Seeing with Your Heart Constellations
Through the Lion’s Gate Portal

Free Your Body. Reclaim Your Soul. Walk Your True Path.
August 6-9, 2026
Salt Spring Island, BC

A Seeing With Your Heart Constellations Retreat
August 6-9, 2026
Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada

Facilitated by Emily Blefeld, Dan Cohen, Zsoka Scurtescu, and Marius Scurtescu
Hosted by Zsoka and Marius Scurtescu

There is a fire within you that’s ancient, unstoppable, and utterly holy.

It’s the spark that lights your way when the world goes dark. It’s the ember you rekindle when you feel dull or lost. It’s the blaze that burns fueled by desire.

In these challenging times your fire may have been dimmed by the heaviness of family patterns, heartbreak, burnout, or fear. The Seeing with Your Heart Lion’s Gate retreat on Salt Spring Island is calling you to reignite and fan the flames of your heart so you can bridge the gap between your highest joy and your everyday life.

Manifest in Community, Among Breathtaking Island Nature!

High summer opens a portal…

Lion’s Gate comes every August 8 when the sun, Earth, and the star Sirius rise into an alignment long honored across cultures as a natural threshold when the heat of high summer fuels intention, embodiment, and lifeforce. As the earth fruits with vitality, days stretch luminous and the body soaks in the nourishment of starlight. The summer bonfires signal the time for ignition of big dreams, initiatives and life movements.

If you are seeking more love, more abundance and more fulfillment in your life, the Lion’s Gate portal is the best time of year to connect your intention to the stars. It’s a call from the universe itself: begin again, more aligned, more awake, and more fully alive than ever before. It is a starlit ceremony where you are invited to step into truth, purpose, and radiant sovereignty.

What makes this retreat even more significant is its timing: the gathering takes place in a Universal Year 1 (2026) in numerology. Year 1 marks the beginning of a new nine-year cycle. It carries the vibration of new beginnings, soulful initiation, and bold creative emergence.

In this retreat, we gather to light the fire and tend that flame.

Held in the field of Seeing with Your Heart Alchemical Constellations, we gather in a masterfully held circle where invisible ancestral patterns are revealed, acknowledged, and alchemized. What belongs to the past is released and the burdens of past traumas transform into blessings. The body feels lighter and lifeforce becomes freely available in a grounded, sustainable way.

With clear intention and sacred community, we’ll lift our hearts and amplify the field inviting the Universe to rise up and meet us.

Imagine…

…feeling so much vitality that your relationships, work, eros and bliss all light up with the fire of your soul.

…feeling safe to be seen, safe to be big, and safe to take up space.

…speaking with authenticity, ease, and an unwavering connection to your truth.

…effortless opportunities arising because your mere presence is a powerful spark of your inner radiance.

…waking with a deep sense of purpose pulsing through your veins, so everything you touch feels aligned, alive, and infused with meaning.

…living fully expressed and unapologetically you.

The Roar. The Radiance. The Unshakable Light.

Through Seeing with Your Heart Constellations, rituals for infinite abundance, energetic clearing, and creative expression, we will:

  • Reignite lifeforce that was constrained by loyalty, fear, or restraints.
  • Release ancestral patterns that limit expression and creative imagination.
  • Strengthen your capacity to live, lead, and create from your heart’s intelligence.
  • Anchor your gifts in the body to move in the world with integrity and warmth.

We gather at the height of summer to remember that our bodies are fueled by radiance. This is your moment to shine, to generate your own heat and to send a beam of light to illuminate your future self.

Your spark is here to light your path forward and spread the fire of love into our world. 

Enter the Portal, Ascend to Your Highest Timeline!

The Land is Calling

Held in the natural sanctuary of Salt Spring Island, this retreat unfolds amid the profound beauty and wild stillness of ancient cedar groves, ocean winds, and moss-covered stones. Known for its artistic community, sacred land, and slower rhythm of life, Salt Spring invites you to slow down, reconnect, and be nourished by the earth. The land here carries an old knowing of the Coast Salish peoples who have long tended its spirit, and of the settlers whose arrival disrupted sacred rhythms. Though the island hums with beauty and creativity, its soil holds stories… some celebrated while others were silenced. Together, we will call in a field where transformation lives in the water, the trees, and the breath. With reverence and deep listening, we welcome what is ready to be seen, healed, and held.

Let the land, the ocean winds, and the ancient trees guide you home to the original light that lives within you.

Getting to Salt Spring Island

Salt Spring Island is easily reached from major travel hubs in British Columbia. Whether you arrive through Vancouver International Airport (YVR), Victoria International Airport (YYJ), Seattle International Airport (SEA) or even via the Black Ball Ferry from Washington State, you’ll find beautiful, scenic routes that bring you across the coastal waters and forest to our island home.

Book Your Accommodations Early

Salt Spring Island is a beloved destination year-round, and accommodations fill up quickly, especially during the summer. With the Lion’s Gate portal and peak travel time converging, availability may become limited much earlier than expected.

We lovingly encourage you to secure your accommodations as soon as you register for the retreat.

The retreat location is approximately 8 minutes south of Ganges.

If you’d like a second opinion on what or where to book, you’re warmly welcome to reach out directly to Zsoka, who is happy to help you find an option that feels aligned and supportive.

About The Facilitators

Zsoka

Emily Blefeld, LICSW, is an internationally recognized Systemic Family Constellations trainer, facilitator, and psychotherapist. With more than two decades of experience, she specializes in supporting change-makers, healers, and entrepreneurs to dismantle outdated paradigms, narratives, and ancient codes that limit their growth. Known for her extraordinary intuitive gifts and ability to commune with the ancestral realm, Emily skillfully attunes to the subtle dimensions of consciousness to help individuals release intergenerational trauma and live with greater authenticity, express their love more fully, and align with their life’s purpose.

Emily’s professional approach integrates psychotherapy, coaching, and mentoring with advanced methods in Systemic Family Constellations, Core Energetics, Compassionate Spirit Release, and Women’s Mystery Traditions. She holds a Master’s of Social Work from the University of Minnesota and is certified in a range of therapeutic modalities that support holistic healing and transformation. Emily has presented at premier institutions including the Omega Institute, Kripalu, and the North American Systemic Constellations Conference, and served on the faculty of the North American Constellation Intensive. In addition to her private practice, she leads trainings and workshops across the U.S. and internationally in countries including Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Hungary, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Bali, Germany, and Africa.

When she’s not guiding clients or leading workshops, Emily walks the ocean shore of Aquinnah, where she resides—gathering inspiration from the tides and the whispers of the land. She receives nourishment from ritual, gratitude, and the simple act of greeting each new day with movement under the rising sun, offering thanks for the unseen worlds that shape her path. Rooted in reverence and alive with boundless energy, Emily is frequently found in heartfelt gatherings with friends and family or joyfully supporting the creative visions of others. A natural night owl, Emily does some of her most inspired work under moonlight, when the veils are thin and her love of the liminal hums with possibility. Whether guiding a constellation or shaping magazine cuttings into soulful vision, Emily brings deep presence, mythic insight, and wild reverence for the mystery that connects us all. Her artistry bridges healing and imagination, inviting others to join her in the sacred dance between worlds.

Oana

Dan Cohen, PhD specializes in helping individuals, couples, and families heal the effects of inherited trauma and fulfill their deepest longings for love, connection, and meaningful impact. He has a particular passion for addressing generational trauma passed down through war, genocide, and the legacy of slavery. Blending a near-encyclopedic knowledge of world history, mythology, and culture with an uncanny psychic awareness, Dan offers profound, transformative healing that restores peace of mind and expands new possibilities for life’s flourishing.

Before earning his PhD in psychology and training directly with Bert Hellinger as a Constellations facilitator, Dan was internationally recognized for his work in violence prevention and conflict resolution. As a former Strategic Planning consultant to the Director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, he pivoted away from national security to become a founding member of the City of Cambridge(MA) Peace Commission in 1981. For over four decades, he has devoted himself to understanding the violent and hostile urges that shadow the human heart.

Since 2000, Dan has been a leading voice in integrating personal, ancestral, and spirit consciousness into therapeutic practice. He holds a PhD in psychology from Saybrook University and an MBA from Boston University. Dan is the author of I Carry Your Heart in My Heart: Family Constellations in Prison and numerous scholarly articles and book chapters. He has led Seeing with Your Heart workshops and training courses across 19 countries in Europe, Asia, Australia/New Zealand, South America, Africa, and throughout the United States.

When he’s not with clients or teaching, Dan can be found writing reflections on a recent class, chasing the latest theories on consciousness, or reading scientific research most people wouldn’t touch without a glossary. He walks daily along the shore of Martha’s Vineyard with his dog Ruby, listening for eternal truths in the ocean wind—and occasionally offering dry commentary in return.

A devoted father, partner, and adoring grandfather, Dan lights up most when his family and dear friends are near. In his world, brilliance and humility walk side by side—stalking wise words and wisecracks in equal measure. A longtime Red Sox fan, he’s intimately acquainted with hope and heartbreak—and still shows up to every season with unwavering enthusiasm tempered by just the right amount of irony.

Zsoka

Zsoka Scurtescu: As stars paint stories across the sky, our family systems paint stories in our hearts—sacred constellations holding keys to healing, transformation, and purpose. Zsoka, a gifted guide and certified Family and Systemic Constellations Facilitator, gently supports you in connecting with the stories of your ancestors to transmute intergenerational trauma and awaken soul-level shifts.

A lifelong seeker and multidimensional healer, Zsoka walks between worlds. She is a Certified Feng Shui Consultant, tuning into the energetic blueprint of your home and workspaces to restore harmony and flow. Like acupuncture for the soul of your environment, her work opens space for clarity, abundance, and vitality in every area of your life.

Zsoka is also a Certified Personal Energy (Aura) Reader with a depth of experience in the Akashic Records, channeling insight and messages from your higher self. Her readings bring illumination, clarity, and energetic realignment, gently revealing hidden patterns and soul wisdom.

Rooted in Earth-honoring traditions, Zsoka is a devoted Moondancer and Sacred Pipe Carrier, initiated in 2018 after four years dancing under the stars in the OllinthlahuiMetztli Moondance in Teotihuacan, Mexico. Carrying the Nahuatl name Tezca Atlzin ~ Reflection of the Water, she holds the sacred Temazcal (sweatlodge) medicine with reverence and devotion, weaving ancestral ritual into her daily life and ceremonial offerings.

Zsoka’s work is grounded and mystical, shaped by years in the corporate world as a teacher, designer, and executive assistant before she answered the deeper call of her soul. Her early career in business and web programming provided the structural foundation through which her spiritual gifts now flow with clarity and potency. Like the turtle, she helps you access steady ground while courageously navigating the waters of your own transformation.

Rooted on Salt Spring Island, Zsoka lives with her husband in a warm, vibrant home embraced by ocean, gardens, and a close-knit community. Together, they are devoted parents to two young adult children. Zsoka’s days are steeped in connection—to the Earth, to the ancestors, to artistry and spirit—and she carries this living embodiment into every session, ceremony, and retreat she offers.

Zsoka offers Family Constellations, Feng Shui consultations, and Aura Readings, as well as multi-session programs, and powerful retreats to guide you toward your soul’s North Star.

Oana

Marius Scurtescu was raised in a small rural village in Romania, where his deep love for the land first took root. As a young adult, he moved to Canada, following a spark of curiosity and a spirit of adventure that continues to guide his path.

For several decades, Marius has worked in the high-tech world—a field he genuinely enjoys—where he has specialized in online identity. Interestingly, this professional focus has mirrored his lifelong inquiry into inner identity, soul-level truth, and what it means to truly know oneself.
Alongside his tech career, Marius has walked a dedicated path of introspection, nature connection, ancestral remembrance, and self-healing. He has been immersed in shamanic practice for nearly 14 years, integrating spiritual insight with everyday life.

Marius now lives on Salt Spring Island with his wife Zsoka and their two young adult children, in a home surrounded by forest, ocean, and community. Together, Marius and Zsoka host retreats and lead Family Constellations groups, weaving their shared gifts into spaces of healing, insight, and deep remembrance.

He brings a deeply grounded and calm presence to everything he does. With an extraordinary ability to hold space, see the larger picture, and bridge the borders between seemingly disparate worlds, Marius offers a rare kind of wisdom—both modern and ancestral, both analytical and soulful.

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Align with your higher path, remember your origin light, and activate the next evolution of your being.

Hear what people are saying about Seeing With Your Heart programs…

Program Schedule

Thursday, August 6, 2026
9 – 9:30 am arrival
9:30 am – 12:30 pm Morning Program
12:30 – 1:30 pm Lunch
1:30 – 2 pm Break
2 – 5:30 pm Afternoon Program
5:30 – 7 pm Dinner
7 – 9 pm Evening Program

 

Saturday, Aug 8, 2026
9 – 9:30 am arrival
9:30 am – 12:30 pm Morning Program
12:30 – 1:30 pm Lunch
1:30 – 2 pm Break
2 – 5:30 pm Afternoon Program
5:30 – 7 pm Dinner
7 – 9 pm Evening Program

Friday, Aug 7, 2026
9 – 9:30 am arrival
9:30 am – 12:30 pm Morning Program
12:30 – 1:30 pm Lunch
1:30 – 2 pm Break
2 – 5:30 pm Afternoon Program
5:30 – 7 pm Dinner
7 – 9 pm Evening Program

 

Sunday, Aug 9, 2026
9 – 9:30 am arrival
9:30 am – 12:30 pm Morning Program

*Please note that the schedule is subject to change.

If you have any logistical questions about this retreat, please contact Zsoka.

With Ancestors Alongside, Experience Seeing With Your Heart