Based on the beautiful Kapiti Coast, near Wellington, NZ, we organise storytelling workshops and events.

Kapiti island

‘A story is like water that you heat for your bath. It takes messages between the fire and your skin. It lets them meet, and it cleans you! Very few can sit down in the middle of the fire itself’… Rumi

We employ local teachers and we also bring teachers from elsewhere in NZ and internationally to teach us here.

Our workshop titles have included
‘Find your Voice – Tell Your Story’,
‘Storyweaving for Matariki’,
‘Listening at the Crossroads – the power of listening and story’, ’Weaving the Story Spell’,
‘Felting and Telling a Nativity Story for Advent’,
‘East of the Sun and West of the Moon – a journey into the land of faerie’,
‘The Inner Story – welcoming our emotions’,
‘Dyeing for Spring – crafting and telling spring stories’
and ‘Speaking and Listening with Heart in Mind’.

Some of our workshops are designed to help you learn to tell stories whilst others help us understand ourselves more deeply through story.

Stories are food for the soul, nourishment for the spirit and rest for the body and mind.

If you have the chance to go to a storytelling evening yet feel too tired—go anyway! You’ll feel much better and sleep well. Judith Frost-Evans.

Sharing lunch at a workshop

Stories work deeply into our inner being. There each character can find its home. The part that wants to sleep in safety may need three challenges to ‘wake up’ so we find it is the third son who wins through. That part of us we find hard to accept may be ill treated by the ‘stepmother’ until we learn to ‘stand up’ to her.  A prince and princess in a traditional tale may represent our inner masculine and feminine and so on…

When we welcome you into the Belly of the Whale our intention is to offer you the opportunity to nourish and explore your inner life through story images and to offer you the opportunity to learn skills so that you can share the stories that resonate with you in your community, your family or your professional life.