Eva Bay Greenslade
Doula Support, Celebrant, Shamanic Healing.
♡ Rites of Passage
♡ Ceremonies through
Becoming Parents
♡ Handfasting
♡ Baby Naming
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'Ceremony brings the sacred into ordinary life. For tens of thousands of years, ceremonies have been universally used to help communities navigate change and welcome in new cycles. Performing ceremonies creates a bridge between the material world we live in and the world of the unseen, the divine, the power of the universe. In modern terms, ceremony opens a phone line between you and the power of the universe, God, goddess, the Creator. Through this line of connection, you can have direct communication between yourself and the spiritual forces creating a partnership to manifest your desired outcome’s a phone line between you and the power of the universe, God, goddess, the Creator. Through this line of connection, you can have direct communication between yourself and the spiritual forces creating a partnership to manifest your desired outcome’
Sandra Ingerman - Shaman
Ceremony can augment rites of passage of life, they help us form a deeper connection to our higher selves, to know ourselves, and help us to open our eyes to the support in this world around us.
Ceremonies are also empowering! I love writing and facilitating them.
I have trained with Order of Bards Ovates and Druids on their Life Ceremonies Course.
Below are ceremonies I have experience offering, and ceremonies I have created through my deep research into what our own ancestors might have woven into their own cultural traditions, and I have come up with ceremonies through inspiration and a kind of inner wisdom. I have twenty years of experience of ceremony and ritual through my own exploration in nature based/ pagan/ shamanic ceremonies, and six years of experience as a celebrant.
I am open to creating new ceremonies for rites of passage, as we are each different and no ceremony fits us all. I also have experience of facilitating pagan handfasting wedding ceremonies for a couples union.
Scroll down to find out more about these ceremonies and get in touch to find out more.
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Handfasting Wedding Ceremony
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Baby Naming Ceremony
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Mothers Blessing / Blessingway
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Water Blessing Ceremony
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Postpartum Healing Ceremony
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Baby Earthing Ceremonies
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Placenta Burial Ceremony
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Ceremony for Pregnancy / Baby loss
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Rites of Passage
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Mothers Blessing / Blessingway
£250
A beautiful ceremony, created as part of the parent's preparation for birth. It is a ceremony to help empower the mum for her birth through the deep support of her friends and family,. It is important to me to include added depth of traditions and spirituality to these as this ceremony is the beginning of the mothers rite of passage to becoming a mum. Ceremonies like these are known throughout the world and have been part of cultural preparation for birth for many throughout history. These are not baby showers, as they are for nurturing the mum on her journey although they can involve acknowledging the baby's spirit too.
These ceremonies can be simple or more indepth, they can be deeply pagan or include another aspect of spirituality.
All of the ceremonies I offer are individual and created following an initial meeting and discussion with the parents becasue it has to be meaningful to the parents that the ceremony is for.
Water Blessing Ceremony
Costs can vary depending on your wishes and my expenses
Water is very much present within our pregnancy and birth. We are made of 65 % water on average, and gain an extra 6 litres during pregnancy! Our babies develop in our amazing amniotic waters, and then flow out of our body during birth with waters. Water is a sacred element in many cultures and many cultures hold ceremonies around the gift of water within their birth traditions.
I base this ritual on an experiment by Dr Masaru Emoto, he took photographs of water molecules after they had been exposed to various emotions or frequencies, happy, anger, metal music, prayer, love, the results in the images are vastly different, with the most beautiful being the prayer and love.
I have been doing research into various songs and prayers for water blessings taken from traditions around the world, and wasnt too surprised to find many indigenous people have been honouring and blessing water, or doing blessings using water, including of course Christian Christenings
With this in mind I have created these short adaptable ceremonies to honour the precious waters within us, these waters that nurture our babies, and flow within birth, because I feel if we can affect water in such a way then perhaps by doing a water blessing and continued prayer to the waters it will affect the waters within our bodies especially within pregnancy where water is so present.
During these ceremonies we will ideally go to a natural source of water and create a ceremony by earths waters, so we can honour all water and bring some back for your own birth alter/ birth space.
If you have a water birth, you can apply the same concept, in singing prayer to the waters you will birth in too.
These ceremonies often follow with a gifting back to the earth with your birth waters.
If you are interested in a water blessing ceremony I would love to hear from you.
Postpartum Healing Ceremony
£65 in clinic/ £85 home visit.
A traditional postpartum healing ceremony with roots in many cultures from around the world.
This ceremony is performed to close and realign the hips, close the energy field, and bring the blood to the area to aid healing. Using massage techniques, rebozo / manta fabric massage and wrapping,
There are many practises from cultures throughout the world believe our bodies are open after birth not just physically but spiritually too, and have similar practices to aid healing and energy flow.
My version of this ceremony comes through learning with Rocio Alarcon, Curandera and ethnobotanist from Ecuador. It involves gentle sifting, and rocking of you womb area, and your body, a massage of your womb and hip area using warming oils. Tight wrapping using rebozo scarfs either just over your hips and womb space or full body. Then while you are wrapped you can choose to be still, or have a sacred drum healing (as I am a trained sacred drum practitioner).
I see this also as a closing of cycles, and a ceremony to seal one cycle and stepping forward to the next cycle of life. This can be any life event not just birth. Sealing ceremony can be done after a break up, or job ending, or a change in life such as reaching an age milestone, like maga or croning.
Baby Earthing and Blessing Ceremonies
Cost can vary depending on your wishes.
Beautiful gentle ceremony to honour and call in your baby's spirit to earth ready for this life.
Through my research into spiritual birthing practices I have learned of beautiful powerful practices different cultures do to call in the spirit to secure them, clear unwanted past energies, and fully ground the baby. This ceremony is one I have brought into modern day drawing on my experience as a sacred drum practitioner and through pagan ceremony experences.
Baby Naming Ceremony
£350 (costs may vary depending on location and my expenses)
A baby naming ceremony is a beautiful alternative to a christening.
Traditionally a baby naming was performed when a baby reached one year old, to honour them as a person in life by declaring their name to all who love them, their friends, family, ancestors, and the land. Families also choose, god/ goddess/ guide / or Odd parents for their baby, people who will support and hold their baby through life when or if the parents cannot.
Placenta Burial Ceremony
Variable costs within other doula packages or stand alone £150
A ritual in which to honour your babys placenta, and gift it back to mother earth. Many indigenous people return their placenta to the earth for various spiritual reasons.
These are an absolute honour to do. However to bury an organ in a public place is illegal so thought and care needs to be taken.
Ceremony for Pregnancy / Baby loss
Cost: Expenses only and a donation to a charity of your choice.
Through experience I have seen the lack of support for many families when loosing a baby, creating a ceremony to honour the life that touched the earth can be very healing. This can be done in many ways, and will depend on what feels right to the family experiencing loss.
Sacred Feminine Rites of Passage
"Maiden ~ carefree, Mother ~ responsibility, Maga ~ carefree responsibility, Crone ~ responsibly carefree!"
Jane Hardwicke Collings
Costs vary.
"Each phase or season of a woman’s life has a rite of passage that set its theme and gives information to the woman about how her particular culture values her new role and what is expected of her" Jane Hardwicke Collings
To honour each phase of your life in a ceremony can really help with a woman's transition to gaining inner wisdom, and reclaim the honour from her community a women deserves in life.
Handfasting Ceremony
Cost £450 ( plus expenses)
''Upon this day, our hands we bind,
A symbol of our hearts entwined.
To witness this, we ask of thee,
Our union forever blessed be." Anon
Handfastings are an old tradition, a pre christian wedding ceremony, sometimes done to mark the beginning of a year and a day to give the couple time to decide if they wanted to marry, like an engagement.
These are very personal ceremonies, whilst I am not a registered celebrant they can accompany your registered ceremony or you can hold them separately, they hold so much meaning because they are written very much with your input, and you can hold them anywhere! In Scotland you can register a handfasting too!
A handfasting can also be created for renewal of vows, engagement, as well as part of your official wedding.
Whilst handfastings are not my main service I have a soft spot for them, I love them. My sister, and a year later friends, asked me to write and facilitate their handfasting ceremonies, this opened the door to me finding the confidence to create ceremony and study deeper by doing a celebrant training. I also had a handfasting for my own wedding, it was so personal and magical.
Testimonials and Kind Words
Contact
Brighton, UK
