A 32-Day Immersive Retreat · Hilo, Hawai’i · February 28 – March 31, 2027, with SotO Founder and Guide, Mariabruna Sirabella and Beth Marcil.
Something magical happens when a group of dedicated people slow down together long enough to open channels of transmission and perception that are usually dormant.
And if they are in nature, away from distractions, focusing on learning and creating, accompanied by the power and the love of the Intelligences of Nature… well… it is impossible to predict exactly what’s going to happen!
The place – ‘Io Mana
We will be at ʻIo Mana, Beth Marcil’s studio – a large, light-filled creative sanctuary on twenty acres in the hills above Hilo, HI, with astounding views of Hilo Bay and Waiau stream. Downstream, a private waterfall and its natural swimming pond are accessible from the land.
‘Io Mana honors the endangered Hawaiian Hawk – the ‘io — a native bird found only on the island of Hawai’i, and often seen soaring above the land where our retreat takes place.
Blending the spirit of the hawk with the concept of Mana – spiritual energy, creative power, and life force – the name evokes vision, creativity, presence, and a deep connection to place.
Nested in the enchanting Hawaiian landscape, in the sacred presence of the volcanoes Mauna Kea, and Kīlauea – the one who continues its work of creation, ʻIo Mana is a place of quiet, connection, and deep presence – where nature inspires and enriches us in every season and at all times of day or night.
Who is this for?
This retreat is for seekers – those who sense that something in them is ready for wider horizons, and who are willing to give themselves time to feel, explore, reflect. For those who intuit intelligence and spirit in every aspect of nature, and wish to access and commune with it at a deeper level. For those who have sacred curiosity for what runs below the surface of matter. For those who wish to let their visionary capacities soar.
No prior experience is necessary to join the retreat, but of course, if you have a favorite creative medium that is not among the creative stations we offer, you are welcome to bring whatever materials you want to work with.
What is required is genuine readiness to show up, day after day, for the full arc of the work – to laughter and tears, surprises and reckonings, validation of truths your soul has known since ever, glimpses and revelations about your inner nature .
We strongly encourage attending the full thirty-two days, but if a full month is not possible, you may join at the opening of any of the four eight-day cycles:
🔸 First Intelligence of Fire on February 28
🔸 First Intelligence of Earthon March 8
🔸 First Intelligence of Wateron March 16
🔸 First Intelligence of Air on March 24
It is necessary to arrive the day before and depart the day after each cycle.
The full sequence of the 16 Intelligences:
Irì Feb 28-Mar 1 · Imè Mar 2-3 · Itù Mar 4-5 · Igà Mar 6-7 · Ebì Mar 8-9 · Efè Mar 10-11 · Elù Mar 12-13 · Edà Mar 14-15 · Unì Mar 16-17 · Uxè Mar 18-19 · Ujù Mar 20-21 · Upà Mar 22-23 · Asì Mar 24-25 · Akè Mar 26-27 · Avù Mar 28-29 · Azà Mar 30-31
Your Guides
Founder and Guide
Mariabruna Sirabella has spent a lifetime asking what it means to be fully alive and guided by spirit – and creating opportunities for others to explore the same question.
Her path has moved through many disciplines and several continents. Her early research at the University of Bologna brought her into direct contact with healing rituals and trance dances in the tribal areas of southern Italy and India – an encounter that shaped everything that followed. Years of practice as a psychotherapist, trauma specialist, and somatic practitioner in California deepened her understanding of what transformation actually requires: not instruction, but ground. Not answers, but the right conditions for something new to arise from within.
The drum entered her life through her teacher Ai-Chu-Rekh, a master of the Tuvan shamanic tradition, whose teaching gave her a direct and embodied relationship with sound as a vehicle for visioning, healing, and communion with what is larger than the self.
She is the creator of BodYnvocations© – a kinesthetic practice rooted in the Four Elements and the universal cycles of nature – and has been one of the lead trainers of SoulCollage® internationally, training hundreds of facilitators around the world. She has taught and presented in the United States, Canada, Italy, Brazil, Switzerland, France, Taiwan, and Israel.
Sot0 – the School of the Origins – is the synthesis of all of it: every tradition she has studied, every method she has practiced, every threshold she has crossed. It began in 2014 with ten people and a month-long experiment in a farmhouse in Italy. It is still, at its core, a living experiment because it is new and personal for everyone that enters it.
Midwife of Creativity
Beth Marcil has been making things with her hands for as long as she can remember. What began as a child’s instinct – that making was good for the spirit, that it opened a quiet space to listen – became a lifelong vocation and a form of service.
An honor graduate of Ringling College of Art and Design, Beth has worked as a professional artist and creative guide for over thirty years. She set down her roots in Maui, Hawaii, where the rhythms of the natural world – storms rolling in from the sea, the sudden return of silence – have shaped her understanding of creative process as inseparable from the cycles of life.
Her work is built on a single conviction: that creativity is not a talent reserved for the few, but a birthright waiting to be reclaimed. In her hands, a paint brush, a pair of scissors, a collaged image, become tools for remembering who you are. Process over product. Intuition over technique. The child self and the adult self, meeting in the middle.
Beth is a certified SoulCollage® Facilitator and Trainer and brings to her work a deep literacy in mixed media, visual journaling, and intuitive painting. In the context of this retreat, she is not here to teach a method. She is here to hold the creative space open – to introduce techniques when useful, to encourage when the inner critic is loud, and to sit with you in the particular silence that comes just before something wants to be made.
About Beth Marcil