Only 10 6 Spots Available for June 6th! Registration Deadline:
Wondering how to nurture body, mind, heart, and soul? Looking for relief from chronic pain and fatigue? Curious about practices that alleviate anxiety, overwhelm, or disconnection from Self and Soul?
Join us for Tend – Grounding Body, Nurturing Soul, a transformative day-long retreat that invites us to tend in a deeply embodied way. Experience an integrative exploration of gentle somatic movement and compassionate self-discovery surrounded by the beauty of nature.
Through the expert guidance of Alana Burton (Somatic Reawakenings), and Michelle Copithorne & Sandra McDonald (Still Lake Listening), you’ll receive tools and practices for tending your whole self (your soma), grounding your body and nurturing your essence.
Throughout the day, you will:
- Tend Through Movement – Experience the profound benefits of somatic movement, a practice that fosters a deep connection between your brain and your lived, first-person experience of self. As a form of neuromuscular re-education, somatic movement invites you into slow, mindful exploration, where you can begin to uncover and release habitual tension patterns that contribute to pain and restriction. By actively engaging the brain in movement, your natural coordination, balance, and strength can re-emerge. These movements are accessible to all, supporting a growing sense of ease, freedom, and connection within your soma. (Please be prepared to engage in this gentle floor-based practice lying on your back, front, or sides.)
- Return Home To You – Cultivate a deeper understanding of your True Self, your essence. Through curious, spacious, and safely-facilitated interactive discussions and practices, we will tend to your inner landscape through noticing, naming, and nurturing. You will be companioned as you explore your experience of what it is to be a flourishing human; a human becoming.
When
- Saturday, June 6, 2026, 9:30am – 4:00pm
Where
- SpiritWood Retreat, 240139 Priddis Greens Drive West, Priddis, Alberta, T0L 1W4
Who is this for
- Those looking for a day to pause, to ground themselves, and tend to their body and soul.
- Anyone seeking relief from physical or spiritual pain.
- All wishing to bolster what it is for them to tend, to flourish, to thrive.
Cost
- $250.00 per person – this includes all sessions, lunch, tea/coffee, light refreshments, parking, and use of all somatic movement supplies for retreat day.
Your guides for the day...
Tend Your Body
Alana’s journey is a testament to the body’s resilience and capacity for transformation. Born with spina bifida and spondylolisthesis, she began experiencing back and sciatic pain at 12, leading to spinal fusion surgery at 16.
Despite the procedure—and compounded by other life experiences such as accidents and repetitive movements—chronic pain persisted, manifesting as headaches, neck, shoulder, back, hip, and sciatic discomfort. Unbeknownst to her, her brain had developed compensatory movement patterns to adapt to both structural changes and habitual movement, inadvertently reinforcing tension and dysfunction.
Alana’s turning point came when she discovered yoga therapy, which initiated profound relief and restored mobility. This experience sparked a passion for understanding movement and healing, ultimately leading her to Clinical Somatic Education—the missing link in deep, lasting recovery. Now, Alana is dedicated to helping others unravel habitual tension patterns and rediscover ease in their bodies through one-on-one and group care. Find out more about her here: Somatic Reawakenings.
Nurture Your Soul
Michelle is a compassion-based spiritual director and co-founder of Still Lake Listening. She is a partner, mom, cook, and lover of trees and those tiny mushrooms hidden in moss (they’re so cool!). She holds space with the dying and has experienced a messy, entangled journey with core shame, betrayal, and crisis of identity. She is a Queer Contemplative who has slogged through her own versions of complex trauma, family system dysfunction, loss of loved ones (miscarriages and parents), loss of home and career, divorce, and physical suffering (chronic disease). She has come out the other side with some scars, an intact sense of humour and mischief (although her partner still rolls her eyes at some of her jokes), and hopefully a smidgen (the beginnings?) of wisdom.
Flourish
Sandra is a spiritual director and compassionate listener and co-founder of Still Lake Listening and she is Michelle’s partner! She’s an empathetic listener. Trauma, spiritual abuse, core shame, and relationship story are some of the growth areas you may want unpack with her. She experiences life as a Human Becoming. This means she’s left some things behind: extreme-conservative Christianity and the harsh parts of organized religion, a 30-year marriage, financial security, servitude and subjugation, being straight, and a dissociation from the essence of who she is. She is curious about engaging a patient, soulful, silly Wonder to the sloooow untangling of entrenched or crippling beliefs and stuck thinking.
Together, Michelle and Sandra are IFS and trauma-informed certified compassion-based psycho-spiritual practitioners. Through contemplative listening and open-ended questions, together they will help you engage in honest reflection and deep awareness. They accompany you as you explore identity and the longings of your soul.
The path we'll meander...
9:30am – Arrival and registration.
10:00am – Welcome and introductions.
10:30am – Somatic movement session with Alana. You are welcome to bring your own yoga mat and yoga block if you have them. Mats and blankets will be provided for those who do not own them already. What is somatic movement? Clinical Somatic Education (CSE), or Somatic Movement learning, is a neuromuscular re-education practice. Its aim is to address unconscious tension patterns in the body through slow, mindful movements. You will engage the conscious part of your brain to connect with and release the unconscious tension and bracing that can create musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction. Alana will close this time with a guided Yoga Nidra session. The outcome of this practice is fostering strength, coordination, and balance.
12:30pm – Lunch and time to refresh and connect. You’ll have space and time to experience the beautiful forest surroundings of SpiritWood, the interconnection of conversation, or time to simply be silent and to be with your own wild and wondering self.
1:30pm – Nurturing the Soul with Michelle & Sandra. Now that you have tended your one soft body, we shift to nurturing your interior self. Together, we will explore the interconnectedness of all aspects of our soma — the Thinking Self, the Body Self, and the True Self (our Soul). We will playfully-deeply practice noticing, naming and nurturing the particularities that are uniquely You. This will be a plummy, hands-on imaginative exploration — inside, outside, and wherever creativity takes us.
3:30pm – Reflecting on the day. We will explore what the day has been like for each of us, and wonder together about how we might tend, flourish, thrive.
