What it is.

A Weekend Workshop of Somatic Movement, into Creative Practice with facilitated sharing circles. Facilitated by Rachel Blackman held in late Spring at the incredibly beautiful Barcombe Village Hall. in East Sussex UK.

Dates: 18 & 19 April 2026
Timings: 10.30 - 5pm both days.
Investment: sliding scale £140 - £180
with monthly payment plans available.

This weekend is intended to be a spa for your body and your imagination. It is designed to be a fertile retreat space for dreaming.

This workshop welcomes the something in you that longs to play, mess around and explore. Come if you're feeling creatively stuck. Come if you want to generate some new creative possibilities. Come if are just starting out and wondering how to wonder, or come simply because you fancy it.

How does it work?

Arrive, find a place on the floor for your mat and materials. Create a nest for yourself. Start the day by coming home to your body. Your first home: this wondrous, sensory, living, adaptive, creative body of yours. We will begin with some easy, somatic movement.

Then we will roll from there into creative practice. The mats will be pushed to one side (unless you feel like a cheeky little nap - which is most warmly welcome.) There will be materials around the space for painting, drawing, writing, collaging, or if you'd prefer to continue moving, there will be music playing through out to guide and inspire you. There is no agenda. You are invited to do what ever draws you. Grab a cup of tea. Sit outside. Create. Take in the horizon and the Downs. Come and go as you wish. Then before lunch we have a sharing circle. How was that for you? What did you discover?

After lunch, we go into some more dynamic somatic movement this time to music. There will be a little guiding and this phase might get a little more of shaking of your booty, carving rug or cutting of shapes. You might even want to make some noise. Think 4 year olds at a disco.

Then we go back into creative practice from this place in ourselves. Continuing with what we started in the morning, or starting something new. There will be a final sharing circle at the end of the day for gathering in and sending us off home feeling folded in and satisfied.

Day two rinse and repeat, but with a little more focussed attention on where you'd like to take these explorations next and what you might like to do more of beyond the workshop.

More About the Practices

& How We Will be Exploring

A LITTLE MORE ABOUT SOMATIC MOVEMENT? 

Somatic movement is movement that emerges from your felt-sense of being in a body. It can look many different ways from the outside, but what makes it unique to other movement styles is that you are tracking what is happening or unfolding from within your moment to moment experience. In this workshop, we will begin each day with a gentle Awareness Through Movement lesson. This is a kind of somatic movement that comes from the Feldenkrais Method

Feldi opens a window to softening and being easeful with ourselves. After a Feldi lesson we are often in a slightly dreamy altered state and our relationship with doing has shifted. It is a really beautiful place to go into creative dreaming. 

In the afternoon, we will be exploring movement with music to move to and some guidance from Rachel. This will also be a kind of somatic movement, where you are following what wants to unfold, but partnered with music. it will have a more free form quality and might move through more dynamic phases. Afterwards you may find yourself in a different inner landscape that when you first entered and this also can be a very fertile place to go into creative dreaming. 

You don't need to be experienced in anything to get some enjoyment from either of these movement forms. Being in a body and having an imagination is enough. 

A LITTLE MORE ABOUT CREATIVE PRACTICE 

Creative Practice for us will look differently for each of you. You might choose to make marks on a page. You might like to make words on a page. You might like to cut up magazines and make new images... a kind of vision board perhaps. Maybe creative practice for you is moving to music and seeing what wants to unfold from your embodied expression or your emotional body. Maybe you want to make sound. Each Creative practice session will begin with a prompt from Rachel that you can use or ignore and it will be slightly different each time. You don't need ot have any experience of anything or have ever made anything creative before to get sometime out of it. Think kids playtime. 

'You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.' 

~ Mary Oliver

THE FLOW OF DAYS

Feldenkrias Lesson 

Creative Practice 

Sharing


Lunch 


Expressive Movement 

Creative Practice 

Sharing 

End

Why this Work?

When we are in the envisioning stage of creating or invoking something, whether that is a project, a business, a novel or a quality we long to inhabit more, it can be potent to spend some time in the dreaming phase. This requires softening, letting go of thinking we know what is next and trusting. This allows something delicate and mysterious to unfold through us.

It is really easy to want to short cut this phase. To jump from having the delicate little idea to pushing into productivity mode: Working hard to do all the things to get to the finish line. DO the thing. Get the deal. Make the money. Kindness to that: the world forces us to think this is the only way to make things happen. Not so.

When we work like that, in a way that starts with effort and doing (before allowing ourselves the space to dream) we are working with sympathetic activation, The doing function in the Nervous System. The sympathetic function is designed for short focused bursts of energy. Not the long game and not the very early conception of things.

When we are in the very early imaginings of something it can be really helpful to come from a more liminal, soft and sideways place. To get to that place in ourselves it can help to come into a more hermetic, less logic driven place. Then we are less in control. Then something surprising can come through.

What to Bring

And what will be provided?

Please bring -

  • A yoga mat, blanket and anything else you need to be able to lay comfortably on your back, on the floor. The floor is clean, solid wood and made for moving on. 
  • Comfortable clothes you can move in - perhaps a few layers for warmth. 
  • Notebook, art book, pen, pencils, pastels and other art materials. For drawing, writing and capturing. 
  • Magazines for cutting up and making collages.(please bring at least 3 you like if you think you'd like to collage) Scissors. Glue. 
  • Food for your lunch, snacks & drinks. (There isn't a shop locally) 


We will provide -

  • A handful of spare yoga mats for those who can't get hold of one (please do everything you can to bring your own, as we only have a few.)
  • A handful of blankets and cushions. 
  • Some additional art materials, a large stack of blank paper, cardboard for collaging, pens & pastels 
  • Some extra magazines, scissors and glue for collaging. 
  • Music for moving to & good quality sound 
  • Green, roibos & regular tea, plunger coffee & decent biscuits.

'Think of the universe as an eternal creative unfolding.
Trees blossom.
Cells replicate.
Rivers forge new tributaries.
The world pulses with productive energy, and everything that exists on this planet is driven by that energy.
Every manifestation of this unfolding is doing its own work on behalf of the universe, each in its own way, true to its own creative impulse.'

~ Rick Rubin

Pricing options

The regular Price for this workshop is between £180 - £140. Please choose a price with in that range that works for you. There is also a monthly payment option for those for whom money is tight.

FAQ

  • Where is Barcombe and how do I get there?

    Barcombe is in East Sussex. Barcombe Mills Rd, Barcombe BN8 5BH. it is a half hour drive from Brighton and a ten minute drive from beautiful historical Lewes. If you are flying in, the closest airport is Gatwick which is a short train journey from Lewes or Brighton. There are plenty of pretty villages and towns to stay nearby if you are visiting from out of town and free parking beside the hall and in the village.

  • Is there a kitchen and can I prepare / bring a packed lunch?

    Yes we will have access to the hall kitchen facilities for warming food, making tea and storing things that need to stay cool. There is no food in the movement / creation space, but plenty of other spaces for eating including an outdoor space with an uninterrupted view looking out over the Sussex Downs.

  • Can I come if I don't have a specific project in mind, or any clue what I might want to grow yet?

    Of course! You are warmly invited to come to simply move, play and explore with no agenda. Everyone will be at different places with in their exploration and every place can benefit from this kind of thing. Space to play, try some things out and to let go of knowing for a while.

  • Will I be able to take my artwork / collage home with me?

    Yes please! We don't have capacity to store your artwork after the weekend. Any artwork left behind will be destroyed. So if you want to keep your work, please bring wats of carrying it home with you.

  • Im not an artist / have no experience of somatic work or this kind of creativity, but I'm still curious. Might I still get something out of it?

    Absolutely. A beginners attitude is the kind of thing many more experienced folk are trying to remember their way back to. It is a kind of freedom to be taking your first steps in this direction. Coming simply to play and explore is most warmly welcome.

Photos & Artwork: 

Dancer & Sky - Dynamic Wang

Jumping Dancer - Sophia Lasheva

Cloud Maker - Nicholas Jain

Running Bird - Unknown

Man Playing on the Floor - Charles Etoroma

Pastels - Daria Datipina

Dream Horizon - Josh Hild 

Open Book - Toa Heftiba

Dreaming  Man - Darius Bashar

Leaping Man - Shane Rounce

Splatter painting - Dan Cristian Paduret

Twister - Yurly Vertokov