in-person training
THE SYLVAN PATHWAY
Welcome to the Sylvan Pathway
The Sylvan Pathway offers an intimate and immersive way to explore ministerial formation. 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 these 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 heart, a two year 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.
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“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
“Walking 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
The Sylvan Pathway in More Detail
Over the course of two years, the Sylvan Pathway invites you to explore the arc of the human journey through relationship, connection, and meaning. Together in community, you will move through the six strands of our curriculum, engaging with the thresholds of life in ways that are both personal and shared.
Your own story becomes an important source of insight. Through gentle exploration of your biographical journey, you begin to recognise the experiences, influences, and inner wisdom that have shaped you. This grounding allows you to step more fully into the remaining strands of the curriculum, meeting each theme with clarity, compassion, and spaciousness.
In the first year, you explore the early stages of life and the formative experiences that help create your sense of self. In the second year, you turn towards adulthood, relationship, loss, legacy, and the mystery of what lies beyond. Throughout, you learn how to hold space for yourself and others, understanding that deep inner listening supports genuine connection.
Drawing on the world’s wisdom traditions, sacred ceremony, and spiritual companionship, the pathway supports you in discovering the sacred within the everyday. Through community and shared practice, you begin to recognise how your own understanding of life can help you serve others with presence, care, and authenticity. This is a transformative journey designed to support your growth while honouring your lived experience. The full curriculum and practical details are provided in the information packet.
“I truly believe I can now 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 and a sense of self awareness and confidence that I have never 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 Depth, Connection, and Ministerial Formation
The Sylvan Pathway unfolds across two spacious years, each held through three immersive gateways that explore both the inner landscape of your life and the outer call to serve others with presence and integrity.
Year One: Roots and Formation
The first year invites you into a journey of remembering. Through three gateways, you revisit the archetypal stages of early life, conception and birth, childhood, and adolescence. These retreats explore how your earliest experiences shaped your sense of self, relationship, and belonging. Through ritual, embodied practice, creativity, and compassionate exploration, you begin to recognise your own life story as sacred ground for ministerial growth. This year lays the foundations for personal, relational, and spiritual depth within a supportive community.
Year Two: Community and Ministry
The second year turns outward, exploring how your inner work naturally evolves into service, leadership, and spiritual companionship. You move through three gateways focused on adulthood and relationship, dying and death, and the dynamics of being in community. These retreats support you to cultivate presence, ethical awareness, emotional maturity, and grounded responsibility. You learn to accompany others through life’s thresholds with care and humility, drawing on the wisdom of diverse spiritual traditions.
Together, these six gateways create a profound, integrated journey that honours both the self and the wider world.
A full overview of the retreats, themes, and curriculum is available in the information packet.
“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
After two years of personal growth, spiritual exploration, and supported practice, you are invited to step into ministry in a way that reflects your heart and your own sense of purpose. Ordination is a moment of affirmation. It marks your emergence as an interfaith minister, someone who serves with love, listens with depth, and honours the sacred in all people, paths, and places.
Ministry is a way of being as much as a way of doing. The Sylvan Pathway offers the guidance, space, and reflection needed to help you shape your own understanding of what ministry can look like in your life, whether through ceremony, community work, spiritual accompaniment, or quiet acts of service.
Student Development
Our student development approach is rooted in care, integrity, and the belief that each person carries a unique expression of ministry within them. Throughout the two years, you are supported to deepen your self awareness, nurture your gifts, and explore your calling in ways that feel authentic and grounded.
Through immersive retreats, ongoing reflection, experiential learning, and the steady presence of the community, you grow the qualities needed for meaningful spiritual service: clarity, compassion, ethical awareness, and the confidence to accompany others with presence and respect. This training does not shape you into something else. It supports you to recognise and trust what is already alive within you, allowing your ministry to emerge in its own natural way.
“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 nurturing, spacious, and steady learning environment where each student is supported to explore their own depth and expression of ministry.
Drawing on years of practice in spiritual accompaniment, ceremony, therapeutics, and group facilitation, the team offers guidance rooted in care, presence, and integrity. Their role is to hold the container, support your unfolding, and ensure that the community grows in safety, reflection, and relational trust.
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.
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. She was ordained as a OneSpirit Interfaith minister in 2017. 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.