Return HomeThe Ones Who Hold The Circle
Meet YourFacilitators
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The Representative of the Phoenix
Holding the space of the divine feminine—guiding you through release, remembrance, and rebirth.# MEET ATHENA PHOENIX *Founder & Guide of The Return to Source*Athena did not create this retreat from theory. She created it from memory—the memory held within her own body, shaped by an experience most people encounter only through accounts of near-death experiences, and one she lived not once, but twice.Athena experienced herself leaving her body completely—rising above it, seeing herself lying below, and moving through a passage of darkness toward a light she could not yet understand.What awaited her beyond that passage was not simply light, but a vast field of remembrance.She encountered the history of her own soul, the hidden truths and quiet illusions she had carried without fully recognizing them, and finally, the threshold of a place she knew immediately—a state of profound illumination, unity, and return. It was a place her own soul had shown her through lucid dreams since childhood.She stood at its threshold.And she consciously chose to return.Not because she feared what waited beyond it, but because she understood that her life—and her work here—was not yet complete.That choice became the seed of everything that would later become **The Return to Source**.Over time, Athena came to understand her experience not simply as a near-death passage, but as a profound rebirth—a journey that seemed to mirror, in reverse, the passage into embodied life itself: moving through darkness, returning through the sacred architecture of the body, and emerging with a depth of awareness she had not carried before.From this realization came another: perhaps such a journey of remembrance does not require coming close to death.Perhaps, in a gentler and consciously held form, it can be entered through the willingness to turn inward—with guidance, safety, presence, and surrender.This understanding became the foundation of Athena’s work.Her path has shaped her into a steady and discerning presence—someone who does not force or rush another person’s process but instead creates the space for what is authentic to emerge in its own time.Years of devotion to the study of the body, consciousness, energy, and spirit have given her many languages through which to understand the same truths her own crossing revealed. She is a Doctor in Natural Medicine with a focus related to Quantum Consciousness, a practitioner of Qi Gong, and a Priestess within the Order of Melchizedek.Where her near-death experiences gave her the map, her training gave her the tools to guide others through their own inner journey with greater care, gentleness, grounding, and embodied awareness.Athena created The Return to Source from one central intention:That others should not have to come close to death in order to remember who they are.Across seven days of shadow, fire, remembrance, sacred union, and guided return, she walks beside you—not simply as someone who has studied this path, but as someone who has travelled to its furthest edge, consciously chosen to return, and devoted her life to understanding what that journey revealed.**The Return to Source is an invitation to make that journey while fully alive—to descend within to your true source of power, to remember what has been forgotten, and return more consciously to yourself.
The Representative of the Dragon
Holding the space of the divine masculine—guiding you through stillness, strength and awakening.# MEET JASON WARICHAK *Co-Facilitator of The Return to Source*Jason Warichak is a co-facilitator of **The Return to Source**, whose path bridges embodiment, spirituality, masculine and feminine wisdom, and the unseen patterns that shape the way we live, relate, and transform.Through his own journey of healing childhood, generational, emotional, and physical trauma, Jason has explored trauma release, movement, meditation, sound, energy work, ceremony, shamanic traditions, and esoteric systems of consciousness.His path has never been purely theoretical. It has been lived—breath by breath, layer by layer—through a willingness to meet what many instinctively avoid.Where some spiritual paths seek to transcend the body in search of something higher, Jason has been drawn in the opposite direction: deeper into the body, deeper into breath, deeper into sensation. His work is rooted in the understanding that profound wisdom is not found by abandoning the physical but by learning to listen to it.This devotion has shaped him into a grounded and steady presence—someone who does not rush another person’s process but creates enough space for what is real to emerge in its own time.His work with sound, ceremony, embodiment, and shamanic traditions has taught him that meaningful transformation rarely comes through force. More often, it comes through resonance, rhythm, presence, and the patient creation of conditions in which what has been held or suppressed can finally begin to move.Jason resonates deeply with the archetypes of **the Hierophant** and **KIN 106—the White Lunar Worldbridger**.He sees his role as that of a bridge: between body and spirit, masculine and feminine, the seen and unseen, the known and the unknown, and between who we have learned to be and who we are becoming.The Hierophant speaks to the gift of translation—bringing what is sacred, symbolic, or unseen into a form that can be understood, lived, and embodied.The Worldbridger speaks to connection—the quiet work of bringing together what has been divided so that it can begin to move as one.Together, these archetypes reflect the way Jason holds space: not from a distance and not from a position above those he guides, but alongside them—close enough to witness, grounded enough to remain steady, and present enough to support what is unfolding without trying to control it.Throughout the seven-day journey of **The Return to Source**, Jason helps hold the container for shadow work, somatic release, yoga and embodiment, sound, ceremony, masculine-feminine exploration, and integration.His role is not to provide answers for participants, but to help create the conditions in which they can hear themselves more clearly, recognize the patterns shaping their lives, cross their own inner thresholds, and bring what they discover back into embodied life.His presence throughout the retreat is less that of a teacher standing at the front of the room and more that of a steady current—one that helps others find their footing as they move through unfamiliar terrain within themselves.