Nourish your Neurodivergent or Sensitive Self (Facilitated Online Class)

Nourish yourself physically, emotionally, and mentally using the Tamalpa Life Art Process®, a mix of movement and dance, somatic awareness, creative self-expression, and reflective practices – in a gentle, intentionally small workshop, designed with you in mind. (18+)

Created and facilitated by late-identified neurodivergent practitioners for late-identified neurodivergent individuals and those who identify as highly sensitive.

All forms of neurodivergence welcome – whether formally/self- identified or questioning.

No movement, dance, or art experience necessary.

Nurture your wellbeing as you’re gently guided to uncover creative resources and the wisdom within your own body-mind — without leaving your own space. *

Participants are invited to discover how what is alive in us, and in our lives, speaks through our body in movement (rhythm, posture, gesture, impulse, breath) – and how creative expression (imagination, mark-making, and narrative) opens additional pathways for engaging and shaping our lived experience.

The somatic approach focuses on developing awareness of internal bodily experience to support nervous system regulation, integration, and authentic ways of being. In the Tamalpa Life/Art Process®, there is no right or wrong way to move, draw, or express – the focus is on cultivating curiosity, presence, and genuine self-expression.

Past participants have found it accessible and beneficial to engage in the Life/Art Process® even when navigating burnout, chronic fatigue, or pain.

*Art Cure, The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health, by Daisy Fancourt, 2026

In this workshop you are invited to:

· Deepen your awareness of how you are physically, emotionally, and mentally at this moment in life

· Explore the stress-reducing potential of movement and creative self-expression, both of which have been demonstrated to help prevent and recover from burnout**

· Connect with fellow neurodivergent or highly sensitive people in a clearly guided and asocial environment – no icebreakers, breakout rooms, or partnered activities, with options for sharing that suit all preferences***

· Participate according to your authentic capacity on the day – movement may be large or small and explored while moving through your space and/or lying on the floor, and stimming is warmly welcomed

· Enjoy a gently-paced workshop designed around your anticipated needs, including appropriate breaks – without leaving your own space

** Burnout, Solve Your Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski, 2020

*** The mainly asocial intent inherent in transformative somatic practices (such as the Tamalpa Life/Art Process) is particularly suited and beneficial to autistic participants, according to Dr Nick Walker, leading autistic scholar and somatic practitioner in the field of neurodiversity studies.

Main Image Credit: Ashkan- forouzani, Unsplash

Image credit: Peter Bucks, Unsplash

“The Tamalpa Life/Art Process for me seemed to unlock my intuition to find practices that support me in my day to day life.”

~ Late-identified autistic participant with chronic pain

“I like the combination of art, movement and writing in a supportive space where there is no right or wrong; just the true expression of how you feel. I can also see that it is equally beneficial to neurotypical and neurodiverse people.”

~ Late-identified AuDHD participant with complex trauma and in burnout

“I feel Tamalpa has so many positive qualities as a movement-based expressive arts practice that are applicable and helpful to autistic people. I feel so many of us are disconnected from our bodies after years of adversity and being told how we move is wrong or bad.

Tamalpa can help us reconnect gently with our bodies and access our innate movements and the knowledge of our bodies. I feel it does this through encouragement of movement, expression of this movement via drawing and writing, and through being in community – in this case, with other autistic people. I feel it really helps to be among people who have been through similar experiences.”

~ AuDHD participant with C-PTSD, chronic fatigue and auto-immune disease

Image credit: Cottonbro, Pexels

What Is the Tamalpa Life/Art Process®?

The Tamalpa Life/Art Process® is a creative and embodied approach to personal and social transformation, developed since 1978 at the Tamalpa Institute in California by founders Anna Halprin and Daria Halprin.

At its heart is a simple yet powerful belief: the body holds our lived experience — and movement is its primary language.

All of life is movement, and everything in our universe moves. In the Tamalpa approach, movement is like a dance and everyone is a dancer; it is not about technique or performance — it is about authentic experience and expression. It is in movement that we express our personality and our conditioning, and it is through movement that we discover new resources.

In this approach, we understand that when we move, we engage more than muscles and bones — we access memory, emotion, story, resilience and possibility.

Through movement and dance, somatic awareness, creative expression and reflective practices (mark making and creative and/or reflective writing) we explore the wisdom of the body and the imagination. Rather than analysing life from a distance, we embody it — listening to what our sensations, gestures, impulses and images reveal.

Each art form deepens and informs the others, allowing insight to unfold organically, and in this way the Life/Art Process facilitates the integration of body, emotions, thoughts, and imagination.

Through this embodied exploration, we can:

• Strengthen our relationship to ourselves
• Engage more consciously with social and cultural realities
• Support healing, integration, change, and growth
• Cultivate creativity as an accessible, practical, and living practice

Since the launch of Tamalpa UK in 2012, the training programmes and public workshops have attracted many neurodivergent adults who have experienced the Tamalpa Life Art Process® and found in it a supportive way of meeting, exploring, and resourcing themselves.

Image credit: Yukon Haughton, Unsplash

What do I need for the session?

· A Zoom account (free to sign up)

· A high-speed internet connection

· A computer or tablet that can be stably positioned – cameras are required to be on throughout to support trust and safe facilitation

· Adequate space in which to move/dance safely (approx. 2×2 metres minimum) where you won’t be interrupted

· A yoga mat or blanket if lying on the ground for movement is preferred

· Comfortable clothes to move in, with layers to respond to possible temperature fluctuations

· Movement is done in bare feet (or in ‘grippy’ socks) to avoid potential slipping/injury

· Plain A2 or A3 paper and oil pastels/coloured pencils/crayons or preferred art materials

· Note book and pen

· Bottle of drinking water

This workshop may be engaged in as a standalone experience or as a complement to existing individual therapy. While it may be experienced as therapeutic and personally meaningful, it is not in itself psychotherapy.

About the Facilitators

Lian Wilson MSMT/MSME Creative Director, Tamalpa UK

Lian is dyslexic — and it was movement, not the classroom, that first gave her a language for her real experience. Diagnosed officially in her 40s, she spent a lifetime navigating the challenges and quietly claiming the strengths that come with a neurodivergent mind.

A Master Somatic Movement Therapist and Educator (ISMETA) and Tamalpa Practitioner, Lian has spent over 25 years at the intersection of somatic movement, expressive arts, and health. She holds a BA in Community Dance from Bretton Hall (Leeds University) and graduated as a Tamalpa Practitioner in 2003 from the Tamalpa Institute in California, going on to work closely with Anna and Daria Halprin across trainings, workshops, and performances.

In 2012, she co-founded Tamalpa UK — bringing the Tamalpa Life/Art Process® to the UK for the first time. Since then she has led professional trainings and public workshops across Folkestone, Sandgate, London, and Scotland, and built a growing international online community.

Lian also served as Assistant Researcher at the Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health (Canterbury Christ Church University), contributing to research in dance and dementia and dance for falls prevention.

Her work is rooted in a commitment to making the Tamalpa approach accessible, practical, and relevant — for every mind and body.

In both her professional and personal life, Lian is guided by her love of movement, creativity, nature, and a daily embodied practice that sustains vitality and resilience.

Sandra Maria Carey RSMT, RSME, SEP

Sandra Maria Carey is a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist (RSMT) and a Registered Somatic Movement Educator (RSME), accredited by the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association (ISMETA). She is a certified Tamalpa practitioner and a Somatic Experiencing trauma therapist. Her one-to-one work is also informed by Somatic Inner Relationship Focusing, a body-centred, parts-oriented psychotherapeutic approach. Sandra’s recovery from complex and inter-generational trauma has been profoundly supported by the practices of somatics and expressive arts, especially in relational contexts.

Sandra is from Ireland but has spent almost all her adult life alternately in the UAE and the UK, where she is now based. She is interested in intersectional de-colonial perspectives on all aspects of contemporary life, especially trauma, therapy, and neurodiversity. She is currently enrolled in the annual fellowship program, Decolonializing Therapy Foundations Training, and she completed Mbari: Art, Bodies, and Care at the End of the World, with Báyò Akómoláfé, Ph.D.

Sandra nurtures connection and continued healing mainly through ongoing inquiry, contemplative practices, and personal therapy; Tamalpa and nervous system-based activities; and through accompanying and supporting others as a practitioner – as well as engagement in the arts, movement, and time outdoors, and through cultivating interdependent relationships with her three adult daughters and close friends