Create a life-changing increase in your nervous system capacity in 7 days.
“This retreat was a profound homecoming to myself—where healing happened not through effort, but through being deeply seen, held, and met in a way that rewired me from the inside out.”
– Kelly, Somatic Summer Camp Participant


You are invited to
Somatic Summer Camp near Aspen, Colorado
Take sacred space to connect with your body, receive highly skilled guidance, enjoy lovingly prepared nourishing meals, and leave rested, satiated, connected and at peace with food.
Your body is calling you to the mountains, and home to yourself!
When you come to The Peace with Food Somatic Summer Camp you will:
– Approach food and each meal with a sense of calm, peace and enjoyment
– Experience bone-deep rest and rejuvenation
– Establish a daily rhythm that fits all our powerful nervous system tools with ease
– Receive the medicine of supportive and caring community
– Leave able to listen to your body and truly trusting your body
Each year, I see that retreat is a unique kind of medicine!
As a nervous system educator, I am always paying attention to how my people heal.
I’ll tell you a secret! It’s not in isolation.
We change and grow in the embrace of nature!
We overcome challenges in community with kind and caring others. We embody new skills and knowledge when we approach our lives with directed intention and dedicated presence!
I see how full of responsibilities my students’ lives are! In the business of life, you can forget what is possible when you take the space to inhabit your body fully from your essence!
But then you arrive at retreat and discover that peace with self and peace with food has been waiting for you all along! You just had to make space for the medicine of retreat to works its magic!
Meet your retreat leader –
Galina Denzel
Galina is the author of
Peace with Self, Peace with Food
“From the moment I set foot in Beyul, I knew the next Somatic Summer Camp will happen here. As I walked by the river, listening to its reassuring sounds, and felt the soft forest floor beneath my feet, I felt more and more at home in my body, one with my breath, and one with my blueprint. I knew Beyul (the Hidden Lands) was calling us home. Now that I have led a retreat there, and built a giant life size nest together with my students and artist Debbie Baxter,I know there is no better home to host my retreats and help my students heal and grow in community.
I am excited for you to experience all the healing potential that is waiting for you to express! I can’t wait for your homecoming in each of the practices and experiences we have planned for you. Peace with food is not only possible, it is your birthright, but peace with self comes first. Join us for a once in a lifetime somatic journey, we are so happy and honored to be your hosts! This experience is worth a 1000 individual sessions, and I am not kidding you when I say that!”
– Galina Denzel
Meet the co-leaders – Rena K. Bauman, SEP, OICC and Susan McLaughlin, PT
Galina is joined by two exquisitely trained professionals and leaders in their respective fields.
Rena K. Bauman: this will be the third retreat in which Rena is joining Galina as a co-leader. Galina and Rena met in Somatic Experiencing school in 2014 and have been working closely together as professionals and friends. Their unique talents and skills allow students to have attuned and refined somatic support and leadership as they experience deeper connection with themselves and others. Rena specializes in working with chronic shame individually and in small groups and you can see more about her work at Richer Growth Concepts. You can also hear multiple interviews with her here.
Susan McLaughlin is a highly skilled Doctor of Physical Therapy who specializes in pelvic floor and digestive health. Galina met Susan during her study with the Restorative Exercise Institute in 2011, where both of them were on the training team with biomechanist, writer and educator of natural movement Katy Bowman. Susan and Galina have traveled the world together teaching and supporting others on their professional path. Susan is joining the retreat to offer hands on support and bodywork to increase nervous system capacity, digestive health and regulation through touch in one on one body work sessions which all participants will be able to receive.
Like Galina and Rena, Susan has studied with Kathy Kain and all three of them share a common practice of supporting trauma resolution through touch. You can learn more about Susan at Align Integration and Movement.
“Healing and transformation are not about quick fixes but about rediscovering the wisdom of your own body. You are not a collection of problematic parts; you are a whole, dynamic being with a story written in movement, habits, and patterns. Through our work, you will begin to unwind old tensions, restore fluidity to your joints and tissues, and reawaken the vital connections between your brain and body. As you tune into your nervous system, breath, and posture, new possibilities will emerge—ones that empower you to move with greater ease, strength, and resilience.” Susan
Come to retreat and let your body remember.
Let your body remember that a slower pace is possible. Let it receive the care of Mother Nature. Let it shed the defenses, so that you can reconnect with your essence!
At retreat you will meet yourself without the noise and distraction of your daily chores and responsibilities. You will engage in daily somatic movement and creative practices, which call you home to yourself!
You will get to discover the richness of your inner life in each moment: as you wake amongst pristine beauty, as you meditate under the aspen trees, as you walk the paths by the river, as you eat the organic local food, as you create art, as you dance with friends, as you stand around the camp fire and tell your story.
If you want to know what it’s like to arrive to each meal with a body that is ready to be nourished, if you want to really experience the gift of embodied rest and surrender, and if you are curious what is waiting on the other side of building a life size nest and going through the Nest portal…join us in Beyul!
This retreat is for you if:
– You are craving bone-deep rest, one that simply taking a vacation or sabbatical won’t deliver.
– You already have some somatic tools in your toolkit, but you also want to explore play, dance and art as portals to healing and self-discovery.
–You are ready to build up your somatic daily practice and really understand how to meet your needs moment to moment.
– Your relationship with food is at times rocky, and despite working on it for a while, you are wondering what more is in the way of you eating with ease and peace.
– You often struggle with receiving support from others and tend to try to do everything yourself.
– You wish to live more and more from your blueprint, instead of the many ways you adapted to the difficulties of your life.
– You are craving nourishing connection in community and spending time with people passionate about growth and healing, people who get you.

Receive the medicine
of supportive and caring community
What will the days at retreat look like ?
Our summer retreat will be held at Beyul, Meredith, an hour from Aspen, Colorado from July 6 through July 13, 2025
Picture waking up with the sun in the Rockies, and hearing the river just a few steps away from your cabin. You slip into your comfy clothes and head down to the main lodge for a cup of tea or coffee. Then you get to take a walk, go for a run, or stretch, or sit in the sauna, jacuzzi…or journal…
If you are already feeling hungry, you come to the Mountain View cabin for a choice of light morning snacks (brunch is at 10:30!)
It’s now 8:30 and you can join Galina and Rena for the morning somatic practice outdoors. You explore movement, cranial nerve activation and breath and you land more and more into yourself. By 10, you are wondering where time went, and you head to a short walk with a partner from the group, digesting and debriefing your morning experience.
10:30 till 11:30 is our time to nourish ourselves with local, organic food, carefully prepared by the Beyul chefs. With your cranial nerves and body already stimulated, you know exactly what calls you from the buffet, and you enjoy your meal in the company of others, or if you prefer, in a beautiful spot in the sun, under the trees, in the company of your own self.
At 12:00, your midday practice begins, where Galina, Rena, Susan and the other students are waiting for you in the beautiful event tent. This is where our new material gets introduced – and we get to work with expressing the blueprint and befriending our defenses. Through words, movement, music, dance, and healing touch – you arrive more and more in your body – your sacred home, filled with goodness waiting to be discovered.
Your afternoon break is between 2:00 and 4:30 – you can explore the 32 acres of pristine mountain landscapes, lay in the sun, float on a paddle-board, nap in a hammock, or connect with one of your retreat friends. This is also the time when you will have a chance to work with Susan McLaughlin 1-1 and receive gentle touch for nervous system regulation and optimal digestion.
Each day at 4:30 We meet outside for our afternoon learning. This time Galina and Rena will work 1-1 with students to integrate the learning from the day, supported by the group.
We gather for dinner at the lodge at 6:30 and our day, filled with adventure – inside and out, is almost complete…
…but not yet…
after dinner, we invite you to Aspen Lodge Cabin, where we get to digest the day by the fire, sitting by the river. This is where we share with others, digest the day and prepare the parasympathetic system for a restorative night.
This is a typical day at retreat…but our days are not so much about our schedule…or what we do…they are about finding a more sustainable and self-aware way of being. We can do that together, and you can see for yourself what a real nervous system reset feels like – a reset you can take home with you after retreat and one that will keep you rejuvenated, recharged, and well-nourished for a long, long time!
What others say about the Peace with Food Retreats:
Katie
Retreat Participant
“By the end of the week, shame around food and my struggles to nourish myself had melted. Being with others, sharing meals, doing the practices, laughing, resting, and moving together made it so easy to feel understood and accepted. I have taken all this growth home with me and integrated the practices in a way that is life-changing.”
Martine
Retreat Participant
“During the retreat I learned to experience and meet the true needs of my body. We practiced, we played, we enjoyed moving and I finally understood how we, wonderful human beings, rest and digest, activate and relax. I really felt the joy of nourishing myself instead of speeding myself up. I left the retreat feeling more complete…more full, yet lighter.”
Suzanne
Retreat Participant
“All you need to do is show up, without anticipation or expectation… Show up open and ready to receive and give, to share, to apply new practices, and expand your capacity”
Kathy
Retreat Participant
“You can dance anything out of and into your life. Before retreat, my body had forgotten how to dance! Now I can dance, every day, and every time I dance, it’s like my retreat sisters are right there with me, lifting me up!
Robbie
Retreat Participant
“I never thought I could eat with other people and experience this level of relaxation, connection and peace. The practices that prepared the body to digest were something I had never truly given a fair chance by myself. Practicing with others made all the difference in the world! I want to experience this every year!”
Hope
Retreat Participant
“This retreat completely changed my relationship with space. Before the retreat I had to fill myself up with activity in order to feel safe, I didn’t know that my body was scared by space. The developmental movements, the reflexes, all the work changed me, I see it everywhere now!”
Derek
Retreat Participant
“It was amazing to simply be able to be myself! To be able to say yes and no and be authentic to express what I wanted and what I didn’t want. There was so much space for authentic expression and connection. I didn’t know what it felt like to be truly welcome as myself till now.”
Haley
Retreat Participant
“The retreat brought everything I knew in my head about the nervous system straight into my body. It’s like all these months studying online with Galina finally had a place in my body, like shelves where everything went in its proper spot. I can see how this was a culmination of all my learning and growth! “
Kelly
Retreat Participant
“Being
being around Galina and Rena feels like a “transmission” of hope, strength, compassion, playfulness, confidence and inner trust for my system and brought me great hope that I can more fully inhabit myself “