and promoting a healthy response to stress. Through a 20-minute practice, studies have shown that it improves neuroplasticity, resets dopamine levels and supports healthy central nervous system regulation.
Additionally, its ancient wisdom undeniably invites in a deeper knowing of the soul. This more spiritual angle empowers a release of fear and unwanted habits and enables new alignment to authenticity, freedom and heart.
Emily's greatest guides are creativity, honesty and heart, and she strives to bring each to every space she holds for healing. Her classes are set with a soothing tone that holds softness and compassion, balanced with activation of the physical and energetic bodies to empower a connection to wholeness. The practices she offers are the same ones that have guided her to finding steadfast peace in the most trying moments, and her guidance is rooted in trusting the wisdom of life's unfolding. She has been teaching yoga and exploring the intersections of healing and creativity for 10 years.
Restorative Sound Bath
Dasha Shleyeva
Dasha Shleyeva is a somatic educator and a therapeutic musician. She is a neurodivergent and queer Russian immigrant who is currently in a program studying therapeutic harp playing in clinical settings. Dasha has been playing music for over 20 years, harp being the most recent addition to her repertoire. Utilizing the therapeutic harp approach, they offer amplified harp sound baths, ethereal loops, gentle field recordings, sound wave dynamics, and relaxing vocals.
They love to offer embodiment education within physical-therapy based yoga classes woven with a grounding sound bath experience afterwards. Dasha’s deepest joy in life is through reciprocally sharing embodiment, autonomy, and joy for & between all beings.
DESCENT SCHEDULE
Jan 4th: Opening Breathwork Ceremony and Potluck
at Innerspace Yurt @ 2 - 5:30 pm
Jan 11th: Yin Yoga
All Heart Yoga @ 2 - 3:30 pm
Jan 18th: Breathwork & Harp Ceremony
Deep Waters @ 5 - 7:30 pm
Jan 25th: Sound Bath at All Heart Yoga
All Heart Yoga @ 5-6:30 pm
Feb 1st: Breathwork Ceremony at Innerspace Yurt + Group Sauna
Innerspace Yurt @ 2 - 4:30 pm + Connect Wellness @ 5:00 - 7:00 pm
Feb 8th: Yoga Nidra at All Heart Yoga
All Heart Yoga @ 2:30 - 4:00 pm
Feb 14th: Closing Breathwork Ceremony and Potluck
Innerspace Yurt @ 2-5:30 pm
VIRTUAL MEDITATIONS WILL BE HELD EVERY MONDAY AT 7 AM.
Testimonials
Early Bird $850 until 12/5
Full price - $950
Add a deeply discounted private breathwork session for $100.
Payment plans welcome and available
1 partial scholarship available
Send Natasha an email at Hello@natasha-stewart.com to set up a payment plan, add a private session or inquire about scholarship.