Preconference Sessions are intimate workshops held on Thursday evening (4.00-7.00pm), before the official Conference begins.

Arrive early and enjoy a bonus presentation from one of Australia's leading Educators.

Preconference Intensive Sessions may be added in the Ticket Booth.

Anxiety is often treated as something to eliminate or manage. Yet for many women it appears at moments when something deeper is shifting — when familiar ways of belonging begin to loosen and a truer self is asking to emerge.

For people who have been socialised as women in female bodies, this experience can carry a particular weight. Many of us have been taught to override instinct, soften our perceptions and seek reassurance outside ourselves. Over time this can create a quiet split between what the body already knows and what we allow ourselves to acknowledge.

In this three-hour session we will explore anxiety through a different lens: not as pathology, but as a threshold experience that can signal perception, instinct and truth trying to reach the surface. Often anxiety arises when the body recognises something long before the mind permits it.

Alongside reflective teaching, we will explore how simple practices; nourishing food, herbal teas, time with plants and gentle somatic awareness can help anxious energy move through the body rather than remain trapped in the mind.

This session invites participants to consider how much wisdom may already be present within their own bodies, and how tending body, land and rhythm can help restore trust in what we know.

Step into a gently held space of reflection, creativity and embodied wisdom. Crafting Sacred is an experiential workshop that brings together contemplative practice, nature-based teachings and hands-on making. It offers a place to slow down, listen inwardly and reconnect with the cyclical intelligence that moves through all stages of life.

Drawing on rites-of-passage traditions, this session explores the Four Shields — Child, Adolescent, Adult and Spirit — as living aspects of human experience. Rather than fixed stages, these shields are approached as qualities that continue to shape how we meet the world. Through guided meditation, storytelling and a simple contemplative walk, participants will encounter each shield in an embodied way, gathering insight and symbolic threads to carry forward.

At the heart of the workshop is the crafting of a personal talisman using natural materials. This small object becomes a way of anchoring what has been recognised or remembered, shaped through attention, intention and touch. The process is not about creating something decorative, but about making relationship visible.

Together we will explore the Four Shields as an inner ecology, engage in reflective practice, and create space for meaning to emerge. No prior experience is needed, only a willingness to be present and to follow what arises.