Healing with Embodied Practice (including retreat)

Facilitated by Robert Rees and Tamsin Olivier, this 8-day certificate course empowers therapists with trauma-informed, body-based methods. Includes online sessions and a 2-night all-inclusive residential coastal retreat.

Course overview:

Many clients and therapists feel as though they are losing touch with their innate selves, in our increasingly digital and disembodied world.

This course shows how focused attention to embodiment can bring us back to ourselves, through intentional use of breath, body, and sound. Through learning a toolkit of techniques, practising them in an embodied way, course participants learn new ways of being and how to facilitate their clients or patients in a more embodied practice. The benefits include greater insight about emotion and internal process, gained through body-based awareness.

The course content is trauma-informed, incorporating understanding of brain and body effects of trauma, plus psycho-education on embodiment in trauma.This creates a safe relational space for therapeutic work, in collaboration with the client to empower their recovery. There is also attention to authentic social identity.

The format of the course has been structured for ease of access by Zoom, followed by consolidation of skills through meeting as a group – which makes sense for an embodiment course.

The 2025 training begins on Zoom for the 4 dates in September and October 2025. These 4 dates are in 2 blocks of Friday and Saturday: 12 & 13th September, then 10 & 11th October 2025.

The second part of the course is attended in person for a coastal weekend retreat in East Sussex to embody the learning and skills practice. The dates of the retreat are the afternoon of Friday 21st November through to Sunday 23rd November 2025. The retreat brings exclusive use by our group of the whole retreat centre house and grounds, including accommodation, breakfast, lunch, dinner, plus unlimited tea, coffee, and fruit. Which means that you can totally focus on the course as an embodied experience, because everything else is looked after for you.

About this course

  • Course Duration:6 days
    (4 on Zoom, 2.5 in person on retreat)
  • Next intake:Autumn 2025
    (12/13th Sept, 10/11th Oct & 21-23rd Nov)
  • CPD Value:50 Hours
  • Level:Certificate (Level 5 equivalence)
  • Fee:£1,975 + VAT
Apply
Do you have a question? Get in touch with a member of the team who will be happy to help
  • Give you greater confidence to take a more fully embodied approach to client work.
  • Enjoy an enriching retreat, to include embodied experiential skills practice weekend away on the beautiful south coast of England.
  • Learn the neuroscience, psycho-educative elements of using movement, breath and sound as a healing practice. Incorporating trauma informed teaching and polyvagal theory.
  • How to use breath, sound and movement to help a client regulate their emotional states
  • Taking an embodied approach to defences: such as resistance and ‘stuckness’
  • Using the body story in therapy practice.
  • Toolkit for applying breath, sound and movement in relation to specific mental health diagnosis.
  • Working with movement, breath and sound to integrate and transform as part of post-traumatic growth.
  • Offer a valuable mix of Zoom teaching and in-person experiential work with retreat-based skills practice.

The 6-day CPD certificate programme covers the following, although the programme may be subject to change according to the group process. The core content will be delivered, plus there are optional activities which are additional opportunities.

Day 1 – Welcome, introduction to embodiment and theoretical basis for the course

  • Setting the course ethos and intention
  • Psychoeducation on trauma, the memory system and disassociation from an embodied perspective
  • How trauma becomes embodied
  • Models to help you understand bodily held states and client presentations
  • Teaching on common ways clients become disembodied and ‘exit the body’
  • Exploring the trauma informed viewpoint to working in an embodied way.
  • Tools and psychoeducation for you to use with your clients, including intellectual reasons to work in an embodied way.
  • Working with common challenges and resistance to embodied practice.
  • Mechanisms in the body that respond to working in an embodied way.
  • Skills practice in groups and pairs

Day 2 – Safety, grounding and befriending the body

  • Resourcing the client in their body.
  • Learn how to assess distress tolerance and bodily presentations of states in the nervous system using experiential practice.
  • Return client to bodily sensations, without overwhelm using experiential practice.
  • Explore a broad range of different techniques from a variety of Western and Eastern disciplines to provide bodily resources for clients using experiential practice.
  • Learn how to help clients integrate bodily held sensations and memories
  • Pairs and Group Skills practice

Day 3 – Opening and integrating

  • Practice techniques to provide ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ opening experiences for clients using experiential practice.
  • Bringing the wisdom of the body into awareness.
  • Facilitating mental links to bodily held sensations
  • Discovery of and working with bodily held memory
  • Integrate memories through the body without overwhelm and disassociation to help promote healing.
  • Pairs and Group Skills Practice

Day 4 – Opening and integrating / growth

  • Exploring deeper embodied practices: movement, sound and breath work together as a means of deepening sensory experiences in the body through experiential practice.
  • Practices for growth, sustained recovery and vitality.
  • Skills practice – integrating embodied practice.

Day 5/6 – ‘Retreat-style’ skills practice weekend
The programme may be adapted to suit the group process or according to the weather

  • Arrive Friday afternoon-evening: welcome / group check-in / embodied arrival
  • Group dinner
  • Night-time yoga session led by Tamsin (optional)
  • Morning cold water swim or stretch led by Robert and Tamsin (optional)
  • Group breakfast
  • Skills practice using embodied practices
  • Bonfire ritual
  • Morning cold water swim or stretch (optional)
  • Group breakfast
  • Embodied practice
  • Group ending

Learning is absorbed by attendance and participation on the course. There is no assessment other than attendance and participation. Although a reading list is provided, there is no formal requirement for further reading – although additional reading is suggested to enhance your professional development subsequent to the course.

The award of the CPD certificate will be issued upon completion of the course, provided a minimum of 5 days attendance has been met and the course fee has been paid in full.

A digital certificate is provided as a matter of routine. Paper certificates despatched by Royal Mail are available upon request. Replacement certificates are available on request.

Here are the dates for the 2024 intake:

Days 1 & 2 on Zoom: Friday 28 June & Saturday 29 June

Days 3 & 4 on Zoom: Friday 12 July & Saturday 13 July

Residential weekend retreat in person at the coastal venue Florence House in Seaford, Sussex:
Friday 27, Saturday 28, Sunday 29 September

Here are the dates for the 2025 intake:

Days 1 & 2 on Zoom: Friday 12th & Saturday 13th September 2025

Days 3 & 4 on Zoom: Friday 10 October & Saturday 11th October 2025

Residential weekend retreat in person at the coastal venue Florence House in Seaford, Sussex:
Friday 21st, Saturday 22nd, Sunday 23rd November 2025

£1,975 + VAT = £2,370 payable in full or by instalments. A non-refundable deposit of £480 is payable at the time of booking to secure a place on this course. Further payments toward reaching the full fee are due in two stages: £1,000 by 30 April 2024; £1,070 by 30 June 2024. This can be paid by instalments as long as those deadlines are reached. Details will be shown on the invoice.

The course fee includes all training materials and the CPD certificate. Travel costs to or from the venue are not included.

The course fee can also be invoiced fully or partially to an employer or funding organisation. Some reduced-fee places may be awarded depending on student circumstances, subject to availability. Please contact us for details.

Design and benefits of embodiment training

The tutors Robert Rees and Tamsin Olivier describe the design and enriched approach of embodied practice in therapy and supervision.

Richness from embodied practice

Hannah - 2023 Embodiment Course

Hannah talks to Robert about her experiences on the 2023 Embodiment Course.

Richness from embodied practice

View further information about the retreat venue

Florence House, Seaford, East Sussex

Click here for venue details
Florence House

View a selection of images from last years retreat

A selection of images taken of the house, grounds, bedrooms and beautiful surrounding land. Look out for the seal who occasionally accompanied us on our morning swim.

Embodiment Retreat 2023 images

Meet the trainers

Tamsin Olivier

Psychotherapist and Supervisor, MUKCP

Robert Rees

Director of The Grove, Psychotherapist, Coach

Dip (Psych, Trauma, Supvn) MUKCP MBACP

Application criteria

Applicants are expected to be qualified and experienced professionals in a mental health or helping profession, who are established in their practice. This will be covered in the application form. All applicants are expected to:

  • be qualified and experienced in their field
  • be full members of their professional body with a code of ethics and complaint procedure for public protection (such as but not limited to BACP, UKCP, COSRT, BPS, AHPP, NCP, NCS, ACC)
  • hold professional liability insurance
  • have supervision arrangements in place for their client work as well as access to support for any clinical or organisation practice they undertake during the course

Professional standards

The Grove Practice is accredited by NCIP (National Council for Integrative Psychotherapists) as a CPD training centre. As such, all The Grove’s courses are awarded NCIP accreditation for CPD (Continuous Professional Development). This accreditation provides reassurance regarding high standards of teaching and course content. The NCIP is one of the longest-established membership organisations for this profession, formed in 1971 following the “Foster Report” on the statutory registration of psychotherapists, with a national and international network of therapists.

The Grove’s courses have been successfully recognised as CPD for members of the following membership bodies: BACP, UKCP, COSRT, NCIP, NCPS, AHPP, BPS, among others. Organisations such as universities, colleges, the NHS, Relate, MIND, and Place2B have also supported their therapists in taking training with The Grove. This is a mark of unofficial validation of our courses as worthy of being listed on the CPD logs for these organisations and therapists.

This course is taught at Level 5 equivalence, for mature professionals who are established in their mode of practice. The title “Level 5” is drawn from the numbered educational levels according to Ofqual’s Regulated Qualification Framework operating in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. (Scotland has its own educational levels in place.) This is a post-qualification training which requires theoretical evaluation, self-reflection, and interpretation of how to apply the models in mental health settings such as clinical practice or multi-disciplinary teams in organisations. The Grove is setting its own courses at a training level in line with industry-wide language for setting the academic level of the course.

Our guidance to anyone researching CPD courses is to ask any training provider stating a Level, to provide the Ofqual qualification number (which looks like this 601/8674/4). If the training provider cannot give this information for their course, then the course is unlikely to be allocated an official Level by Ofqual. In our view, any other course provider should state that their course is taught “at a level equivalent to Level x but is not a qualification regulated by Ofqual”. This approach is implemented by The Grove.

About this course

  • Course Duration:6 days
    (4 on Zoom, 2.5 in person on retreat)
  • Next intake:Autumn 2025
    (12/13th Sept, 10/11th Oct & 21-23rd Nov)
  • CPD Value:50 Hours
  • Level:Certificate (Level 5 equivalence)
  • Fee:£1,975 + VAT
Apply
Do you have a question? Get in touch with a member of the team who will be happy to help

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