Starshine Roots

Starshine Roots Sound healing, drumming, circles and somatic healing for women.

I create containers rooted in Celtic folklore and trauma-informed practice where you can go bone deep - shedding what's not yours, reclaiming your voice, and remembering your power.

A practitioner handed me The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle when I was in agony.They told me my chronic pain was accumula...
02/09/2026

A practitioner handed me The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle when I was in agony.

They told me my chronic pain was accumulated emotional suffering I was keeping alive by identifying with it, and that if I was present enough, awake enough, healed enough, it would dissolve.

I couldn’t help but feel how sickly ironic that was. I know all about emotional pain manifesting in the body. It is my work.

Six years ago I could not wash or dress myself. I could not get my own boots on. I was 42 years old.

What got me out of it was going into it. Years of it.

The body, the unexpressed grief and rage, the ancestral work, the wee parts of me that hadn’t caught up with where I am now.

All that emotional pain from what happened after the traumas I experienced. I did that work and I am still doing it.

They knew this but they thought they knew better because they had read a book.

I did not transcend. I descended. And then I went down again, and again, a bit deeper each time. Healing is not a straight line and not a victory. It spirals.

I can put my own boots on because of that.

That book was written by a man who has never had his body, his pain or his emotions systematically used against him. Transcendence is an easier sell when presence has never been dangerous. When your body was not the thing you had to leave in order to survive.

And think about who was handed this book.

Women in their forties and fifties, whose oestrogen is dropping and whose rage has arrived all at once, and they are told it is their pain body. Their ego. Their shadow. Something to rise above.

Told to be a good girl. Again.

The problem with this is the direction of travel. That healing points up and out. Everything I know about healing points down and in. Into the body.

I have written about spiritual abuse in my latest blog.

Blog link in bio.

Our ancestors knew that words are spells. To speak is to cast.And many of us have been casting the same spells, every da...
25/08/2026

Our ancestors knew that words are spells. To speak is to cast.

And many of us have been casting the same spells, every day, often without noticing.

✨The shoulds ✨
I should be grateful.
I should be over this by now.
I should not need so much.
I should be further along.

✨The could-haves ✨
I could have been someone.
I could have done more.
I could have been a better daughter.

Those words are rarely ours alone. They come down the line, mother to daughter to daughter, long before they ever reached us. We inherit the spell.

These are incantations but because we cast them in our own voices, we believe we are the one who wrote them.

The shoulds were often handed down by a woman who was punished for wanting. The could-haves often came from women who never had a choice, so she made her longing your inheritance.

They casted these spells to survive a world that had no room for them, and the spells kept working long after the danger passed, passed down to us.

I’d like to share with you my 4 week Ancestral Joy Circle starting Thursday 10 September.

It is for you if you are ready to meet the women in your bloodline: to grieve the ones who carried survival, poverty, patriarchy and war, and then to reach further back, to the wild ancestors who knew joy long before shame ever touched a female body.

There is an application and a short call with me first, so we can feel together whether the timing is right for you.

One place left. If it is calling you, info is all here:https://starshineroots.org/events/womens-ancestral-healing-circle-bristol

There is a moment I witness in every drum circle.A woman arrives carrying her whole week in her shoulders. Braced. Holdi...
20/08/2026

There is a moment I witness in every drum circle.

A woman arrives carrying her whole week in her shoulders. Braced. Holding it all together the way we're taught to. Then her hand meets the skin of the drum, the rhythm rises up through the floor and into her bones, and I watch something in her let go.

Her breath drops. Her edges soften. The wild, knowing part of her that never actually left comes back to the surface.

This is the oldest medicine there is. Fire and rhythm and women gathered.

The next drum circle at Boiling Wells of St Werburghs City Farm is on Tuesday 1 September, Bristol 🔥

No experience of drumming needed and rattles and drums available to borrow.

More info: https://fb.me/e/6pxLNs7Xp

Yesterday was a hard day. It was do with accountability.As I move through my Celtic shamanic practitioner training, I ke...
18/08/2026

Yesterday was a hard day. It was do with accountability.

As I move through my Celtic shamanic practitioner training, I keep meeting my own values and accountability is right at the top for me. Always has been. I own my part. I stand in it.

In the not so distant past (like many of us with complex trauma) I would have taken on too much responsibility for things that weren’t mine but I am very different these days, and much of this has been down to the work I have done on myself through IFS (Internal Family Systems) and walking this shamanic path.

But when accountability is missing from someone else, I feel it in my whole body.

There is a wee part of me that wants them to own what they did. I can feel her, arms crossed, waiting. And yesterday I was able to mother her. To let her know it is okay. That I have her.

Then I picked up my drum. Five minutes of playing and I was back in Self energy, able to witness and love the parts of me that needed tending.

Grounded, back in my centre.

And then I went to facilitate drum circle at the Bristol Goddess Temple

It was beautiful to witness women step in and express themselves. The strength in the space we made together was breathtaking.

We do this three times a month now.

Bristol Goddess Temple, Conham River Park. And the next one is on Tuesday 1 September at Boiling Wells of St Werburghs City Farm

A circle of women drumming is a powerful thing that will never cease to amaze me.

More info: https://starshineroots.org/events/womens-hearth-drum-circle

I have written something and I am really nervous about it.I experienced religious abuse for the first 19 years of my lif...
11/08/2026

I have written something and I am really nervous about it.

I experienced religious abuse for the first 19 years of my life.

And over the last several years I have experienced the same thing happening in spiritual spaces. Circles. Ceremonies. Retreats. Some of it has happened to me. And I imagine, many of you have experienced your own versions of this too.

I have been too scared to speak up publicly about this until now.

But something big has shifted over the course of this year.

Between my shamanic work and the community of women who have all encouraged me when I have been most myself, my most vulnerable, I have finally stopped apologising for the truthtelling part of me.

This year, I have accepted it. I am finally embodying it. It is in my lineage!

It is long, and it is still only a wee bit of it.

https://starshineroots.org/blog-1/spiritual-abuse-circles-ceremonies

Thank you for your support, for your encouragement. I am very grateful for our community!

With much love, Ruth ###

On 12 September I am a panellist at the Pagan Safeguarding Symposium in Glastonbury.I said yes without hesitating.I grew...
06/08/2026

On 12 September I am a panellist at the Pagan Safeguarding Symposium in Glastonbury.

I said yes without hesitating.

I grew up experiencing religious abuse in Northern Ireland. Many of us did there.

I know what it is to be told that questioning is disloyalty. That anger is a failure of faith.

I have met the same thing again in spiritual, pagan and wellness spaces.

Different language.
The same shape underneath.

In my experience, safeguarding conversations in the spiritual community tend to happen quietly, after the incident, between individuals. This conversation is happening in daylight with researchers and safeguarding professionals in the room.

Free, and there are still places.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/pagan-safeguarding-symposium-tickets-1993020705581

More from me on this soon.

“Is that meditation recorded anywhere?”“I need something to hold my practice between circles.”“I struggle to get out and...
28/07/2026

“Is that meditation recorded anywhere?”
“I need something to hold my practice between circles.”
“I struggle to get out and wish there was another way for me to access this work”
“Do you ever record the drum journeys? I would love to do that at home.”
“I wish there were other ways for us to share.”
“I’m not in Bristol but I’d love to experience this.”

I have been listening .

And I have been dreaming into this for over a year and a half. This year I have been researching it, testing it, sitting with what it could be.

An online membership for women. A place where the work can keep breathing.

Somewhere built to hold a community as WhatsApp and social is not for that.

But before I build the next part, I would love to hear from you.

So I have put together some questions and your answers will help in shaping the next stage.

Answer by midnight this Sunday, 2 August, and you go into the draw for a 1-1 sound journey with me in St George or online.

Membership questionnaire: https://starshineroots.org/membership-questionnaire
💚☺️🙏🏻

Look how much you’ve grown. Gather it in. Count the abundance.What almost no one says is what the growing took.Part of...
24/07/2026

Look how much you’ve grown.
Gather it in.
Count the abundance.

What almost no one says is what the growing took.

Part of my growth this year was boundaries.
I stopped handing my energy over before I’d even felt whether it was mine to give.
I let the no rise all the way up before the yes could form.

Some people did not stay.

There is a grief in that.
Hard to place, because it can be hard to properly mourn a loss that only arrived once you got well.

We carry it quietly, most of us.
The cost walking alongside the growth, never quite named.

Sunday we name both.

Eight women.
One day.

What has grown in you this year, witnessed properly.
What it cost you, given its place at the table.

Then a vegan harvest feast. The joy that has always belonged beside the grief – the way Tailtiu’s festival always held both the lament and the games in the same field.

Two spaces left for this Sunday’s Bone Deep Harvest Circle

Circle link in Bio

If you’d like to talk first, please get in touch 💚☺️

Those of you who know me well, will know I can talk about drumming until the cows come home. And then keep going after t...
17/07/2026

Those of you who know me well, will know I can talk about drumming until the cows come home. And then keep going after the cows have settled in for the night. 😂

So when Rebecca Conran invited me onto the New Story podcast for an episode called Women Who Drum, I was in my element.

What a conversation it was. We talked about the path that brought me here - the chronic pain, and the drum that found me when I needed it most. And we talked about what happens when women gather in circle and find their way back to themselves.

None of this exists without the women who show up. Who drum with me at Boiling Wells of St Werburghs City Farm, by the river in Conham River Park, and at the Bristol Goddess Temple.

You are the heart of this story, every one of you.

Here it is for a wee listen with a cold drink!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4YZWWPT2Hs&t=1360s

Ruth x

When did someone last spend a whole day tending you, and want nothing back?For most of the women I work with, the honest...
16/07/2026

When did someone last spend a whole day tending you, and want nothing back?

For most of the women I work with, the honest answer is when they were very young. Maybe never.

Bone Rest is a day retreat in a private space in St George, Bristol, for women who tend everyone else. There's no timetable. No yoga at eleven, no workshop at two.

We open with a short sound journey and close the same way, and everything in between is yours. Quiet corners and books. A sauna heated and waiting. Shade under the vines. Rest however your body wants to rest.

And while you rest, I cook. Everything made by my hands, with herbs from my own garden: cold pressed lemon verbena over ice, dips green with fresh herbs, homemade bread, a raw lemon cheesecake to finish. You don't fetch anything. You don't clear anything. It all comes to you.

Because collapse is not rest. Collapse is what the body does when it can't go on. Rest is what the body does when it knows it can finally stop.

This Saturday's day is the last at the introductory price of £95 From the Autumn Equinox day onwards, Bone Rest is £135, with a community space at £85 on every day and payment plans available. https://starshineroots.org/events/bone-rest-womens-day-retreat

A few spaces remain for Saturday. DM me and I'll share everything, including the location, when you book.

Much love, Ruth x

Address

Troopers Hill Road
Bristol
BS58BP

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 8pm
Tuesday 9am - 8pm
Wednesday 9am - 8pm
Thursday 9am - 8pm
Friday 9am - 8pm
Saturday 10am - 2pm

Telephone

+441173364015

Website

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