The Story of Soft Core
Soft Core was born from the place where creative expression best lies – in the truth of the moment.
Between us we have spent decades travelling the world and exploring the leading edge of transformational spaces and spiritual quests. Soft Core began to cook as we each found ourselves looking for the same things: places where our wild free spirits and love for home, family, Celtic lands and embodied, sustainable growth and healing can meet.
Soft Core reflects the inner journey we have each been on to explore the deep mysteries of living a soulful, spiritual life that is also rooted in principles of earth, body, love and care.
We have each walked different paths – from spiritual adventures to corporate boardrooms, music-making, mysticism and leading-edge technologies of healing and awakening.
We are all connected through a shared pathway and pilgrimage round the world. We each find ourselves back where we started and share a great desire to teach others what we have learnt.
We combine our unique personal histories, gifts and professional qualifications with our shared desire to see a more beautiful world where people are resourced and available to experience the fullness of life and play their part in a wider story.
3 Pillars of Soft Core
Body
In pursuit of our ultra-modern, industrial, rational world, we’ve denigrated the wisdom of the body, and of the earth, as primitive, chaotic, or dangerous. In doing so, we’ve severed ourselves from a power far greater than anything the mind could comprehend, and birthed a society that is profoundly unwell, both individually and collectively.
The origins of this split between the rational mind and the sensing body are tangled up in religion, politics, and economics, but the intention and effect are clear: control. If you castrate a wild bull, it becomes a dutiful ox. We have been castrated from the wild, shamanic, earthy powers that once rooted us in vitality, creativity, and belonging.
And yet, we know the urgency of staying soft and regulated in today’s hyper-stimulating world. The nervous system is one of the only systems in the body that is not purely automatic; in other words, we can learn to work with it. This is no coincidence. It is a divine feature of our design — a built-in invitation to reclaim softness and sovereignty.
Soft Core invites you to remember the body as sacred ground — to listen to it and hold it as holy. To nourish yourself from the inside out so that you are vital and strong. Strong of blood, bone, soul, and spirit. Filled up with life itself.
Our intention is to offer an experience of true embodiment: what it feels like to inhabit your body as a living, sensing, relational being. Through meditative and somatic practices, we’ll explore how to stay grounded and connected to ourselves, the earth, and each other.
We offer embodied self-connection and conscious touch practices to support you in deepening your sense of home within your body and to cultivate a comfort with true, non–goal-oriented intimacy. Something, we believe, our touch- and intimacy-starved world is so deeply hungry for.
Heart
The heart is the most human part of us, and perhaps the most spiritual. Through it, we can touch the whole, the everything. It is the most ordinary doorway to our own divinity: our capacity for empathy, unconditional love, and the deep recognition of our oneness with all that is.
It is also where the great paradox of existence is most vividly felt: fragile yet unbreakably strong. It beats tirelessly, sustaining life, and yet, when it stops, so do we. It can shatter, and yet somehow, we love again, more deeply, more fully. The heart sits at the perfect midpoint between the physical body and the immaterial realms of love and soul, between our animal instincts and our spiritual longings. Its language is universal, making it the gateway to our shared humanity and the universality of life on Earth.
We work with the heart for its ordinary extraordinariness — for its universality and its tender strength. Through it, we remember our innate ability to love ourselves and open to what becomes possible when we allow ourselves to love and be loved exactly as we are, without condition.
Often, the heart pulls us toward our next edge of growth — a process that can be beautiful and painful all at once. It exposes the places within us that long for love and healing but need help finding the key. The heart is magic, mysterious, innocent, brave, and strong. It is so deeply human.
For the poets, mystics, and lovers among us, there is often no other way to live than to surrender to the heart’s longings. It leads us to lives of deep meaning, connection, creativity, and beauty.
The work of Soft Core supports this gentle easing open of the heart. It also wraps bandages of love around the places that feel painful, stuck, numb, or contracted. We don’t push; we don’t demand results. We know that opening the heart in a world that can so often feel harsh is tender, holy work.
Soul
How do we speak of soul?
After all, this is just a word — where the soul itself, and our sense of it, cannot be captured, cannot be touched. But it can be felt. It can be experienced.
Words are only signposts; they are not the thing itself.
You might understand soul as your deeper self — the part that exists beneath the noise of personality and preference. Perhaps it is the part of you that has always been most you. The acorn that carries the oak tree you are becoming. The glimmer that shone through you as a child, before it was wrapped in story and structure.
It’s the part of you that persists and knows, that whispers beneath all the chaos what you’re here for and what you’re meant to do. And yet, in the busyness of our lives, we often lose touch with this deeper pulse, the quiet hum of our own being.
Sometimes the soul must call us back. Often, it does so through crisis, especially when it has gone unheard. It may even create the crisis to awaken us.But soul can also be touched through slowness, silence, and softness.
At Soft Core, we peel back the layers of self gradually and gracefully, so we can touch this essential nature. This is a journey of deep intimacy with self, and yet there is a kind of necessary magic that happens when we do this together.
As James Hillman writes:
“How can we know ourselves by ourselves?
Soul needs intimate connection, not only to individuate, but simply to live.
For this we need relationships of the profoundest kind, where self-revelation is possible, where interest in and love for soul is paramount.”
The soul is intangible, mysterious and alive. We all feel it, though we can never quite define it.
Soft Core supports you to access your own sense of soul, and to connect with spirituality in a way that feels true to you.
Often in these spaces, people reflect that soul intimacy — true, meaningful, authentic connection — feels so simple, so right, so natural. As though we are finally remembering something we never really forgot.
We are self-defined mystics on a path of discovery. We don’t have all the answers, but we trust the questions.
And we all carry these teachings inside us.
Sometimes, we just need help finding the key.
About Us
Laura O’Neill
Laura is an Irish writer, musician, accredited psychotherapist, facilitator and heart warrior. Her thirteen-year long full-time spiritual odyssey took her from Northern California to Asia to study for years with Buddhist, yogic and tantric masters, and to New Zealand Aotearoa for esoteric soul studies, attending and assisting 5 of the temple trainings at Highden temple in New Zealand (immersive 6-week containers living and breathing temple life).
Over the last eight years she’s dedicated thousands of hours one-to-one with clients worldwide, stewarding them through transformative initiations.
Her background in somatic bodywork, yoga, tantra, meditation, and spiritual coaching informs her holistic, ecological perspective of psychotherapy, integrating mind, body, and spirit into the therapeutic process. Drawing from a range of modalities, including acceptance & commitment therapy, transactional analysis, internal family systems, somatic therapy, psychodynamic and psycho-educational therapies, mindfulness-based & solution-focused therapy, she offers a comprehensive and flexible approach to healing that is centred in soul.
From years living & working with groups, she’s adept in creating safer, sacred spaces within which transformation is possible.
Through her music, under Ellowen, she hopes to spark sensual delight, inspiration and a reconnection to the native creativity that lives within each soul. She lives in service to a heart-, soul- & soil-centred way of being, and in devotion to life, the unknown, ordinary magic, shameless humanness & everyday creativity, & to remembering connection to earth, purpose & each other.
Tracy Kelleher
Tracy is a soul guide, energetic interpreter, and international facilitator. She is given to empowering souls deeply landed into our bodies and human existence and honoring the multitude of realities and expressions of love within each of us. Tracy has spent the last decade on a journey of personal healing and integration, energetic mastery, and soul initiation. She combines lived experience, years of training and depth of study with intuitive adeptness and precise energetic attunement in her work.
Tracy is both soul midwife and doula for death-bearing witness and holding the ground for our inherent wholeness and the power of surrender as we traverse initiatory thresholds. Tracy’s group work focuses on activating fields of vibratory coherence between humans, igniting group capacity for generative healing and revelatory creativity. She is deeply devoted to radical rest and the regenerative power of truly descending into the wisdom of matter and living into the beauty and richness of the seemingly mundane and ordinary aspects of life.
In complementarity to her client practice, mentorship and group work, Tracy co-founded Chesapeake Temple, a center for soul culture in the USl. She also serves as a facilitator for the spiritual community of Avatara and as a mentor for the project incubator, GIVEN. And she is a practitioner on the healing team for Luminous Awareness Institute, an international school based in Colorado for healing and awakening.
FInd her work at https://www.harmonicsoul.org
Olivia Grace Jensen
Olivia is a Mentor and Guide for Soulful Transformation. Her work supports people to be who they truly are and live a life of deep meaning and purpose. This includes working with authentic leadership, creativity, intimacy and sexuality.
Olivia is passionate about embodied spirituality and sustainable transformation. She is equally driven by expansion of self, growth and healing and the important work to integrate our transformational experiences so we truly live a rich life in line with our soul’s purpose.
Olivia spent her early career working in the cornerstone of British politics amongst those who pull the levers of power within the British political system and media. After feeling deeply disillusioned about her ability to have meaningful impact, she followed an intuitive call to New Zealand. There she worked as an Advisor and Strategist in the Care and Protection system focussing on Indigenous rights and exploring the future of one of the most fraught areas of New Zealand society.
It became clear that Olivia had more to offer than could be achieved from behind a desk and followed a path of personal exploration and spiritual study.
Olivia has spent many years immersed in life’s great mysteries, exploring technologies of awakening, personal growth and healing. She has spent thousands of hours immersed in transformational soul work and supporting others to awaken and emerge as who they truly are. As a Tantric guide she has worked with hundreds of people seeking to ignite their life-force and enjoy a life of deep meaning through their bodies, hearts and souls.
Olivia weaves her experiences from the frameworks of conventional power and the mysteries of soul to meet you with depth, integrity and a burning fire to serve humanity at this time of great change.
Daily life looks like mentoring clients, creating group spaces, reading, writing and walking her beloved dog on Cornish headlands.
Find Olivia @oliviagracejensen_ and https://www.oliviagrace.life
FAQs
This retreat is open to those of all experience levels who are drawn to deepening their connection with soul. You don’t need to be “spiritual enough,” have a certain kind of practice, or be in any particular phase of your life. If you’re feeling the pull toward softness, toward rest, toward truth — this retreat is for you... All bodies, all genders, all identities are welcome here.
While everyone’s journey will be unique, here are some of the things you can expect: a deep exhale, the language of soul, guided movement, silence, ritual, creative practices, nourishing meals, connection with others — and most importantly, a remembering of who you are beneath the noise.
The prices are as follows, which are all-inclusive of the retreat, accommodation for 4 nights, and all meals including dinner on day of arrival and breakfast on day of departure, cooked lovingly by our amazing chef. Early-bird: Dorm £850 / Shared Double £950 / Single £1100 (LIMITED AVAILABILITY) Full price: Dorm £950 / Shared Double £1050 / Single £1200
You’re absolutely welcome! The way that we work encourages you to move at your own pace. Having beginners in the space brings a beautiful fresh energy to the group.
Soft Core is not focused on sexuality or relational dynamics with others. Instead, it’s an invitation to turn gently inward, to meet yourself in your own presence and truth. Boundaries and consent are respected and clearly held throughout.
Soft Core is not therapy. It’s not a place for processing acute trauma or a productivity retreat. It’s a space for softening, slowing, and remembering. A space where your wholeness is already intact.
Absolutely! You can share the experience with someone you love or move through it independently. Both are welcome.
That’s okay. If you’re unsure, you can reach out to us for a chat. Spaces are limited, so try not to leave it too late if you feel the pull.
Click the Apply Now button on the homepage to access the application form.
In the stunning Devon countryside, UK — May 2026.