Create a life-changing increase in your nervous system capacity in 7 days.

Yes, I Want to Come to California This Summer! >>

“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 our annual
Somatic Summer Camp in the Santa Monica Mountains, in Southern California

Saturday May 30 – Saturday, June 6, 2026, at Oak Canyon Ranch, only 40 miles from Los Angeles International Airport

Take sacred space to connect with your body, receive highly skilled somatic guidance and personalized body work, enjoy lovingly prepared nourishing meals, and leave rested, satiated, feeling connected and at peace with food.

Your body is calling you to find nourishment in the rolling embrace of the California hills, and inviting you 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 both energizing activities and bone-deep rest and rejuvenation
– Establish a daily rhythm of somatic practices and self-care routines that fits all our powerful nervous system tools into your life with ease
– Receive the powerful medicine of supportive and caring community
– Leave stable, secure, confident, able to listen to your body and truly trusting your body and its wisdom

Each year, I see that retreat is the most potent medicine we offer. Each participant gets to receive their own magical potion to take home and be nourished by for months to come.

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!

I want to sign up, take me to the form where I can reserve my spot! >>

I now know what true regulation FEELS like. I FEEL so much and am guided by it.”

Barbra

I learned that healing can happen through pleasure. How is this not everywhere? It’s truly revolutionary and I am screaming it from the mountaintops!

Darcy

This experience was a highlight of my life. The insights and experiences are forever branded into my heart.

Jean

Meet your retreat leader –
Galina Denzel

Galina is the author of
Peace with Self, Peace with Food

“Finding the ideal retreat space is a precious process – somatically we hold that as the pre-beginning, preparing the soil. Stepping on the sacred and nourishing land, making sure we have everything our students will need so they don’t have a worry in the world once they arrive. We are in love with this new space we have prepared for you – and we are honored to be working as a team, so you can be welcomed, held, nurtured, and have all you need to experience your wholeness and your full authenticity in connection – with nature, with self and with each other.

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! Each year I tell my students – this experience at retreat is worth a 1000 individual sessions, and I am not kidding you when I say that.

What would shift for you if you gave yourself this gift? If you said yes to seven days where everything is designed to support your nervous system, your healing, your coming home to yourself?
– Galina Denzel

Meet the co-leaders – Rena K. Bauman, SEP, OICC

Galina is joined by two exquisitely trained professionals and respected leaders in the field of somatic therapy and healing.

Rena K. Bauman: this will be the fourth 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 – leading retreats and intensives. 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.

Meet the co-leaders – Susan McLaughlin, PT

Susan McLaughlin is a highly skilled physical therapist, 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 bio-mechanist, 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 for a second year in a row 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 oak 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 sit around the 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 it’s like to feel deeply connected with a community of like-minded people – we can’t wait to be together at Somatic Summer Camp.

This retreat is for you if:

– You are craving bone-deep rest, one that simply taking a vacation or sabbatical won’t deliver.

– You are wanting nourishing connection in community and spending time with people passionate about growth and healing, people who get you.

– You wish to break through areas of biological stuckness and create capacity for the next threshold of experiences and courage that your life is calling forth

– 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 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.

– You wish to take home practical rhythms which allow you to care for your nervous system and continue to embody the skills from retreat

– Create new body memories and a somatic base to serve as a solid foundation of aspirations for spiritual growth, professional achievements and deeper personal connections

– You wish to live more and more from your blueprint, instead of the many ways you adapted to the difficulties of your life.

– Meet yourself in your authenticity, feel enlivened by your life force – perhaps for the first time in your life

Receive the medicine
of supportive and caring community and make lasting memories

What will the days at retreat look like ?

Our summer retreat will be held at Oak Canyon Ranch, Agoura Hills, about 40 min from Los Angeles Airport, California, from May 30 through June 6, 2026

Picture waking up with the sun, and hearing the birds and the river just a few steps away from your cabin. You slip into your comfy clothes and head down to the shared living room for a cup of tea or steaming hot coffee. If you are feeling hungry – there are many sweet and savory snacks to choose from before brunch. Then you get to take a walk, go for a run, or stretch, or sit in the jacuzzi or by the pool, or swing in a swing or hammock, or play chess on the lawn…or journal…

It’s now 8:30 and you can join Galina and Rena for the morning somatic practice outdoors under the canopy of the oak trees. 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 our in-house chef. This year every recipe is chosen by us to nourish your senses and belly and selected so you can make it yourself when you get home. 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 yurt or in the practice room depending on the weather outside. 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 50 acres of safe private trails and landscapes, lay in the sun, jump in the pool, 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 our main living room space or yurt (depending on weather), where we get to look back on the day. 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.”

Darcy

Retreat Participant

I really appreciated the way that the retreat was organized. It felt so natural for me to start out with being welcomed. I feel like something inside of me has opened up in a way that I have been desperately trying to make happen for a long time.

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 “

Experience bone-deep rest and rejuvenation and leave able to hear from and trust your body!

Space is limited to only 14 retreat participants,
so head over to the registration form!

Here are some of the accommodation details and amenities at the ranch:

Each retreat participant will have their own individual accommodation (a cabin/room with own bathroom and shower).
The cost of the retreat – minus travel – 7 days of lodging, meals, education and activities is $5500. No tax will be added to this cost.
To register – you will be redirected to a registration form. A deposit of $1500 is due upon registration. You will receive a digital invoice for the deposit. The rest of the payment is due in two payments – one in March and one in April, 2026. You can also choose to pay the rest at once.
A full refund is available if cancellation happens before March 30. After March 30, the initial deposit is non-refundable, any further installments will be refunded.
We recommend each student gets retreat and travel insurance to cover any sudden changes in plans. Travel Guard and Trawick are companies that offer those services. Insure the payment for the retreat and also the plane ticket.
Oak Canyon Ranch is on 50 acres of private land and trails in the Santa Monica Mountains, yet it is easily accessible.
Amenities: luxurious yet cozy bedrooms and showers with all needed amenities, mini fridge/coffee maker in each room, jacuzzis and pool, outdoor pool area, many spaces to rest and rejuvenate, fishing at the creek, outdoor chess, yoga room, many cozy living room spaces and fireplaces for gathering. It has a rustic outdoor vibe, but a luxurious indoor vibe, which is a rare jewel in the retreat space. And yes, friends – air conditioning 🙂 I have inquired about bugs and they spray regularly and keep the space as bug free as possible.
Transportation: you would be flying into LAX and taking an Uber or a shared ride (we are happy to create a travel share document for participants). We also have a local person who is happy to offer rides for a small fee (we can connect you if you choose that option). We will not be organizing a shuttle to and from the airport, as we are in a pretty well covered area by Uber/Lyft and rental cars. If you are within driving distance, we are happy that you don’t have to fly.
Once registered, you will receive our special food preference intake, so that we can make sure the food is nourishing and exactly what you need for your comfort and self-care.