
Returning to Your Body, Mind and Heart | 25th – 26th July 2026
step out of the everyday and into a space where you can listen to your body’s wisdom — leaving restored and inspired.
Tamalpa UK Summer Retreat
In Person with Lian Wilson MSMT/MSME
25th–26th July 2026 | Sandgate, Kent Coast
If you love to dance — whether in a studio, in your own practice, or barefoot in your kitchen — and feel curious about the wisdom your body holds, we warmly invite you to join us for our annual Summer Weekend Retreat on the beautiful Kent coast.
This is a space to pause, breathe, move, and reconnect.
At Tamalpa UK, we believe creativity is not separate from life — it is life. When we move, create, and express from our lived experience, we access a deeper source of wellbeing and personal growth.
Rather than striving for performance or perfect form, we explore an aesthetic rooted in authenticity — the beauty of what is real, present, and true in the moment.
Over two nourishing days, you’ll be introduced to key Tamalpa Life/Art Process® tools through:
- Guided somatic movement explorations
- Creative practices and mark-making
- Reflective journaling
- Individual and shared inquiry
Skilfully facilitated by Lian Wilson, this retreat offers a supportive environment to explore your inner landscape, ignite your creativity, and reconnect with what matters most to you.
Dedicate a weekend for yourself to feel recharged, inspired, and equipped with practical creative tools to support your current life goals — grounded in the intelligence of your own body.
“I found the Tamalpa tools helped me to cut through the clutter of everyday life and be kind to myself for a couple of days. I had time to relax and evaluate what was important to me and create some positive ideas to make space in my life for the things that have real meaning to me, amazing!” ~ Retreat participant
The Retreat is a dynamic embodied experience of the Tamalpa Life Art Process®️ and introuduction to the work of Anna Halprin and Daria Halprin. It can be used as a stand alone experience or a an introduction to the larger Tamalpa trainings.
Join us this July for an opportunity to unwind, relax and recharge, physically, emotionally and mentally, facilitated in a safe and compassionate way.
No dance or art experience necessary.
Date: 25th & 26th July 2026
Time: Saturday 25th 10.00am – 5.00pm
Sunday 26th10.00am – 4.30pm
Cost : £210 (concession rates £175 available)
Example of a typical retreat day:
Morning session 1
10.00am – 13.30pm (includes a short break)
• Arrival and welcome
• Guided somatic movement explorations – ‘Arriving in Your Body’
• Creative drawing & writing explorations – ‘Identifying what your body needs’
13.30: Lunch Break – 1 hour
Afternoon session 2
14.00pm – 17.00pm (includes a short break)
• Guided movement explorations – ‘Reigniting Life Vitality’
• Introduction to a key basic Tamalpa Life Art Process® tool
• Further expressive art explorations – ‘Identifying Life Resources’
• Digestive quite time
• Closing activities
17:00: Finish
What you will need:
- Note book and pen
- Layers of clothing to keep you warm between art activities
- Bottle of water
- Travel Mug
Please note all movement and activities will take place inside the Chichester Memorial Hall in Sandgate. For further information please contact us via our website: www.tamalpa-uk.org
Tel: 01303 488 538
What Is the Tamalpa Life/Art Process®?
The Tamalpa Life/Art Process® is a creative and embodied approach to personal and social transformation, developed at the Tamalpa Institute in California by Founders Anna Halprin and Daria Halprin.
At its heart is a simple yet powerful belief: the body holds our lived experience — and movement is its primary language.
Through movement and dance, creative expression, somatic awareness, and reflective practices, we explore the wisdom of the body and the imagination. Rather than analysing life from a distance, we embody it — listening to what our sensations, gestures, impulses and images reveal.
Each art form deepens and informs the others, allowing insight to unfold organically.
In the Tamalpa approach, movement is not about technique or performance — it is about authenticity. Movement is life in action. It is personality and soul made visible. Dance becomes the integration of body, feeling, and imagination in motion.
We understand that when we move, we access more than muscles and bones — we access memory, emotion, story, resilience and possibility. Through this embodied exploration, we can:
- Strengthen our relationship to ourselves
- Engage more consciously with social and cultural realities
- Support healing and integration
- Cultivate creativity as a living practice
The Tamalpa Life/Art Process® invites people of all backgrounds — not just trained dancers or artists — to live more fully embodied and creatively engaged lives.
When we reconnect to movement, we reconnect to ourselves.
Image credits: Tamalpa UK, Camiila Tiefensee-Schroeder & Cottonbro Studio

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).

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