# Event Details - **Event Name**: Water Voice and Plant Medicine by St Kevin’s Holy Well, Glendalough - **Event Start and End Date**: Sat, 22 Aug, 2026 at 12:00 pm – Sat, 22 Aug, 2026 at 05:00 pm - **Event Description**: Join singer Rachel Dempsey, herbalist and forager Sophie Rieu for a day of deep connection to place through song and medicinal plantsAbout this EventWater, Voice & Wild Medicine: A Day Retreat at St Kevin's Holy WellGlendalough, Co. Wicklow | Sat 22 Aug |12pm – 5pmAbout the DayDeep in the Glendalough valley, tucked beneath the old yew and hazel, St Kevin's Holy Well has been a place of pilgrimage, healing, and quiet reverence for well over a thousand years. Long before it carried a saint's name, this was a place where people came to meet water as a living presence — to drink, to bathe, to leave an offering, to ask for healing, to listen. That older way of relating to water — as sacred, as alive, as kin — is at the heart of this retreat.On 22 August Rachel and Sophie are coming together again to offer a day retreat at this site, allowing us to be in relation with the waters of this well by the river Glendasan as well as the rich array of plants and trees around it. Our day together will encompass grounding, awakening our senses, ritual, singing, foraging, flower essence-making, leaving you connected to yourself, the land, and the living world around you, and to Irish ancestral heritage.We bring two threads of practice to weave together over the day:Sophie Rieu is a community herbalist, forager, and biodynamic craniosacral therapist, whose work moves between the fluid physiology and energetics of the body and the intelligence of plants and place. Her approach is rooted in deep listening — to the body, to the land, to what wants to happen in its own time — and in reconnecting people with the living, edible, medicinal world growing all around us.Rachel Dempsey is a nature-based facilitator, researcher, and founder of Full Circle Change, working at the intersection of voice, ecology, and embodied sustainability practice. Her work uses singing, sound, and nature attunement as a way back into relationship with the more-than-human world — treating the voice not as performance, but as a form of listening, dialogue, and eco-social action.Together, we offer a day that moves through embodied awareness, water wisdom, song, foraging, plant essences, and communal sound — always in the body, always in the senses, always in direct relationship with the magic and energetics of place.Water, the Well, and the Old WaysWater connects everything. It moves through rock, root, and cloud, through rivers and rain, through our own blood and tears, in an unbroken cycle that has no real beginning or end. Roughly 60% of the human body is water — the same water, in continual exchange, that falls as rain on Lugnaquilla, rises as mist off the lake, and has moved through this well for centuries. To sit by a holy well is to be reminded, quite literally in the body, that we are not separate from the water cycle: we are the water cycle, temporarily wearing skin.We will tell and hold the history of St Kevin's Well with care and respect over the day, honouring this sacred place as a site of continuous devotion across traditions, rather than treating it only as scenery.We'll also touch, gently and openly, on more contemporary ways of understanding water's aliveness — that water is not simply a resource, but a living entity with its own integrity. This will be a thread of conversation woven through the sensory and devotional work of the day, an invitation to consider how the old reverence for holy wells and this newer legal language might be pointing at the same truth from different directions.Senses, Body, VoiceThroughout the day, our shared emphasis is on coming back into the body through the senses — the actual physical experience of being at the well.You'll be invited to feel the temperature and texture of the water on your skin, to notice the particular quality of light filtering through the canopy, to smell damp moss and stone, to listen to water moving over rock and moving through your own voice.Singing, in this context, isn't performance — it's a way of using the body as an instrument in direct dialogue with a living landscape, letting sound rise up in response to water, to trees, to each other.Foraging and essence-making work the same way from a different angle: slowing the pace of attention right down to what's growing at eye level and underfoot, engaging taste, smell, and touch as ways of knowing a place rather than only sight. Resonating with the vibrational field of plants through our own vibrant bodies to encapsulate their medicinal 'essence' or signature in water. When we say essence, we really mean whatever emerges between you and the plant as you converse together.By the end of the day, we hope that your body will have had a direct, felt experience of being in relationship with water, plants, sound, and place and will feel revived and inspired.The Day12pm — Arrive & Walk to the WellMeet at the Glendalough Visitor/Info Centre. We'll walk together to St Kevin's Holy Well, using the short walk as a gentle transition into the pace of the day.12.15 – 12.45pm — Opening Circle: Grounding & Senses (Sophie)An opening circle at the well to arrive fully in the body and the place. Simple grounding practices and sensory awareness exercises help settle the nervous system and open attention outward to water, stone, air, and the living world around us — the foundation for everything that follows.12.45 – 1.15pm — Tuning In to Water & Song (Rachel)A gentle exploration of the significance of the holy well tradition — its pagan roots, its layered history, and what it means to approach a well like this one with reverence today. This moves into vocal warm-ups and some simple, accessible singing and sounding, using the voice to attune more deeply to the water and to each other.1.15pm — Potluck LunchA shared lunch at the well. Please bring something to share if you can.2pm – 3.30pm — Foraging & Plant Essences (Sophie)Foraging for what's growing in the area around the well, followed by making a plant or flower essence— a profound practice of intimacy with place, syncing with the medicine of this sacred site through an embodied conversation with a plant, or river, or rock, cradling it through water in a jar which you can bring home with you.3.30 – 5pm — Singing & Sounding (Rachel)A closing arc of singing and sounding at the well — harmony songs, call-and-response, and free sounding — as a way of offering something back to the place before we leave, and of integrating the day's experience in the body through voice.Practical DetailsLocation: St Kevin's Holy Well, Glendalough, Co. Wicklow (meeting point at the Glendalough Visitor Centre)Time: 12pm – 5pmWhat to bring: Weather-appropriate clothing and footwear for being outdoors all afternoon (the well is exposed to the elements), something to sit on, a water bottle, and a dish to share for the potluck lunch. A small offering for the well, if you wish to bring one, is welcome.Please note: This retreat takes place entirely outdoors, at and near the well — there is no indoor space to retreat to, so please dress for the Wicklow weather. Rachel and Sophie very much look forward to spending time with you and the plants, through water, rituals and songs. - **Event URL**: https://allevents.in/glendalough/water-voice-and-plant-medicine-by-st-kevins-holy-well-glendalough/100001995453042767 - **Event Categories**: fitness, food-drinks, Meetups, Music - **Interested Audience**: - total_interested_count: 0 - **Event Highlights**: - Duration: 5 hours - Location: Glendalough Visitor Centre - Languages: English ## Ticket Details - **Ticket Price Range**: min: 70.69, max: 70.69, currency: EUR ## Event venue details - **city**: Glendalough - **state**: WW - **country**: Ireland - **location**: Glendalough Visitor Centre - **lat**: 53.010461 - **long**: -6.3243431 - **full address**: Glendalough Visitor Centre, Glendalough, Ireland ## Event gallery - **Alt text**: Water Voice and Plant Medicine by St Kevin’s Holy Well, Glendalough - **Image URL**: https://cdn-az.allevents.in/events5/banners/587b6f6f2d17732ddb66e29ecd770732f4f3f607cb970d9873d8e59e2c04a11e-rimg-w1200-h675-dc081818-gmir.jpg?v=1786532750 ## FAQs - **Q**: When and where is Water Voice and Plant Medicine by St Kevin s Holy Well, Glendalough being held? - **A:** Water Voice and Plant Medicine by St Kevin s Holy Well, Glendalough takes place on Sat, 22 Aug, 2026 at 12:00 pm to Sat, 22 Aug, 2026 at 05:00 pm at Glendalough Visitor Centre, Glendalough, Ireland. - **Q**: Who is organizing Water Voice and Plant Medicine by St Kevin s Holy Well, Glendalough? - **A:** Water Voice and Plant Medicine by St Kevin s Holy Well, Glendalough is organized by Sophie Rieu. - **Q**: Who is this event for? Is it right for me? - **A:** Water Voice and Plant Medicine by St Kevin s Holy Well, Glendalough is ideal for curious learners, students, and skill-builders looking to gain hands-on knowledge and practical expertise in a focused, interactive setting. Whether you're a first-time attendee or a longtime enthusiast in Glendalough, this event is thoughtfully curated to deliver a standout experience worth every moment. 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She was an environmental and social journalist, a press officer for Green MEP Patricia McKenna, and founded and designed the pioneering eco womenswear label ‘Unicorn’ in 2003.She has attended several foraging and tracking workshops as well as took part in the year-long Wild Awakening, a series of foraging, tracking and ancestral skills weekend workshops curated by ancestral crafts teacher, ethnobotanist and tracker Lucy O’Hagan. She also took courses with forager Courtney Tyler, and with bird language, tracker, and forager Jon Young, author of What the Robin Knows and Coyote’s Guide to Connecting With Nature.She has trained as a community herbalist with Nikki Darrell and Alex Duffy at the Plant Medicine School in Hollyfort, Co Wexford and is currently studying to become a clinical herbalist.Sophie mixes her movement, craniosacral attuning skills and herbal/foraging knowledge to share her love of plants and her passion for immersive learning and connecting in the natural world." } ] } ] ```