in-person training
THE SYLVAN PATHWAY
2026-2028
Welcome to the Sylvan Pathway
A two-year journey through the arc of human life.
The Sylvan Pathway is for those drawn towards public ministry, and for those seeking a profound deepening of their spiritual lives in service of others. This two-year, retreat-based training takes place entirely in person at the much loved Florence House, held between the sea and the ancient hills of the Sussex Downs. It is a place where learning, community, and a deep appreciation of life and nature come together with ease.
Over the course of the two years, many students describe the experience as bringing a renewed sense of meaning to their daily lives. The rhythm of the retreats, the gentle depth of the teachings, and the beauty of the land create space for reflection, connection, and personal growth. It is a grounding anchor that supports you as you step more fully into who you are becoming.
The Sylvan Pathway is, at its core, a journey through the arc of human life. A spacious and heartfelt invitation to explore your inner landscape while learning to accompany others with care and presence.
Who This Pathway Suits
This pathway may be especially meaningful if you are drawn to:
- Retreat-based learning in a supportive, in-person community
- Slowing down into embodied practice and spiritual reflection
- Sharing extended time together in a held residential setting
- A journey where inner formation becomes a foundation for service
- Discovering ministry through ritual, relationship, and lived experience
x
“An enriching two years bringing meaning, spirituality, appreciation of life and nature to the forefront of your daily existence. A North Star in the melee of life.”
– Veronica, Sylvan Class of 2025
“Moving through the pathway of life, from birth to childhood, to adolescence, adulthood and death, was a deeply profound experience. With each gateway and retreat I felt invited into deeper layers and the whole experience felt like a living container...”
– Olly, Sylvan Class of 2025
Practical Details
- Length: Two years, held through six immersive gateways
- First retreat & Final gateway: November 2026, June 2028
- Ordination retreat: July 2028
- Location: Florence House, Sussex
- Format: Three residential retreats per year
- Accommodation: Retreats are held fully in person with residential stay included
- Further information: Full schedule, fee options, and payment details are provided in the information packet
“I truly believe I can stand in my full authority with confidence and love. I feel as though I have this deep well within that I can draw from when needed. I may not have all the answers but have the tools to navigate what comes my way with honesty, integrity, a sense of self awareness and confidence that I haven’t experienced before. I am also owning my accomplishments and my abilities which is also very new for me.”
– Nancy, Sylvan Class of 2025
A Two Year Journey of Formation, Connection, and Sacred Service
The Sylvan Pathway unfolds across two spacious years, each held through three immersive gateways that explore both inner formation and the outer call to serve others with presence and integrity. Together, these six gateways create a profound and integrated path of formation, where personal transformation and ministry are deeply intertwined.
A full overview of the retreat dates, themes, and curriculum details is available in the information packet.
Year One: Roots and Formation
In the first year, you are invited into the roots of your own becoming. Through embodied practice, compassionate reflection, and retreat-based learning, you explore the early stages of life and the experiences that shape identity, relationship, and belonging.
This year lays the groundwork for spiritual depth and personal grounding, the inner soil from which meaningful ministry grows.
Year Two: Community and Ministry
In the second year, the journey turns outward, exploring adulthood, community, loss, legacy, and the sacred responsibility of accompaniment. As your inner work deepens, your capacity to hold space for others begins to take clearer form.
You are supported to cultivate ethical presence, emotional maturity, and a lived understanding of service, whether through public ministry, spiritual care, ceremony, or quieter expressions of sacred responsibility.
“I loved every second of the training, and feel tremendously grateful to have had the opportunity to become a minister with an organisation that lives and breathes such important values as: love and respect for all being, authenticity and wholeness, love enriched through personal growth and reflection, diversity within community, the wisdom of both past and future, and listening that heals and uplifts. A huge thank you to everyone for all the work and love put into this training, and I hope many more may have the chance to receive the enormous gift it offers.”
– Donna, Sylvan Class of 2025
Vow Taking and Ordination
A Sacred Threshold
At the close of the two-year Sylvan Pathway, students are invited into a residential retreat dedicated to vow-taking and ordination. Ordination is a meaningful and earned threshold, marking your emergence as an interfaith minister: someone formed in presence, ethical care, spiritual depth, and sacred service.
Vow-taking is deeply personal. It is an opportunity to speak aloud the commitment that will guide your ministry, witnessed and held in community. This retreat is often described as one of the most profound and life-affirming moments of the training, a ceremonial culmination of all that has been journeyed, deepened, and become.
Ordination does not mark an end, but a beginning: the start of a lifelong path of service, accompaniment, and continued formation.
“For me, now I slow down and take the time to be. I live much more in the moment and focus on the now where I am and what I see and experience. I am aware of how I hold space for myself and another on a deeper level. I am also aware that as I love myself my love can reach others in a deep and profound way.”
– Eileen, Sylvan Class of 2025
Our Faculty Team
The Sylvan Pathway is held by a dedicated and experienced faculty team led by Dawn and Una. Together, they create a spacious and supportive container for formation, where spiritual deepening and the call to sacred service are honoured side by side.
Drawing on years of practice in accompaniment, ceremony, and relational learning, the faculty support students to slow down, listen inwardly, and grow in embodied presence and integrity. Their role is not to shape you into someone else, but to hold the conditions in which your own gifts, calling, and expression of ministry can emerge in their own time.
With care, steadiness, and deep respect for each student’s unfolding, the team helps cultivate a community rooted in trust, reflection, and the sacred work of becoming.
Dawn Russell
Dawn’s greatest passion is to be part of the human experience that unfolds when we come together in a heart space to achieve something for the greater good for all. She started her working life in therapeutic communities and worked with many aspects of psychotherapeutic practices such as art therapy, psychodrama and group dynamics.
Read More
After many years of exploring earth-based spirituality and healing practices (often under the umbrella name of shamanism), she became co-director of Eagle’s Wing College of Contemporary Shamanism, and co-founder of both Celebrating Woman and Medicine Woman, Medicine Ways.
Over the last 20 years, Dawn has been offering one-year courses and short courses in healing, earth connection and practitioner training. She has also developed a one-to-one practice offering many lenses to help people know, love, heal and accept themselves, and in turn to know themselves as part of the Divine, Great Mystery of life.
Dawn was ordained with OneSpirit in 2018.
Una Devine
Una has worked as an Occupational Therapist and mental health service manager for over 3 decades in Ireland and London. She is a qualified Gestalt psychotherapist who believes that allowing vulnerability in a contained situation will lead us towards experiencing sacred support. She has trained in Family Constellation work.
Read More
Joining the OneSpirit Interfaith family has demonstrated her sacred support as a felt experience through the practice of spiritual counselling, ceremony and joint endeavour.
Another beautiful lesson for Una on the Interfaith course was the use of creativity as an expression of our spirituality. Una has a fine art degree and has had her paintings in a number of exhibitions, she plays music and writes.
Una lives in Spain on an avocado farm. She uses her garden for conducting ceremonies and is learning to grow food and speak Spanish. She was ordained as a OneSpirit Interfaith minister in 2017.