Somatic Expression with Jamie McHugh

"The great sea has sent me adrift;
it moves me
like a reed in a great river.
Earth and the great weather move me,
have carried me away,
and fill my inward parts with joy." - Uvavnuk, an Iglulik Eskimo woman shaman

"Whenever we touch nature we get clean. People who have got dirty through too much civilization take a walk in the woods, or a bath in the sea. Entering the unconscious, entering yourself through dreams, is touching nature from the inside and this is the same thing, things are put right again." - CG Jung

"We must uncenter our minds from ourselves. We must unhumanize our minds a little and become as confident as the rock and the ocean we are made from." - Robinson Jeffers

Embodying Nature Online 2026

A Somatic-Expressive Exploration of Place

Make space in your life for an embodied relationship with your bioregion - PDF Version HERE

This five-month online series invites you to explore your local terrain through presence, play, and creative response.

Through simple somatic practices and expressive rituals, you’ll discover what nature has to offer you— and what you have to offer nature in return. This is a process of mutuality and reciprocity, listening and responding, becoming breathing rock and still water.

For over 30 years, I’ve guided Embodying Nature retreats in forests, mountains, and coastlines across Europe and North America. And while those immersions are magic, it’s becoming harder for many people to leave daily life for a weeklong retreat.

This series brings the practice home where you are - in your body, your land, and your rhythm.

What You’ll Do

Cultivate a somatic-expressive relationship with your local landscape
Investigate and integrate place through regular sensory engagement
Create and share images, videos, soundscapes, writing and movement responses using your phone or tools at hand

How It Works: Sensorimotor Engagement & Aesthetic Expression

We begin each month by attuning to the body’s five somatic technologies: Breath. Vocalization. Self-Contact. Movement. Stillness.

These create a shift from the automatic to the extraordinary — opening your perceptual field and re-calibrating how you meet the world around you.

Along with these somatic practices, you are guided through the Five Phase Relational Map: Witness. Contact. Mirror. Respond. Rest.

Once attuned, you allow the body of the Earth to move through you with many voices: writing, sound, image, movement, and more. Your phone becomes a collaborator by capturing glimpses of your experience in image, voice, sound, or gesture.

These are responses. Invitations. Echoes of your time with place. Together, these frameworks support an embodied, creative, and relational experience of your nature.

Read an article for an overview of the methodology HERE

Monthly Structure

Each phase of the journey is explored across five weekends

Phase	Dates	Theme
Phase 1	March 21 & 22	Witness & Rest
Phase 2	April 11 & 12	Mirror
Phase 3	May 9 & 10	Contact
Phase 4	June 13 & 14	Respond
Phase 5	July 11 & 12	Integration

Saturdays (somatic explorations + themes)

Sundays (sharing + guidance)

9-11:30am PDT/ noon-2:340pm EDT/ 6-8:30pm CEST both days

All sessions recorded for playback and download

Who
This series is for anyone ready to explore somatic-expressive engagement with the natural world — as continuing education, personal re-creation, or artistic research.

Whether you are a therapist, artist, educator, activist, or simply curious, Embodying Nature offers a framework for discovering your relationship with place over time. Participants have used this approach as a foundation for performance, creative writing, environmental education, and ecopsychology.

No prior experience in somatics or art-making is required. Just a willingness to show up, feel, and respond.

Program Fee: $475 paid in full by March 1/$550 after

Fees for this course are deliberately below market value to encourage participation. Payment plans available.

HOW
Submit an application to Jamie McHugh naturebeingart@gmail.com with a little information about yourself and your intention for being part of this group, as well as payment through Venmo @Jamie-McHugh or Paypal https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/somaticxpress

YOUR GUIDE Jamie McHugh

I primarily lived in rural locations on the US West Coast for the past 20 years before moving recently to the hills of Western Massachusetts. While staying connected to the modern world virtually, the bulk of my time was spent in the vastness of the environment. I became a photographer of water in all its many dimensions, in particular the coastal ecosystem of waves and eddies, coves and tidal pools.

The beach was my movement studio where I could lay down in the embrace of sand, breathe and move while listening to the ever-present drone of the ocean, and enter another frame of consciousness. Taking my camera on these excursions amplified this kinesthetic state of mind though focused attention on the visual domain.

Where the confluence of breath, vocalization, movement and stillness enabled a wide-open fluid perception, the focus of the lens brought concise attention to detail, form, and color. Suspending time temporarily to touch an ephemeral moment and embrace a still image became a practice of action-reflection, impression-expression, gather-hold…and then release and re-set.

This rhythm of concentrated attention modulated by spacious breath and movement was its own reward, deepening my relationship with place while altering my state of being. Having all these countless “souvenirs” (from French, memory) to share with others as prints and video montages was an extra bonus. www.naturebeingart.org

Making art has potentiated and amplified my relationship to place just as place has done the same to my aesthetic sensibility. This reciprocity with the natural world is the essence of this learning lab dedicated to Somatic Attunement, Relational Presence, and Creative Engagement. It has been my soul medicine, and I am happy to share it with you!

For in-person Embodying Nature retreats, go here