We offer events, classes and therapies rooted in lived experience and deep practice. Each of us brings a unique workflow; one refined through devotion, discipline and years of focused work in our chosen field. Between us, you’ll find support across somatic healing, emotional integration, trauma resolution, nervous system repair, energy work, relational therapy, physical health, and more.
Our aim is your evolution: to help you uncover what it means to be fully human—and, over time, what it means to become coherent. The ethos of all of our events is “Come as you are, take what you need & give what you can“.
Basic activities like walking briskly, breathing fresh air and sharing thoughts and feelings are extremely powerful for self-regulation, and also massively overlooked by our culture because we have lost our way, discarded all of the wisdom of the past and replaced it with fast food, dopamine loops and performative living for others rather than for ourselves.
No matter the time of year, nature is always just around the corner waiting for us to immerse ourselves – and we are very lucky to have the beautiful Forest of Dean to soak up all of our emotional charge whenever we want to let something go. Come along to walk and talk with us. It can be about emotions, it can be about health, it can be about anything – provided that it is authentic and relevant to being human (this is not the place for masks or performance). If you have the courage to drop the mask and be real, you are welcome. If you just want to see what someone else dropping the mask looks like, you are welcome too. If you want to learn how to be authentic, you are welcome – and finally, if you are already happily authentic then you are very welcome!
We meet at Speech House Woods carpark at 10am on a Sunday and just start wandering through the trees. No set route, no set time, but usually it’s about 10km and takes about 2 hours. The challenges we all face are not unique, and often what’s good for the goose is also good for the gander so you might get some benefit just from coming along and listening. As a group, our focus is on the areas we all have in common – our core human needs – and our mission is to understand and spread the truth about what makes us tick on a fundamental level, and how we can maximise our experience for the best life possible.
Walks are led by Thom, who has a background in real wellbeing and personal transformation. He’s walked the path away from the mental and emotional mess of modern culture that many are only just waking up to—and now he’s here to guide you out of your comfort zone and into the forest. We are joined by some of our other therapists, healers and members from time to time depending on their own availability, so you never know who you might get to talk to 🙂
Join AONOS Lab at Flaxley Schoolrooms for a hypnogogic journey of light and sound that takes you deeply into yourself using a high frequency strobe light and high quality sound system. Light therapy is a powerful therapeutic tool that can entrain the brain to deep states of meditation and relaxation, without you needing to have any prior skills or knowledge of this area.
The soundtrack is carefully crafted using binaural beats, specific tones, and frequencies all layered under beautiful electronic music, chants, drones and singing bowls that is in perfect sync with the light and locked in to the tempo of your brainwaves. The result is entraining your whole energy field into a deep, pure state of altered consciousness. Think of it like a rave for your soul!
We start by getting you into a calm Alpha brainwave state, then we go down into Delta to fully relax the body before the light takes us on a journey into the Theta realms and, finally, we ground ourselves back in the physical reality with movement to create Beta waves, and sharing of our experiences.
Everyone has different effects. Some see colours, some have visions, others just feel more coherent and relaxed afterwards. These sessions are at the cutting edge of the intersection of spirituality and technology, and have proven to be extremely powerful and transformative so, if you’re tired of the same old gong-bath yoga-class cacao-sipping spiritual grifters, come join us for a truly authentic altered states experience.
7.00 Arrival & setup
7.15 Breathwork
7.30 Yoga Nidra
7.45 Theta-gamma light session
8.30 Movement & sharing circle
9.00 Finish
Come as you are,
Take what you need,
Give what you can…
Facilitators have decades of experience of group work, altered states, trauma recovery and personal growth and development. You are in safe hands, and since you will be lying down for over an hour you need to bring a little comfort zone with you. A yoga or camping mat, pillow and blanket are going to be essential for your enjoyment of the event.
Unfortunately due to a lack of solid research and guidance on the subject we are unable to host anyone who suffers from epilepsy or any other neurological condition that requires ongoing medication due to the potential of strobe lighting to induce seizures. This event and its organisers have no intention to diagnose or treat any specific medical condition.
A four-week introduction to Buddhist Stillness Meditation — taught in a straight, grounded, no-nonsense way.
This course is for people who want to understand what their mind is actually doing, why it kicks off the way it does, and how to build the kind of inner stability that makes life noticeably easier.
You’ll learn:
- the mechanics of suffering (craving, resistance, distraction)
- what real stillness is and why it matters
- how the breath becomes the anchor that steadies the whole system
- how to work with your mind without fighting it
- how to recognise the patterns that keep you stuck
- what the Buddha actually taught about attention and calm
- why your mind flicks, jumps and spirals — and how to stop feeding it
Each session includes short, clear explanations followed by practice periods.
These aren’t long silent sits — you’ll get guided, real-time instruction, practical corrections, and direct pointers you can actually use.
There’s no performance here.
No “spiritual voice.”
No sharing circle.
Just the practice, taught the way it’s taught in real Buddhist environments — simple, honest, effective.
This course is suitable for complete beginners and for anyone fed up with fluffy mindfulness apps and looking for something real.
About the teacher
Thom from AONOS Lab has over 15 years of meditation experience, beginning with traditional Buddhist training and extended periods of practice in the UK, Europe, Indonesia and Northern Thailand.
He studied within the USADA meditation lineage and the forest monastery tradition, learning directly from teachers who emphasised discipline, concentration, stillness, and the clear seeing of mind and suffering. This included long retreats, intensive practice, and exposure to the no-frills, brutally honest style of monastic training — one meal a day, sleeping on a hard floor, walking and sitting to the point of exhaustion.
After returning to the West, Thom spent a decade integrating those insights into ordinary life — work, relationships, stress, responsibility. Through lived experience rather than theory, he developed a way of teaching that strips away the mysticism, jargon and spiritual posturing that usually surrounds meditation.
He has since gone on to harness technology in highly creative and effective ways to alter consciousness and support personal growth, but has never forgotten his roots on the cushion — watching thoughts, feelings and sensations come and go between each breath.
His approach is simple:
- understand the mechanics of mind
- train attention
- calm the system
- see things more clearly
- stop suffering unnecessarily
Expect clarity over comfort, straight talk instead of spiritual clichés, and meditation taught the way it’s actually practised in Buddhist environments — not the watered-down Western version.
Please note:
The course fee is £20 for all four sessions, covering venue, marketing and transaction costs.
In keeping with the Buddhist tradition, Thom teaches dharma on a donation (dana) basis. You’re welcome to assign your own value to the teaching and express that at the end of the course if you wish.
This is a course, not a drop-in.
You cannot join after it has begun, and you’ll be expected to attend each week — later sessions won’t make sense without the earlier ones.
RESET is an evening for people who know they’re changing — and who can feel the last remnants of who they used to be still lodged in their body. This work sits in a category of its own. It’s not massage, not therapy, not meditation, and not energy healing in the way most people imagine it. It’s the missing interface between who you are becoming and the body that still remembers everything you’ve survived.
John’s approach blends precise postural intelligence with intuitive energetic release, creating a kind of shift most people don’t realise is possible: your system stops running the past as its blueprint.
Not metaphorically, but physiologically, emotionally and neurologically, the “old you” stops being the default.
Most inner work only operates at the level of insight and intention. RESET goes underneath all that into the micro-bracing, the held breath, the collapsed presence, the survival reflexes that live in the tissues and quietly dictate your reactions. When these patterns release, something extraordinary happens; your body stops defending an identity you no longer believe in.
This is why the work lands so deeply.
This is why it sticks.
And this is why people walk away looking and feeling like they’ve brought themselves back online.
Expect an evening that feels strangely familiar and completely new at the same time. There’s no forcing, no catharsis, no drama. The system reorganises because it finally gets the signal it’s been waiting for: you’re safe now — it’s time to update.
As John works with the field of the group, you’ll feel space returning where tension lived, breath dropping into places you forgot existed, and a sense of internal stillness that isn’t “calm” — it’s presence, the kind you recognise immediately because it feels like the person you were always meant to be.
If you’ve done the mindset work but still feel held back…
If you’re evolving faster on the inside than your body can keep up with…
If you’re tired of reacting from reflexes that belong to an older version of you…
Then this session isn’t just helpful — it’s essential. It gives you back the part of the transformation process nobody teaches:
a body that actually matches your future.
Come and experience what real alignment feels like when it isn’t posture, what real release feels like when it isn’t emotional collapse and, what real growth feels like when your whole system finally agrees to move forward.
This is the somatic foundation for the kind of evolution Beyond The River facilitates with all of its events and gatherings.
For more details of Johns work and services he offers on a one to one basis, take a look at his website:
www.rediscover-freedom.com
Past events
