At age 5, Hannah Dyson dreamt of being an explorer. 25 years later, she became one.
The Welsh researcher is leading a documentary movement on how ancient women’s wisdom can empower and uplift women worldwide.
“To be indigenous is to be connected to a land and a place, with ancestry and traditions that a lot of us in the modern world are disconnected from,” Dyson, 31, said.
After several years documenting with a team and holding two gatherings, Dyson understands the complexity and challenges this project entails to those who are wary of the intentions and the immersion in vulnerable communities.
“Indigenous communities, have never stopped being attacked”, she explains, adding that after talking to elders in South America (Colombia, Guatemala, Costa Rica), whose culture is not interested in pictures or speaking up in interviews for mass media, urge her to create a research online house that could serve as a bridge of knowledge.
In that sense, Soul Seed Gathering offers online-offline deep connection: a yearly online membership to the research and educational program and live gatherings once a year in specific communities.
“We are focusing on women because they are being forgotten, and they are being missed today. I think sometimes we are looking for the very confident performance artist, the leader, activist or guru and what I have learnt from the women I have worked with and met is that you can easily miss them. The real medicine women, the truly powerful shaman spend 90 % of their time in Nature, learning from Nature, they are not on the world stage necessarily”, she said.
Dyson is very aware of how her privileges as a white female westerner can work against her. And yet, the journey that led her to found Soul Seed Gathering and connect more than 100 women from different countries is as inspiring as Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray. Love.
Having lived that journey and recognizing the colonial aspect, orientalism and indigenous culture imagery exploitation, the 30-year-old modern explorer proposes a path to find those answers for many countless Millennial women her age nowadays travelling to exotic places like Bali, India or Mexico to seek the meaning of life. Of their life.
For Dyson, the awakening came six years ago after quitting a documentary research job in London -where she focused on conflict, genocides and crimes against humanity- to study yoga in Vancouver.
In that city, she experienced the connection to Mother Earth and the sacred feminine that her soul was yearning for so long.
After learning from Native American and Native Canadian women, the documentary producer made several trips to Latin America and moved to Costa Rica with her family.
Her first SSG gathering took place in Guatemala where she learned about women empowerment from indigenous women supporting each other emotionally and financially after their husbands were killed in the Civil War.
She understood the importance of spiritual travel with integrity and how much of Humankind’s history was incomplete.
Women were left behind.
Now, with her Deeper Current podcast underway, a research membership house and a next gathering to take place soon in Costa Rica, she aims to ignite a different kind of conversation and a revolutionary movement: women learn from the past but translate those teachings in their daily lives for a better future.
“It is integrating, not going back in time”, she highlighted. “Our education system and media hasn’t given us the knowledge of who we truly are as women”, she adds.
There is more to our story is one of the campaigns SSG has launched to help uncover the mysteries of the deep feminine and bring women (and men) from all over the world to respect, honor and find treasure in their roots and answers on how to live a better and more sustainable future.
You can learn more about Soul Seed Gathering click here: https://soulseedgathering.com/
Photos Credits: Soul Seed Gathering
Lumina Magazine 