In Person Workshop at ESALEN INSTITUTE: Movement as Metaphor in Life and Art with Daria Halprin
March 9–13, 2026 at ESALEN INSTITUTE.
To register and for more information visit the ESALEN website.
This is an IN PERSON workshop.
Everything I have experienced in my life, I take into my art. —Anna Halprin
What if everything you’ve experienced in your life could be danced? What if an image drawn carried a message for healing? What if a dance inspired a drawing that sparks words for a poem and the poem transforms a difficult story that needs to be told into beauty?
Grounded in the Halprin Life Art Process™, this workshop’s approach enlivens dialogues between body and imagination, life experience and art making, and creativity and healing. With creative explorations of the expressive arts — movement, drawing, and poetic writing — participants will be guided in creative encounters with the symbolic and metaphoric life of the body.
Each day begins with somatic awareness and movement to awaken and attune the physical body. From there, you’ll navigate your personal material through a model that interweaves movement/dance, visual art, poetic narrative, performative ritual, and witnessing.
Together, we’ll work with Body Part Mapping and the Self Portrait Process: visual and narrative maps to lead us into the themes, memories, and dreams that inform our lives. Individual and collective life narratives will provide material to generate encounters and inspire embodied models for change.
Participants can expect to explore:
- Models of a practice to facilitate embodied art-making for individuals and groups.
- Examples of movement and art making as a healing force.
- A communication tool that supports giving and receiving feedback.
Please make sure to bring a writer’s journal and a box of varied and well-supplied Craypas pastels.
The workshop is designed for everyone, with no previous experience in dance/art needed. For further information on the work please visit www.tamalpa.org and see Tamalpa Media.
Guests:
Somatic Artist/Educator – Natan Daskal
Musician – Miles Lassi
Recommended reading: The Expressive Body in Life, Art & Therapy by Daria Halprin
Member
Tamalpa InstituteEvent MemberTamalpa Institute, founded in 1978 by dance and expressive arts therapy pioneers Anna Halprin and Daria Halprin, is a non-profit organization internationally recognized for its ground breaking training programs & workshops in a unique approach to movement based expressive arts education and therapy.
We offer expressive arts training programs and workshops for healing, education, and social transformation. Our innovative work has been brought into classrooms, businesses, hospitals, mental health care settings, hospices, prisons, and disadvantaged communities, among others. The Tamalpa Life/Art Process®, which combines movement, dance, drawing, and writing, has influenced the fields of dance, environmental design, theater, movement therapy, and art-based psychology. Our approach is based on the theory that people’s own life experiences are the most meaningful sources for artistic expression and social change.
Tamalpa has worked with over 10,000 people from more than 50 countries, including students, educators, therapists, artists, social workers, and health care providers. Today our movement-based, expressive-arts training programs are ranked among the best in the world. And our public and social engagement programs serve diverse communities from all walks of life, including children, elders, and virtually everyone in between.
Tamalpa Institute’s programs are recognized by the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association (ISMETA) and the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association (IEATA).
