The Ancient Earth Women’s Retreat offers a deep journey into the creation of ceramic instruments, rooted in Mesoamerican traditions, and the art of musical expression — within a space that gently nurtures the natural unfolding of ancestral healing and women’s embodied wisdom.
This retreat offers a unique opportunity to shape and sculpt your own ceramic instruments, guided by ancestral techniques rooted in the Mesoamerican tradition. You’ll explore the deep connection between craftsmanship and music through hands-on learning and personal expression. Participants will gain an understanding of ceramic instrument anatomy, create personalized tools and instruments, and be encouraged to bring their pieces home for firing at a local pottery studio.
At the heart of this experience is a sacred invitation to reconnect with the body — anchoring into our heart and womb as pillars of creation, healing, and ancestral memory. Through the grounding practices of pottery and the expressive freedom of music, we soften into our inner landscapes, allowing space for restoration, clarity, and expansion. Each instrument becomes not only a work of art but a reflection of personal transformation and the integration of earth wisdom.
In the evenings, we’ll gather for immersive music jams and workshops—exploring different instruments, expanding into voice activation, and creating personal prayers through sound. These sessions are designed to deepen your relationship with music, creativity, and community.
To honor depth, presence, and connection, each retreat is limited to 15-20 participants — allowing space for more one-on-one guidance and the cultivation of a strong, supportive creative community.
Join us for a transformative journey of artistic expression and musical discovery, held in reverence for the ancestral wisdom of the lands from which these traditions arise.
VIANNEY LOPEZ
Vianney López is an artist and musician whose work is rooted in reflections of Mother Earth, Dreamtime, and Ceremonial visions. Guided by ancestral presence and unseen guardians, she weaves sacred instruments, voice, and intuitive expression into every creation.
Her artistry arises from a deep remembrance—a reconnection to nature and the ancestral wisdom carried within each of us. From a young age, Vianney was drawn to creative expression through music, movement, and visual arts, allowing her path to unfold through the language of dreams and the rhythms of the natural world.
Academic studies deepened her understanding of art’s many layers, while later initiations with sacred plant medicines reawakened ancestral memory, further anchoring her practice in earth-based wisdom and prayer.
Today, her creations span across music, ceramics, animation, illustration, and weaving—each piece a reflection of her devotion to the sacred and the unseen.
A Note on Lineage, Land, and Community
“These retreats are rooted in the ancestral teachings of the Mesoamerican tradition. As a woman of Indigenous descent from the lands of the Americas, I carry these traditional practices of the clay with permission and care, as they were passed on to me by my teacher.
This space is open to all women who feel a sincere call to create, remember, and connect — whether from a lineage of the Americas or another Ancestry—so long as the heart moves with respect and openness.
The land we gather on is sacred, carrying the presence of those who came before. For many, this connection awakens remembrance, grief, clarity, and empowerment. These retreats honor difference rather than bypass it, inviting understanding through creativity, intention, and deep listening.
Each woman brings her own story, her own medicine. Together, we shape clay, create music, and weave something greater than ourselves. This is not about perfection—it’s about showing up with honesty, curiosity, and humility.
My role is not to guide from above, but to walk beside you, offering what I can so we may remember something meaningful together.” — Vianney Lopez
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
Can someone who has never done Pottery before attend it?
The retreat is open to women of all skill levels who are interested in exploring ceramics, music, and creative expression. No prior experience is required.
What materials will be provided?
All standard materials for the ceramic workshops will be provided, including clay and tools. Participants will also create their own tools during the retreat. You are also more than welcome to bring your own tools as well if you feel called!
Can I take my ceramic creations home?
Yes! You are encouraged to take your creations home to fire them at your local pottery studio. I can also take them with me for a Firing & Shipping Fee.
What instruments will we be creating?
Sculptured Instruments of Ocarinas, Flutes & other Ceramic Creations ( Smudge Offering Bowls/Sculptures )
Do I need to bring anything with me for the pottery workshop?
Yes, once you book your spot, an email will be shared later in the year on the details of what to bring.
Will my pieces be fired?
It is encouraged to take your pieces home and have them fired at a local pottery studio near you.
EMILIA CIANCI
Italian born and with roots along the whole Mediterranean basin, Emilia dedicates her life in service to the path of remembrance, of healing and restoration of right relationship with the web of life and the unseen world.
Guided by her own sense of disconnection and fragmentation, she has devoted her time, from a very young age, to studying a wide range of healing and ritual arts practices, mystical traditions and indigenous ways of knowing. Her work weaves together ritual and ceremony, somatic practices, contemplative practices, soul work, grief work, astrology, traditional medicines, dreamtime, prayer, ancestral healing and more.
The spaces she holds are created for others to their souls path and authentic voice and to bring healing to their lives, restoring a sense of belonging and sovereignty.
She holds groups and courses all around the world and online, pilgrimages and rites of passage and 1:1 healing sessions. She also works as a doula and birth keeper, finding profound joy in being at the threshold between worlds and honouring the arrival of life on earth.
Much of her work is in devotion to the feminine essence and the path of beauty as a radical reorientation of our relationship to life, the earth and mystery.
TIERRA VALIENTE | BRAVE EARTH
Brave Earth is located between San Ramon and La Fortuna, nestled in between Arenal Volcano and the Children’s Eternal Rainforest, the largest reserve of protected wildlife in Costa Rica.
As a living lab, we have experimented with different building modalities using AirCrete and materials sourced on the land including bamboo and adobe. We have implemented biophilic design, closed-loop systems and permaculture design principles. Ornamental, food, and medicinal gardens surround the center as well as hiking trials to a nearby river, and a natural swimming pond.
CULTURES OF TRANSITION
The impulse for Tierra Valiente stems from an awareness of our civilizational trajectory within the dominant culture with its source code of extraction, domination, commodification, colonization, control, entitlement, and separation from the living world.
We are both informed by this critical lens and inspired to create outside of the old values and incentive landscapes to build a culture based on reciprocity, regeneration and resiliency.
In this collective transition - whether you call it the Anthropocene, the Kali Yuga, late-stage capitalism or capitalist modernity - our intention is to become more attuned to this cultural context in order to decolonize the conditioning of the dominant system and be in deeper service to our collective potential.