Reconnect with SELF and NATURE
Transformative retreats and experiences for personal growth, connection and healing.
About us
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
In every life there are moments that change everything, when the old ways no longer fit, and the new has not yet taken form. These are defining moments: times of transition, challenge, and possibility.
At Defining Moments, we create sacred, supported spaces for people to meet these thresholds with consciousness and care. Through expertly held retreats, guided reflection, and ceremony, coaching and counselling, We help individuals and communities move through life’s major passages with meaning and dignity.
Our Work
Introduction
Introduction
We bring together ancient wisdom and contemporary practice to restore what has been lost in our modern world, the shared experience of being witnessed, supported, and transformed through life’s initiations.
Our retreats and online resources explore key life transitions such as:
- Entering adulthood
- Beginning or ending intimate relationships
- Preparing for marriage or parenthood
- Facing illness, loss, or death
- Stepping into eldership and legacy
Each retreat offers time in nature, deep group process, ritual, and storytelling. All designed to reconnect participants with purpose, belonging, and the natural cycles of life.
Our Approach
Introduction
Our Approach
We believe that healing and transformation are community acts.
Our facilitators draw from decades of experience in counselling, rites of passage work, and spiritual leadership.
Together, we hold spaces that are safe, grounded, and inclusive. Where the soul can speak and the heart can remember what it already knows.
This is not therapy. It is initiation:
A chance to step forward, be witnessed,
and to reclaim your place in the great story of life.
Why We Exist
Why We Exist
Our Approach
As a western culture, we have forgotten how to support one another through change.
Defining Moments exists to remember, to rebuild the pathways between generations, to honour life’s turning points, and to ensure that no one has to walk their journey alone.
Curious
Why We Exist
Curious
Whether you are standing on the edge of change, seeking to make sense of what has been, or longing to step more fully into who you are becoming - you are welcome here. Come take your place in our circle.
Together, we’ll remember how to cross life’s thresholds with grace, courage, and meaning.
Highlighted Retreats and Experiences
A Meaningful Stag Night
Rekindling Our Kinship with Nature
A Meaningful Stag Night
This two-day, one-night gathering offers an alternative to the traditional stag night, one rooted in depth, reflection, and honour.
Drawing on ancient rites of passage, men are invited to pause at the threshold of commitment and be witnessed as they step out of boyhood and into mature partnership. Through fire, ritual, storytelling, and honest conversation, this retreat creates a held space to reflect on love, responsibility, fear, and readiness.
This is not a night of excess or distraction, but a conscious initiation. A time to let go of old patterns, receive the wisdom and challenge of other men, and mark the courage it takes to love faithfully and wholeheartedly.
For men preparing for marriage or long-term commitment, this gathering honours the moment with integrity, presence, and purpose, a true rite of passage into conscious manhood.
A Meaningful Hen Night
Rekindling Our Kinship with Nature
A Meaningful Stag Night
This two-day, one-night gathering offers a soulful alternative to the traditional hen night, one rooted in connection, reflection, and celebration.
Drawing on ancient traditions where women gathered to bless one another at life’s thresholds, this retreat creates a circle of sisterhood to honour the transition into committed partnership.
Through sharing, ritual, and simple ceremony, the bride-to-be is held, witnessed, and supported as she releases what has been and prepares to step into love with intention and grace.
Together, women explore what partnership, trust, and feminine strength mean to them, receive wisdom from those who have walked this path before, and celebrate the courage and joy of choosing love consciously.
This is not a night of escape, but a rite of passage, a beautiful pause to mark a profound turning point and to cross into partnership feeling grounded, blessed, and deeply supported.
Rekindling Our Kinship with Nature
Rekindling Our Kinship with Nature
Rekindling Our Kinship with Nature
a one-day Defining Moments experience
In a world that often pulls us away from ourselves, this one-day retreat offers a gentle yet powerful return to what is most natural and nourishing.
Held in wild landscape, Rekindling Our Kinship with Nature invites you to slow down, step out of modern busyness, and rediscover your living relationship with the land. Through guided practices, solo time, shared reflection, and simple ceremony, you will come into contact with nature not as background scenery, but as ally, teacher, and mirror.
The day weaves together sensory awareness, stillness, creative expression, and meditative walking to help you reconnect with presence, clarity, and your own ‘first nature’. You will be supported to listen deeply, receive insight from the natural world, and remember your place within the wider web of life.
This experience is ideal for those seeking grounding, renewal, or a meaningful reconnection with nature. It also serves as a powerful introduction to our longer, immersive retreats.
Come as you are.
Leave with the land woven back into you.
Lost for a Day
Boy to Man - The Early Journey
Rekindling Our Kinship with Nature
a 24-hour embodied experience of the gift of getting lost
Lost for a Day is a one-day and one-night immersion into the ancient, unsettling, and ultimately liberating experience of being lost.
Across twenty-four hours in wild landscape, this retreat invites you to step out of certainty, control, and habitual ways of orienting, and to explore what becomes possible when you allow yourself to not know. Through carefully held, nature-based practices — including solo wandering, sensory exploration, night walking, fire-side reflection, and time in solitude — you will encounter lostness not as a problem to fix, but as a doorway to insight, presence, and deeper knowing.
Guided by experienced facilitators, you will be supported to let go of maps and plans, listen more fully with your senses, and discover how the land itself can become a teacher and guide.
This experience stands alone as a powerful rite of passage, and also forms the first step in a wider journey exploring lostness, finding, and being found.
Come prepared to let go.
Come prepared to wander.
Come prepared to meet the gift that only lostness can offer.
Boy to Man - The Early Journey
Boy to Man - The Early Journey
Boy to Man - The Early Journey
a father and son adventure (ages 7–14)
Every boy carries the spark of the man he will one day become.
Boy to Man – The Early Journey is a two-day, two-night adventure in nature for fathers and sons to step away from everyday life and spend meaningful time together. Through shared exploration, play, storytelling, and simple rituals, this retreat gently marks an important stage in a boy’s growing-up journey.
Across the weekend, fathers and sons will build fires and shelters, explore the land, share stories around the fire, and take part in activities that strengthen trust, courage, and connection. Nature becomes the classroom, and time together becomes the gift.
For boys, this is a chance to feel seen, celebrated, and encouraged as they begin to step beyond early childhood.
For fathers, it offers time to slow down, listen, and enjoy the adventure of guiding a son toward the wider world.
This is not about pushing boys to grow up too fast, but about honouring where they are and beginning the journey toward manhood side by side.
You will return home with muddy boots, full hearts, and memories that will last a lifetime.
Elder Invocation
Boy to Man - The Early Journey
Boy to Man - The Early Journey
awakening to one’s own wisdom
A three-day retreat for men and women
At a time when true elders are rarely named or supported, Elder Invocation offers a held and meaningful space to awaken the wisdom shaped by a life fully lived.
Across three days and three nights, this retreat invites you to pause, reflect, and turn towards the deeper calling that often emerges in the later chapters of life. Through guided reflection, shared dialogue, ritual, and time in nature, you will reconnect with your life story, distil its lessons, and explore what it means to step into elderhood with integrity, presence, and care.
This is a threshold experience, a movement from simply growing older to consciously becoming an Elder: someone who embodies grounded authority, compassion, and service, and who offers steadiness and blessing to others.
Elder Invocation is for those who sense that something new is being asked of them a ripening into wisdom, responsibility, and contribution and who feel ready to step forward as a gift to their community and to the generations that follow.