15th July to 22nd July
Hello,
Lots of Love and Healing Greetings!
Thank you for your interest in working at this year’s Buddhafield Festival in our beautiful Healing Garden. Our theme for 2024 is With Arms Wide Open. The festival will run from Wednesday 17th July to Sunday 21st July.
The key dates and times for your diary are:
- Arrive/set up – Monday, 15th July
- Festival starts – Wednesday, 17th July at the noon HEALING GARDEN MIDDAY MEETING
- Festival ends – Sunday, 21st July at the 6pm Garden Party
- Love & Leave – Monday, 22nd July
You need to be on site from Monday 15th to Monday 22nd July to join our Healing Garden.
Healing Garden Requirements
To work with us, we need the following:
- You must be qualified and insured for all the therapies you want to offer.
- You must include scanned copies of your qualifications and insurance with your application - we cannot process it without them. You must be insured for all the dates you are working on site. Please be sure that your insurance scan clearly shows dates covering your time working with us and what treatments your insurance covers.
- You must complete and submit your application form, with the relevant certificates and insurance uploaded, before the end of May. If you are affiliated with a governing body for your therapy, please also upload evidence of your affiliation (e.g. a scan of your membership card).
- You agree to the hours of work and all requirements of the Healing Garden as requested, as well as the festival's rules - including no drink, no drugs, and no dogs.
- While working, you act professionally, following your own and your therapy’s code of ethics and in accordance with all that Buddhafield aims to uphold.
- You agree with the Dana/suggested donations system Buddhafield strives to maintain and support our endeavours to work with generosity (see below for details).
- We advise you to bring a Risk Assessment for your personal work space and treatments offered.
For Your Information
We want to give you all the information you are likely to need before we get to the field so that we can all enjoy the festival. Please read the following before contacting us with any enquiries. There is quite a lot, but most of your questions should be answered by the time you reach the end.
If you still have a question after reading the info, feel free to ask us at healers@buddhafield.com. We will get back to you as soon as possible - we appreciate your patience.
The Healing Garden offers complementary health to the festival. We focus on one-to-one bodywork and practices which are in accordance with dharmic principles. We aim to provide as much variety as possible, so some therapies will have a limited capacity.
If you wish to offer Yoga, TaiChi or other group sessions, please apply in 2025 as this area is now closed.
We do have a Healing Garden workshop space, which is primarily for Healers who are also offering one-to-one sessions. There may occasionally be some - but very few - exceptions to this. The Healing Garden workshop space does need to be considerate of everyone around the area. For this reason, any potentially loud or disruptive workshops, however wonderful, will need to arrange an alternative workshop space before the start of the festival. Again, follow the appropriate link from the main Buddhafield website to apply to workshops for this.
We ask all the healers to work an (approx.) minimum of 5 hours each day on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday; Wednesday afternoon is optional.
You are free to choose your own hours, although we ask that you finish by 5.30pm on Sunday to get to our Garden Party on time. We highly suggest you fit your appointments around the things you would like to participate in. Our festival has much to offer, so take advantage of it by carefully considering your timetable.
You are, of course, welcome to work more than the requested 5 hours, but please heed this warning: don’t work so hard as to burn out. All work and no play makes you... exhausted. So don’t go killing yourself to heal others!
We do not run a clinic-style booking system. We intentionally leave it to the healers how they choose to work. Most bring booking sheets or boards to place outside their treatment space. If you need to make yourself a booking board, wood will be available onsite, but you will need to bring any paint, pens, etc, depending on your needs.
Donations for Treatments
Payment is arranged between yourself and your clients. We ask all Healing Garden healers to work for donations with no fixed prices displayed. We suggest asking for a donation of £10 for each 15 minutes of treatment / £40 per hour. Please consider this before applying to join our Healing Garden, as we operate from a generous heart. If people are able and choose to give more than the suggested donation, we all welcome it, but you, as a therapist, need to be willing to work for our suggested Dana rate. Many people coming to the festival are working for "support" within Buddhist Right Livelihood organisations, so please be aware that most of the field might not be able to afford treatments in any other place - so let's give what we can and be open to receive. Some may be unable to afford the suggested Dana rate; please be prepared to share what you can and discuss with your clients accordingly. Dana comes from a generous heart. At the end of the festival, manth and the team will ask you for a donation on behalf of Buddhafield.
Donations to Buddhafield
We have always run the open-hearted Healing Garden on a dana/donation basis, and we are very keen for this to continue. Since manth and Emma took on coordinating and lightly holding our Healing Garden, we have offered a significant donation to the event each year. We used to provide a few hundred ££, but we have consistently given £3,000 for the past few years. In 2019, we contributed about £5,000. Let's see if we can be even more generous this year...
Only because of this are we able to continually request the healers receive a complimentary ticket and vehicle pass despite all other areas of the festival having restricted ticket allocations. For which we are grateful ~* Thank you kindly. *~ This means we can continue to have our beautiful Healing Garden generating generosity from an ever-positive heart chakra. This would not happen without your continued support, generosity and wonderful good work!
A mighty Sadhu, Thank You to those of you who have contributed. Let's see what we can add to the pot this year!
So, for Buddhafield to continue to be sustainable, we suggest that every therapist working in the Healing Garden contributes £200 - £250. Of this:-
- £200 covers the cost of your ticket
- £35/£75 covers your car/live-in vehicle
So Dana of £235-275 would cover your cost. If you would like to offer a donation to our charity beyond your expense, we would welcome it : )
By joining our Healing Garden, you are potentially able to earn £500 to £800. Please know that we are asking to receive a suggested minimum donation of £200 from each therapist to be sustainable.
Buddhafield is a charity (Triratna Buddhafield, UK registered charity No. 1108826). To see how we spend your donation, visit the Buddhafield website for details of our offer…. Donations go towards making our events accessible to different income levels and help towards ongoing kit repairs and replacements, vehicle upkeep, tech support, supporting people with their Buddhist practice, etc.
Your Space
We ask that you bring your own workspace, yurt, geodesic dome, bell or frame tent, etc, and decorate with enchanting organic style and festival charm... Please bring plenty of plants to decorate our Healing Garden.
The more beautiful your structure, the more likely you are to be offered a 'top pitch', though final say is with Manth and the team - and, of course, the 'Health & Safety' and festival Layout crew. Preference for the best plots will go to structures such as yurts, tipis, geo-domes, canvas structures and canvas tents, purely for eco-aesthetic reasons. Please note that in our mandala community, every space allows you to create a top pitch; how appealing it is is up to you!
If you don’t have a structure but have been before, maybe now is a good time to invest in your working environment. Please go on; value yourself and your work enough to consider it. Otherwise, you will need to beg or borrow (but not steal) one!
Gazebos are not very practical structures to work in unless there is blissful summer sunshine every day. Unfortunately, our weather is not always heavenly but often full of earthly elements. If you have no other option, please bring plenty of strong rope and heavy-duty pegs, as gazebos are prone to fly! And if it gets windy, you need to be around to rescue your own beasts or sadly we will be left with no option but to ban them.
So, with this in mind, choose your structure accordingly. Beautiful, eco-friendly decoration may boost your chances - Healing Garden colours are Medicine Buddha Blue (the colour of Lapis Lazuli) and White (the colour containing all others and a symbol of purity). Flower tubs and baskets are lovely. Prayer flags a plenty...
The other thing that may alter your pitch position is your arrival time, although we spend many hours considering mapping out our mandala before the event.
L.E.D. Lights - Solar-powered lights are great, but please remember, this is a healing garden. Our colours are White and Blue. Please Do NOT have flashing lights. Perpetually flashing lights are not soothing or calming. For some, they cause headaches and eye strain - this is not what we want in our peaceful Healing Garden. The gentle glow from fairy lights in the nighttime creates a sense of welcome and delight: that’s what we’re about.
Communal Om - We offer a communal space for up to four people to work from. Please know that if you are offered one of these places, we provide you with a structure, but you must provide everything else yourself, all that you need, including decorations to make your space look lovely. Priority for these places goes to those new to festival healing, wanting to try it before investing in a treatment space of their own, or those travelling to join us from abroad. This shared environment is Not suitable for talking therapies.
Due to Health & Safety Regulations and attempting to preserve the beauty of our area, vehicles will not be permitted to park/live in the Healing Garden area. So, nobody will be able to work from a vehicle, and if you wish to sleep in your camper, you will have to park in the healer's live-in vehicle area and have a structure to work from in the Healing Garden.
Due to weather conditions, it may not be possible to unload/load your vehicle in the healing area. There will be a system in place enabling you and all your belongings to arrive in the Healing Garden - this usually involves a wheelbarrow. Please have accessible (i.e. pack last) some large ground sheets and waterproof covers to protect your precious belongings if it rains.
We respectfully ask for your kind cooperation and patience during the set up/tat down, as you will inevitably need to await your turn. We encourage healers to assist and support each other – a little help from those who are fit and able goes a long way to creating our precious shared Garden of Healers. So send out prayers and good wishes to your gods and enlightened protectors and to the spirits of the land for fine weather and all to flow with ease... as we know this helps! Let us create the Peace and Harmonious community we all long to find in the world.
If you need assistance setting up your space, please arrange this before arrival, and we will be as accommodating as possible. If you arrive with a helper who intends to stay on to enjoy the festival, they will need their own ticket. If they do not intend to stay but will assist you onsite, you must let us know their name to avoid any hassle at the gate. They must leave site on Tuesday, before the festival opens on Wednesday.
Comings and Goings
Why is it important that you arrive on Monday 15th and leave Monday 22nd July?
Arriving on Monday gives you time to enjoy setting up your space at your leisure. You then have the opportunity to get to know your neighbours, meet friends old and new and take advantage of the time for treatment swaps and, many a herbal tea. This space to arrive and spend time in a supportive and natural environment is something that Buddhafield offers you as a thank you for all your efforts. It is also an important time to come together as a community of like-minded individuals wanting to harmonise and make a difference in the well-being of the people we meet and all beings on our shared sacred earth.
Buddhafield also offers you the opportunity to join daily meditation sessions during your set-up and tat-down time on site, should you wish to deepen your experience. No experience necessary - for more information, ask any of the team in the field.
We are collectively a healing mandala community...Please consider the value of this when making your decision to join us.
In this same flavour of community spirit, please realise that it is very disruptive to those healers still working and clients experiencing treatments if others around them start packing up on Sunday, banging tent pegs, breaking the circle and leaving. If you have no choice but to go on Sunday, please know that we kindly ask everyone to stay until 8pm, pack up and leave after the evening Garden Party and not to start quietly packing up until 5pm on Sunday at the earliest. We hope you will appreciate how your decisions affect our shared space and trust that you would want to honour your commitment to joining us. Ideally, we ask that you stay until Monday 22nd, packing at your leisure and leaving by the evening.
What Happens Next
We will have all your documents and applications in by Friday, 17th May, when the applications close.
We will process all the applications in June and let you know whether you have been accepted. If there is a clear reason your application will be refused, we will let you know as soon as possible.
We hope to send invitations before mid-June.
We usually have many more applicants than we have Invitations for. Consequently, some may be offered a place despite nothing being wrong with their application. With some, it is simply the luck of the draw. Successful applicants will be sent further information and an Invitation.
You will not make it onto our invite list without all the required documents.
Please know that you need the invitation to come and join our Healing Garden.
*** Do not expect to hear from us until early June ***
We understand the timing of things is tricky, but we are unlikely to let you know any sooner. If we can send the Invitations out sooner, we will.
Remember, the more dharmic, varied, positive, and creatively enticing your offerings are, the more likely you are to be prioritised... bringing lots of small trees and big herbs always wins our hearts.
We very much look forward to hearing from you.
Warm wishes for good health, happiness and sunshine!
The Healing Garden Team xxx