3.5-Days Retreat · Life Beyond Trauma

6th to 9th of August 2026 – Casa Maya Retreat Centre, Triban, Istria, Croatia

Guest Facilitation at Casa Maya Retreat Centre

Trauma, chronic stress, and distress can profoundly shape how we experience ourselves, others, and the world around us. What happened in the "there and then" can continue to influence the "here and now”, narrowing our capacity to respond freely, connect deeply, and fully inhabit our lives.

Dr. Peter Levine often speaks of trauma as a loss of response-ability — our natural capacity to meet the present moment with flexibility, choice, and authenticity. Trauma can also diminish our capacity to be touched.

Touched by beauty. Touched by grief. Touched by joy. Touched by another human being. Touched by nature. Touched by our own inner knowing. Touched by wonder. Touched by love. Touched by aliveness.

Many of us learn to survive by becoming disconnected from aspects of ourselves and from the living world around us. Others learn to amplify certain aspects of themselves — making them more prominent in a bid for safety, acceptance, or belonging. While these adaptations may once have been necessary, they can leave us feeling defended, disconnected, or isolated.

This retreat is an invitation to gently restore our capacity to return to rhythms that nourish and sustain us. Together, we will create space to slow down, listen, and notice. Through movement, touch, reflection, nature, and relationship, we will explore what becomes possible when we meet ourselves with greater gentleness and curiosity.

This retreat is an invitation into self-discovery. We come to know ourselves through relationship — with ourselves, with others, with nature, and with life itself. As we cultivate the capacity to witness our experience without immediately needing to change, fix, or improve it, something unexpected often emerges.

– Whatever arises becomes welcome. Moments of insight. Moments of grief. Moments of beauty. Moments of connection. Moments of wonder.

In creating space for our experience rather than striving to manage it, we may discover a deeper sense of belonging— to ourselves, to one another, and to the living world around us. As we learn to welcome our experience with greater honesty, curiosity, and care, we may discover that what we have been seeking is not something to achieve, but something already here, waiting to be noticed.

The path is not always easy. At times it can be gritty. Yet when met with presence and compassion, something often begins to soften. As John O’Donohue beautifully wrote:

Perhaps this is the deeper invitation: Life Beyond Trauma is not simply about healing trauma. It is about restoring our capacity to be touched by life and to be participants in it. This retreat is not organized around achieving a particular outcome. Rather, it is an invitation to create the conditions in which something can emerge, be noticed, and given enough room.

Embedded within the natural beauty of Croatia's Istrian peninsula, and set amidst a small working village where daily life remains closely connected to the land, Casa Maya is a living ecology. The rhythms of nature, the changing light, the gardens, and the surrounding landscape invite us to slow down and reconnect with ways of being that are often forgotten in modern life, yet remain deeply remembered within the body.

Nature does not hurry. It does not force. It unfolds in its own timing. In much the same way, this retreat invites spaciousness and curiosity. At Casa Maya, we are held not only by community, but by place. The land itself offers an invitation to slow down, pay attention, and reconnect with the rhythms of life.

Come be here. Come notice. Come be touched. Come discover. And then see what emerges.

This retreat will weave together experiential learning, somatic principles, touch, movement, reflection, nature, relationship, and time for rest and integration.

What To Expect

• Guided experiential exercises

• Somatic touch practices

• Movement and embodiment explorations

• Teachings on developmental, relational, and complex trauma

• Opportunities for self-reflection and inquiry

• Time in nature and connection with the surrounding landscape

• Space for rest, integration, and simply being
  

This retreat is designed for anyone curious about what becomes possible beyond survival. Together, we will explore Life Beyond Trauma — not as the absence of difficulty, but as a return to aliveness, connection, and belonging.

The retreat package includes optional online Pre-Retreat Gathering and a Post-Retreat Integration Gathering. Spaces are limited to maximum of 20 participants. For registration and all the information on the retreat and prices please contact udrugasomatiq@gmail.com.

4-Days Workshop · Coherence – Aligning with Our True Nature​

24th to 29th of September 2026 – Hotel Belvedere Resort, Maistra Vrsar, Istria, Croatia

Guest & Co-Facilitation with SE Faculty Berns Galloway (MEd, CCC, SEP)
For SE students and SEPs

This workshop on exploring coherence is a four‑day immersive experience grounded in somatic therapy. It offers space to explore coherence as a lived, embodied process — emerging through awareness of bodily sensations, emotional experience, and cognitive understanding.

Through guided somatic practices, experiential exercises, reflective inquiry, and group processes, participants are supported in developing greater self‑regulation, embodied clarity, and integration. The emphasis is not on achieving a particular state, but on listening to the body’s innate intelligence and allowing coherence to unfold naturally.

Set in the calm and restorative surroundings of Hotel Belvedere Vrsar in Istria, the workshop provides a retreat‑like environment that supports nervous system regulation, presence, and meaningful inner exploration.

About Co-Facilitator & SE Faculty Berns Galloway (MEd, CCC, SEP)

The depth of the trauma and commitment to change foreshadowed the transformation through the healing process. He is grateful and humbled to have witnessed this. They reinforced how organic somatic work is, the power of connection, and the necessity of embodying the full range of life’s energy.

Collaboration and connection is key. We are not meant to go it alone.

He continues to marvel at, and be awed by, the continuous richness Somatic Experiencing offers. Training internationally has expanded his scope and appreciation for just how similar our nervous systems are, and how unique our experiences manifest.

This four‑day Immersive experience concerns SE students and SEPs. 60 spots are available. For registration and all the information on the retreat and prices please contact udrugasomatiq@gmail.com.