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
Daria Halprin, MA, REAT, RSMT:
With her mother Anna Halprin, she first came to Esalen to work with Fritz Perls in the 1960s and returned as a workshop leader in 1975. The Halprin work was innovative in situating movement/dance and expressive arts as an approach to healing for individuals and communities.
Daria co-founded Tamalpa Institute where she directs training programs The Life/Art Process®. She has served on faculty at European Graduate School (Switzerland, Malta), CIIS, JFK, Alanus University, and UC Berkeley, as a keynote presenter at numerous conferences, in educational, health, and art centers throughout the world.
Published writings include Principles and Practices in Expressive Arts Therapy (1999), The Expressive Body in Life, Art and Therapy (2003); Dance, Somatics and Spirituality, (2014).
Photo by Nicole Combeau
DATE:
March 9, 2026 - March 13, 2026TIME:
All DayPRICE:
LOCATION
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