Pindus Art Retreat

Our body, our image, is formed by repeated operations, so is our personal technique, influenced and shaped by our experiences and habits. Our body is so affected by stress, which is nothing more than the result of exposing ourselves to useless influences.

Somehow the distance between our internal environment (Body) and our external environment (Earth) grows.

But we can create new paths by participating in new activities and developing new behaviors and new techniques.

The Pindus Art Retreat: Eco-Somatics, is an exploration of our relationship with our “home.” It is based on a fundamental recognition of interdependence and explores how life moves within and along a relational continuum between bodies, lands, waters, and ancestral practices in space-time. Current research confirms the profoundly healing and restorative effects of nature on our minds and bodies.

We will discover the hidden source of physical energy in the Pindus mountains at an altitude over 1060m, where the Western Macedonian land is reconciled with the mainland – stone, wood, water, air and earth dominate – these are the raw materials and elements of our existence’s connection with nature and our art.

Pentalofos – in a Dionysian landscape in the mountains of Northern Pindos, on Mount Voio – is the village of the stonemasons, the heroic Women of Pindos, of myths and legends, of euphoria and countless cultural traditions, remnants of Dionysian events.

In a seven-day program, the Pindus Art Retreat: Eco-Somatics will support participants – artists and non-artists – with the aim of returning to a grounded relationship with their bodies, so that they can live in reciprocity with the Earth, Water, and Nature.

The anxiety of achieving professional and personal goals, the need for recognition, the constant effort to develop skills, all chain our behavioral flexibility, locking our body and behavior into something that unfortunately becomes unproductive.

The same routine appears in every professional activity. As artists, in recent years, we have been particularly concerned with the increasing number of techniques that we must practice and apply on stage. We focus on the methods and training of different techniques of the performing arts, neglecting the raw material and spontaneous operation.

The anxiety of auditions, the stress of success, the effort to minimize mistakes, the intense rhythms of life disorient our bodies and our breathing, while ultimately affecting our technique itself, leaving a tight and irregular result.

Many of us learn from a very young age to reject or ignore our feelings, to override certain impulses, and to avoid discomfort for the sake of survival. This continues into adulthood.

Guided by eco-somatic practices, ecotherapy, kinesthetic learning, breathing practice, ecoobservation and the arts, we will connect with our inner self, locating our hidden self and redefining our art and technique from a new ground zero.

The Pindus Art Retreat: Eco-Somatics, seeks to awaken our multisensory perception, expand our sense of self, rooting us back to our bodies and back to our ancestral heritage, and create a grounded sense of belonging in the world.

Spending time in the healing presence of Earth and Water is co-regulatory, soothing, and revitalizing. It reorients our nervous system toward natural rhythms that stimulate sensitivity, curiosity, wonder, and embodied vitality.

We spend most of our day indoors, where we tend to use mainly or only two sensory organs, our eyes and ears. Outside is the place where all our multisensory abilities awaken as we smell the flowers, taste the fresh air, observe the changing colors of the trees, hear the birds chirping, and feel the breeze on our skin. With our tools we will help you develop your curiosity, expand your senses and explore your connection with the living environment.

You just need to relax and find pleasure in simplicity. Listen to the way your soul speaks within and through you. Together we will slow down. We will experience deep listening.