The retreat is designed as a progressive process. It is not based on a succession of isolated exercises, but on a progression that unfolds across the week, each day, and each stage of the work. The overall aim is to help participants identify certain physical, emotional, and psychological mechanisms that influence the way they are, move, feel, and relate to others.

The body is the starting point. The work begins with structured physical engagement: floor barre, barre work, mobility, coordination, movement, and dance. The goal is not technical performance, but engaging the body for long enough that habitual mechanisms of control, compensation, or protection become more perceptible. As the body becomes engaged and physical fatigue appears, dominant mental activity can begin to soften. The body becomes more available, less controlled, and certain elements that are usually hidden may begin to emerge.

From this state of physical engagement, we offer exercises exploring the relationship with the body, emotional expression, the relationship to movement, the capacity to feel, express, or contain certain emotions, and reactions to effort, difficulty, failure, the gaze of others, or loss of control. These exercises make it possible to observe where blocks, resistance, tension, dissonance, fears, automatisms, or difficulties in expression emerge.

Our role is to accompany this process of observation. Drawing on our respective experiences in dance and psychotherapy, we help participants identify what is manifesting through the body and movement: areas of holding back, moments where intention and action become disconnected, difficulty letting go, mechanisms of control, emotional reactions, avoidance, inhibition, or repetitive patterns. The first step is simply to observe precisely what is happening, without immediately trying to interpret it.

Once these elements have been identified, a space for speaking allows them to be articulated and expressed. The group plays an important role here. It allows each participant not to remain alone with what they are discovering, to hear other experiences, to recognise similar mechanisms in others, and to benefit from a mirroring effect. It also makes it possible to observe how certain patterns emerge in relationship: the need to compare oneself, fear of judgement, difficulty taking one’s place, the tendency to remain silent, to justify oneself, to take care of others, or to withdraw. The group thus becomes a space for relational observation as much as a space of support.

From what has been expressed, the therapeutic work seeks to understand the origin, function, and present place of these mechanisms. We explore what they have protected, what they have made possible, when they may have developed, which beliefs sustain them, which emotions have been repressed or avoided, and how they continue to influence the body, relationships, choices, and the way a person inhabits their life today. The aim is not to judge these mechanisms, but to understand why they came into being and whether they remain adapted to present circumstances.

When certain blocks, patterns, or mechanisms have been recognised and understood, it becomes possible to observe more clearly the place they occupy in a person’s life. We then explore how they manifest concretely: in the body, posture, breathing, relationships, decision-making, responses to difficulty, the experience of emotion, or ways of protecting oneself. If the participant feels ready, the work may then move towards a gentle and progressive confrontation with what has been identified: a fear, a belief, an inhibition, anger, sadness, difficulty taking one’s place, or difficulty expressing something. This stage takes place without pressure, respecting each person’s pace, and with the support of the group, the framework, and the therapeutic process.

Returning to the body is an essential stage. After observing, expressing, and understanding, we return to movement, stretching, dance, or more integrative physical exercises. This return makes it possible to observe whether something has shifted: a tension, a breath, a posture, an openness to movement, a greater capacity to occupy space, to express an emotion, or to enter into relationship with others. The body then becomes a concrete indicator of what has been understood, released, shifted, or begun to transform.

The week follows this same progressive logic. The first stages are devoted to establishing the framework, trust, and safety necessary for the work. The physical and psychological intensity then increases gradually over the first days, reaching a deeper point of exploration in the middle of the retreat. The final days are devoted to integration, meaning-making, and observing what has changed in the body, in self-perception, and in the understanding of one’s own mechanisms.

Each day follows the same overall movement. The morning is primarily dedicated to physical work. A period of reflection and sharing follows, allowing participants to name what they have experienced and identify the emotions, thoughts, and mechanisms that have emerged. Later in the day, a deeper therapeutic session helps connect these observations with personal history, beliefs, roles, protective mechanisms, and relational patterns. Finally, a return to the body through stretching, movement, or dance allows participants to begin integrating what has been observed and understood.

The overall aim of the retreat is therefore to accompany a process that unfolds in several stages: engaging the body, allowing things to emerge, observing, identifying, expressing, understanding, making connections, confronting when possible, and then returning to the body in order to experience and integrate. This ongoing movement between bodywork, psychological observation, reflection, and movement lies at the heart of our approach.

After this week of work, participants may have developed a deeper awareness of themselves and the way they function, while opening a space in which something can begin to be released.