EMBODIED RELATING
Explore your inner landscape that shapes the way you connect, honor yourself, and belong.
October 24 | 2–6PM – One Day Retreat
October 24–25 | 2–6PM Daily – Full Weekend Retreat
Yellow Farmhouse Inn | Waitsfield, Vermont
Come on your own, with a partner, a friend or family member
You May Recognize…
You may notice yourself pulling away or needing more space when closeness feels intense, or reaching for reassurance and connection when you sense distance. You may lose touch with your own needs in relationship, become more reactive than you want to be, or find yourself repeating familiar patterns even when you understand them intellectually. You may want greater intimacy, while also wanting a stronger sense of yourself in relationships.
Embodied Relating offers an opportunity to understand these experiences from the inside—recognizing how your history, conditioning, and nervous system shape the way you relate, while developing greater awareness, flexibility, and choice in how you show up with others.
Much of what shapes our relationships happens beneath conscious awareness. This immersive experience invites you to slow down and explore what happens within you as you relate with others, how this shapes your patterns of connection, and what new possibilities might emerge for intimacy and greater choice in how you relate.
The body often knows before the mind understands. Relationships begin to change when we learn to listen.
What shifts in relationship when you feel more grounded and supported within yourself?
This brief embodied practice explores the connection between your inner experience and the way you relate others.
Experience Embodied Relating
The Embodied Relating Experience
The Retreat begins with brief teachings that introduce attachment patterns, nervous system responses, parts, and present-moment awareness, creating a foundation for the experiential work that follows. From there, guided practices invite you to bring these ideas into your own lived experience and notice how they show up within you and in relationship with others.
Through mindfulness-directed practices, partner and group exercises, you’ll slow down and pay attention to what is happening in the moment. There is no expectation that you change what you notice. Instead, you’ll practice meeting your experience with curiosity and compassion. We’ll then shift into strengthening internal resources that help you stay connected to Self energy, noticing how greater grounding and connection within yourself can shift the way you relate to others.
Throughout the retreat, you’re welcome to move, pause, reflect, and make use of the farmhouse and surrounding property in ways that support your experience. You’ll also have opportunities to share observations and learn through both your own direct experience and witnessing the experiences and perspectives of others.
Midway through the afternoon, we’ll pause for a nourishing break with tea and refreshments, including options for common dietary needs. Day One closes with time for reflection and integration, with space to consider what you want to carry forward into your everyday relationships.
Continuing into Day Two
For those joining for the full weekend, Sunday builds on Day One with more deeply layered embodied and relational practices. The weekend culminates in a paired practice centered on your vision for how you most want to be in relationship with others. Rather than leaving that vision as an idea, you’ll explore how it feels in your body and begin developing an embodied sense of how you want to show up in your relationships.
Retreat Schedule
We’ll move through the retreat at a thoughtful, spacious pace, with each experience building naturally on the one before it and time to pause, reflect, and integrate along the way.
Arrive and Welcome1:45pm
Foundations and Exploration2:00pm
Nourishment Break3:50pm
Deepening the Experience4:10pm
Closing and Departure6:00pm
Meet Your Facilitator
HEATHER PARKER, LCMHC
For more than twenty years, I’ve worked with individuals, couples, and groups, with a particular interest in the patterns that shape how we relate to ourselves and one another. I’m drawn to the transformative potential of relationship as a place for healing, growth, and deeper connection.
Embodied Relating brings together the relational, somatic, and experiential approaches that have shaped my work, including attachment theory, parts work, nervous system awareness, and mindfulness. Rather than simply talking about relationships, we’ll explore them experientially—creating opportunities for greater awareness, choice, and embodied connection.
I facilitate these retreats with curiosity, respect, and choice, creating a supportive and welcoming space where you can explore at your own pace and stay connected with what feels right for you. LGBTQIA2S+ participants and people of all genders, sexual orientations, identities, and relationship structures are warmly welcomed and affirmed.
A Place to Slow Down
The October Retreat will be held at the Yellow Farmhouse Inn in Waitsfield, Vermont, a beautiful and spacious setting surrounded by the landscape of the Mad River Valley.
The farmhouse offers a variety of spaces for paired practices, allowing for greater privacy throughout the afternoon. Seven guest rooms have been reserved exclusively for our retreat; those not booked for overnight stays will provide additional rooms for pairs to work together. Participants staying at the farmhouse may also use their own room during paired practices.
Throughout the retreat, you’re welcome to move around the property, wander the gardens, visit with the animals, settle onto a porch, or find a quiet place on the hillside to take in the views.
For those who would like to extend their experience overnight, guest rooms are available to retreat participants at a special discounted rate.
Is This Workshop Right for You
Embodied Relating is an experiential learning workshop, not a psychotherapy group. While meaningful emotions may naturally arise, the experience is thoughtfully paced to support awareness, exploration, and growth rather than intensive trauma processing, working with significant relationship conflict, or crisis support. Together, we'll gently explore the edge of familiar relational patterns, where new awareness, flexibility, and choice can emerge without pushing beyond your capacity.
Because the workshop is experiential, participants should have the capacity to use their own grounding or self-regulation practices if emotions become activated. If you're currently navigating an acute emotional crisis or are unsure whether this workshop is the right fit, please reach out before registering.
Some exercises may include opportunities, using touch as part of learning about connection, boundaries, and nervous system activation and regulation. Though touch can be an important part of the somatic process, it is always consensual, and every exercise can be adapted without physical contact. Personal choice is foundational to every aspect of the workshop.
Experience a New Way of Relating
An experiential retreat for couples, individuals, family members and friends seeking deeper connection, greater self-awareness, and more intentional relationships. Attend Saturday for the four-hour retreat or continue into Sunday for the full weekend experience.
Join the October Retreat
ONE-DAY RETREAT
Saturday, October 24 | 2–6 PM
Registration: $175
FULL-WEEKEND RETREAT
Saturday & Sunday, October 24–25 | 2–6 PM each day
Registration: $325
Yellow Farmhouse Inn | Waitsfield, Vermont
Registration is per person
A four-hour experiential workshop for individuals and couples exploring attachment, the nervous system, and embodied awareness to cultivate greater authenticity, connection, and choice in relationships.