Winter retreat 2026: fire, ice, and darkness to light

Winter retreat in Helsinki, Finland in an amazing venue on the island of Suomenlinna, a UNESCO World Heritage Site sea fortress. You can stay on-site at Hostel Suomenlinna or book your own accommodation. 

Join us for dancing wave after wave, with darkness and light, between moving and resting, with the elements of fire and ice. Allowing the winter hibernating bear part of us to rest with other dancing bodies. Waking up the fire and energy inside us, reaching towards our own inner light in the darkness of winter. Weather permitting, there will also be opportunities to move outside in the winter, to hopefully dance with and in snow, and to play with the elements of winter in many ways.

Suomenlinna is an easy 20 minute ferry ride away from central Helsinki. And you can fly direct to Helsinki from many international airports. If you want to explore the Arctic and the North of Finland as well, you can have an adventure in winter magic before or after this retreat. This is the best time of year for skiing, for instance!

Teaching is in Finnish with translation into English available if it is needed (please let us know!).

This workshop counts as 2.5 days of Waves towards the teacher training prerequisites.

"JUICY"

In this workshop we begin by working with liberating life energy in our physical body and welcoming physical movement. We’ll then continue liberating life energy in our emotional body, our heart, and welcoming emotional movement. 

Every meeting with each other on this journey is a mirror of our own heart, its emptiness and fullness, its troubles and joys, its wisdom and its innocence.

As our hearts get juicy again, our sexuality is awakened in our moving bodies and so we will explore the connection between our emotional and sexual lives. And as part of that exploration we will investigate how dance and moving meditation can serve our sexual healing.

How can we take responsibility for our sexual energy, and its direction and manifestation, instead of burying it under layers of guilt? How can we first enjoy it for ourselves before we have to blame it on somebody else or just give it away like there’s no tomorrow? 

How can we heal the shame we carry about our body, our heart, our sexuality?

What do we need to feel safe and secure in our own body and its appetites, in our own heart and its desires so that eventually we could meet somebody else’s appetites and desires?

The dance floor is a safe and sacred space to move with our juiciness, and the 5Rhythms map will guide us.

I am curious about what is needed to make a bridge between our heart and our sexual energy, and what they can co-create together. How fear becomes excitement, how anger becomes passion, how sadness can be released orgasmically, how generous we can be in our joy and how the unity of breath, beat and body can unite us with the Divine and with the Universe.

“If the heart is not free to experience the power of loving, if we are emotionally blocked and holding back feelings, there is no way we can experience total orgasm, or total well-being.” Gabrielle Roth