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Daily Alchemy

Holistic Therapy, Clinical Somatics &
Open Floor Embodied Movement
1:1 + WORKSHOPS + RETREATS

02/12/2025

Sunday Dance Update — No Dance This Weekend

Kia ora, Dancers 😍

I wanted to share a little personal update alongside the news that Sunday Dance is cancelled this weekend.

The second half of 2025 has been unusually full... rich, demanding, and at times overwhelming. With so many moving pieces, I’ve found myself unable to offer the consistency and steadiness that this practice deserves. I’ve noticed how often dates have shifted or changed, and I know that hasn’t always been easy for those who try to plan their Sundays around dance. I want to acknowledge that openly.

Although I feel a tenderness in naming it, the truth is that I haven’t had the capacity to prioritise Sunday Dance in the way I wish I could. And yet, dancing with you all continues to be one of the highlights of my year... a place of joy, upliftment, and genuine connection.

With this in mind, I have made the decision that as we move into 2026, I will be stepping back from facilitating Sunday Dance with Hester. This is not a departure from movement or community, but a recognition of my own limits and the need to honour the integrity of the space we share.

Hester has held this community for over two decades with enormous heart, consistency, and devotion. I want to acknowledge her mahi deeply, and the way she has nurtured a safe, grounded, and vibrant environment for us all to gather and move.

As I settle into a new rhythm next year, my hope is that I may return later in 2026 to offer a different style of program... something that aligns with my own way of teaching and allows me to create the kind of container I feel most resourced to hold. I don’t yet know the shape of it, but it feels exciting and true.

For now, I want to thank you for the richness of this community and for all the ways you bring life to the dance floor. I look forward to dancing with you in 2026.

With warmth, gratitude and dancing spirit,

28/11/2025

The first retreat of 2026 calls us into the realm where body and myth meet.

Mythical Body is an immersive 3-day journey into the feminine as shapeshifter, storyteller, and weaver of her own becoming.

Across movement, story, and ritual, we explore the ancient threads that live beneath our everyday identities... the parts that surface in dreams, intuition, desire, and those quiet moments of knowing.

This retreat is an invitation to remember the body as an oracle… a wild archive… a place where shadow and light both belong.

We’ll move, write, unravel, and remake ourselves through archetypal stories that mirror our own transformations: the descent, the shedding, the re-emergence, the return.

Expect depth, play, softness, mystery, and the kind of renewal that only happens when women gather in circle and give themselves permission to shift shape.

Te Moata, Coromandel — 28 May to 1 June

A powerful whenua to anchor this work.
Quiet bush, forest tracks, misty mornings, and space to hear your inner world again.

Tickets go on sale next week.
Private cabins are open to pre-book now.

If your body is stirring, pulling, whispering... trust that.
This one is meant to be felt.

20/11/2025

Come dance with me this Sunday. A soft place to land, shake, breathe, and move with life. Nothing to get right. Bring your body exactly as it is... slowly, wildly, honestly.
Hampden Street School 10:30-12:30 - no prior booking needed

18/11/2025

I’m beginning to map out my 2026/27 retreat schedule… and I’d love your input.

Each year, the land itself guides where the work wants to unfold — and these three spaces have been calling softly in the background.

🌿 Te Moata Retreat Centre (Coromandel)
A sanctuary of stillness and regeneration, home to labyrinth walks, forest sanctuaries, and the quiet hum of the earth.

🌊 Waihōanga River Lodge (Ōtaki Gorge)
Tucked alongside a flowing river and surrounded by native bush, Waihōanga is a space for deep connection, movement, and gentle grounding.

🌲 The Baton House (Kahurangi National Park, Nelson/Tasman)
Immersed in wild nature, this riverside haven is a place to touch the elemental — to rest, release, and remember.

✨ I’d love to know — which of these spaces speaks to you most?
Drop a 🌿🌊 or 🌲 in the comments and tell me why.

Your feedback will help shape where we gather in 2026/27 — and which landscapes we’ll root into together.

31/10/2025

✨ From Numb to Noticing ✨
Somatic ways to gently wake up your body when you’ve gone still inside.

Sometimes what feels like calm is actually our body in a protective freeze. When that happens, the kindest thing we can do isn’t to force energy, but to gently invite it back.

Here are 5 ways to reawaken your body safely when you notice you’ve gone numb or distant:

1. Orient to Safety
Look around your space. Let your eyes land on something neutral or beautiful.
Name five things you can see.
Orientation reminds your nervous system: I am here, and it’s safe enough.

2. Touch & Temperature
Hold something cool or warm. Press your palms together.
Run your hands along your arms or legs.
Temperature and touch increase proprioceptive feedback and signal aliveness.

3. Move Something Small
Start at the edges — wiggle your toes, roll your wrists, stretch your fingers.
If that feels okay, stand and shake or sway.
Movement helps thaw the freeze without overwhelming your system.

4. Sound & Breath
Hum. Sigh. Exhale with sound.
Let your breath move through your ribs, shoulders, and jaw.
Vibration awakens the vagus nerve and brings life back through voice and breath.

5. Re-enter Slowly
Notice what shifts — warmth, tingling, emotion, breath.
Stay curious, not forceful.
Coming out of freeze is a process of trust, not a push.

💛 Take it slow. Presence builds through small, consistent moments of safety and awareness.

29/10/2025

When you’re healing from trauma, progress looks more like a spiral than a line. Each return brings new awareness, new capacity, new gentleness.

Your system is learning that it’s safe to soften. 🌬️

Let’s walk this spiral with compassion.

22/10/2025

Have you ever thought you were calm — but later realised you were actually checked out?

It’s easy to mistake dissociation for calm because both can feel still.
But stillness can mean two very different things —
one is presence, the other is protection.

When the nervous system senses danger, it may slow everything down.
Heart rate drops. Breath softens. Muscles release.
From the outside, it looks peaceful… but inside, we’ve gone somewhere else.

If shutting down helped us survive in the past, the body learns to equate numb with safe.
So now, that same stillness can feel soothing — even though it’s disconnection, not calm.

Here’s the difference:
✨ Calm is stillness with presence.
🌀 Dissociation is stillness with absence.

Calm feels connected, sensing, alive.
Dissociation feels distant, hazy, gone.

Neither is wrong — both are survival responses.
The work isn’t to get rid of dissociation, but to help the body feel safe enough to come back.

Learning to tell the difference is how we begin to return home —
to our breath, our sensations, our aliveness.

💛 Curious to know more - I am here to help! Feel free to message me your questions 😊

21/10/2025

CALM vs DISSOCIATED
They might look the same: soft eyes, still body, quiet mind, but what’s happening inside tells a different story.

Calm is presence.
Dissociation is absence.

Calm comes from safety.
Dissociation comes from protection.

Have you ever thought you were calm when really you were frozen, spaced out, or just holding it all together?

Both states are part of your nervous system’s wisdom. One invites connection, the other helps you survive.
The work isn’t to judge either, but to notice where you are, and gently find your way back home to your body.

I can help you discover what your nervous system is really telling you 🤎

16/10/2025

REGULATION ≠ CALM

We often mistake calm for being regulated.

But regulation isn’t about perfection, it’s about connection.

Sometimes it looks like deep breaths and stillness.
Sometimes it’s tears, shaking, dancing, or letting a sound rise that’s been waiting inside you for years.

Your nervous system doesn’t need you to hold it all together, it needs you to listen.

To feel what’s true.
To move what’s stuck.

When we allow our bodies to express what they’re holding, whether that’s stillness or movement, softness or roar, we return to balance in the most human way.

So today, I invite you to pause and notice:
💬 How is your body asking to move or express right now?

There’s space for it all. 🌿

15/10/2025

The world is overwhelmed.
Teachers, parents, workers, leaders, so many of us are stretched thin, living in a constant hum of anxiety and pressure.

Over the past year, I’ve been quietly building and facilitating an ACC-funded program called Calming an Anxious Mind. It’s designed to support nervous system regulation, emotional resilience, and embodied healing.

What started as a trauma recovery program has become something deeply relevant to the collective moment we’re in.
Because this isn’t just about trauma, it’s about living in a world that asks too much of our minds and too little of our bodies.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing some of the tools and insights from this work, simple practices to help you pause, breathe, and reconnect.

Let’s regulate together 🌿

women |
Pause Yoga

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About

A woman's soul is like a magical container which is bigger and more spacious inside than we could ever imagine from the outside. It holds treasure and wonders, terrors and monsters, desires and passions. Many of us never look inside because we fear what we may find and how it will make us feel, but deep down we are curious. The revelation comes, for those of us daring enough to peer within, that our journey as women only begins when we turn inward.

Hi I’m Jade. Daily Alchemy is the heart of my well-being journey, it is founded on my own healing work and research into the nature of Self, ancient wisdom practices and the transformative journey of opening to the Sacred Feminine.

For as long as I can remember I have been insatiably curious about what it means to be well. Why do some people struggle while others find a way to thrive, often despite the most challenging circumstances? The depths of this enquiry has propelled a journey of awakening that has opened me to knowledge and practices that have helped me to move beyond the constraints of conditioning, limited beliefs and ancestral patterning; into a deep unshakable sense of knowing who I am and how I’m most authentically called to express myself in this life.

My work, and my passion is helping women, like you, become familiar with your inner dance to awaken to the precious gifts of power, delight, creativity and that most rare jewel - your authentic self. I am wholeheartedly dedicated to facilitating and holding space for your inner transformation, and my own.