Explore Group Events
Group Events with Sonja
There is an undeniable alchemy that can happen when women come together into a space where they have permission to drop into the moment, to be with what is alive for them in their inner world, to invite relational, embodied presence.
It’s not something we do, really - it is something that emerges when the timing and the container feel right. Grace descends.
I offer Qoya as a compassionate, feminine practice for exploring how it is to be with emotions, to allow sensation to be acknowledged and for our feelings to guide the way in which we move. Qoya allows us to bring our sensory inner landscape into our awareness.
Life can be a heady, cognitive experience - Qoya is one way to go into the body and remember the wisdom within.
Qoya Inspired Movement with Sonja
Qoya Inspired Movement is an embodiment practice that weaves together thirteen different pillars to welcome all aspects of ourselves, bringing mind, body, heart and soul into awareness. Qoya classes are a place to strengthen our inherent resilience, rest in our essence and remember we are wise, wild and free.
In these times of accelerated transformation and change, each of us is being asked to find the ways that we can best meet this moment. In Qoya, we explore healing and nourishing ourselves in community so that we can bring our embodied selves to our daily lives in service to the expression of our most honest, authentic self.
Upcoming Retreat Day
Autumn Equinox Retreat Day, Sunday 20th September / 9.30am-4pm / Studland, Dorset
Welcome to this beautiful Autumn Equinox Retreat Day — a very special offering that invites you to receive the holding of Mother Nature, the embodied feminine practices of reflection, movement and deep rest, and the collective nourishment of shared female experience.
Join Sonja in Studland Village Hall for a day of nature meditation and Qoya, a deeply restorative yoga nidra, cacoa from Common Roots, delicious food from Wylde Green Kitchen, and a closing sauna and sea swim at Knoll Beach.
The Day
9.30am — Opening circle and shared introductions
10.00am — Meditative nature immersion: an opportunity to wander outside in silence, collect offerings for our altar, or simply rest quietly in our space
10.30–12.00pm — Qoya Inspired Movement to the theme of Remembering Yourself
12.00pm — ‘The Everyday Is Sacred’ Cacoa Ceremony with Jo & Common Roots
12.30–1.30pm — Yoga Nidra
1.30pm — Lunch & sharing
3.00–4.00pm — Sauna at Knoll Beach
Our Container
Our circle will hold ten women plus Sonja, Jo from Common Root Cacoa and chef Gilly from Wylde Green Kitchen, 13 women in a total — a small, intimate gathering that allows real space for connection.
Our day is carefully curated to move us through a journey from connection to nature, to body, and to the liminal field - a journey of depth and truth. In sharing delicious food together and dancing between the heat of the sauna and the cold of the ocean, we remember to lighten up and not take it all too seriously. Somewhere here, between the depth and the lightness, we remember ourselves.
If you feel called to stay quiet and solitary, there is space for that. If you feel called to chat and meet others, there is space for that too. There is no expectation of you other than to arrive as yourself, in whatever form that takes on this special, gentle and nourishing day.
Qoya Retreat Day Team
Sonja is a depth practitioner of Core Process Psychotherapy with a private practice in Poole and has been sharing Qoya since 2016.
Jo is a multi-disciplinary being - Fine Artist, Somatic Breath practitioner, co-creator of Common Roots Cacoa and Emergent Brand Strategist with a passionately feminist lens.
Gilly is a vegan chef with over 20 years of experience as a holistic retreat chef, she pours so much love into her food that all who eat it radiate joy and vitality.
All 3 of us live in Poole, Dorset and share the love of authentic spaces for women to gather and come into honest, safe relationship.
Our Location
Studland Village Hall is a cherished simple community space that allows us access to the most extraordinary land. Positioned at the eastern edge of the Jurassic Coast, a stretch of Dorset shoreline so ancient and so remarkable that UNESCO named it a World Heritage Site, placing it alongside the Grand Canyon and the Great Barrier Reef.
Beneath our feet as we dance, 185 million years of Earth’s history lie exposed — desert, tropical sea, marsh, chalk and clay, each layer a chapter in a story older than we can truly fathom. Studland is extraordinary.
As we sit in the sauna and run into the sea, we are side by side with Old Harry Rocks , three great chalk stacks rising from the ocean — silent, enduring, indifferent to time. To stand here is to remember how brief and how precious a single human life is. How much has happened here. How much the land has held. It is this quality — of something vast, patient and unshakeably alive — that makes the Jurassic Coast such a potent place to slow down, to return to yourself, and to remember that no matter what life holds for you right now, you’re ok.
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Questions?
I would love to hear from you. Email sonja@sonjalockyer.comand I’ll be happy to share more details.
10 Spots
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What Sets Our Retreat Days Apart
01 / Embodied Presence
My intention is to offer you the container you need to slow down and return to your own embodied presence.
This is not about self improvement, it is about coming home to yourself. All of you is welcome.
The pace, the practices, the ingredients we share are compassionately held - so that you might remember you are already whole, already wise, already vibrant.
02 / True Nourishment
True nourishment comes from receiving the support needed to remember all that you already are.
That is why the cocoa that Jo brings comes from the female-led farm direct, the food that Gilly cooks is delicious, organic and full of life force. The Jurassic land on which we gather holds a quality of something ancient, wiser, slower. Our practices of meditation, Qoya, yoga nidra and sauna ritual come from ancient feminine traditions and are known to guide us back to our inner compass.
It is here that true nourishment dwells.
03 / Allowing
Life can feel heavy, it comes with it’s inevitable sadness, grief and suffering which is why it is good to remember the joy and celebration too. Not to dismiss the pain, but to welcome it, acknowledge its place amongst the polarities of human experience and allow it to be here.
The truth is that all of it belongs. And so we allow space for a return to delight amidst the difficulty.
Together, for one special day, we hold it all - surrendering to something bigger than ourselves and making space for profound joy and nourishment.
