Trail’s End Healing Retreat
Lake Palestine, TX
“The characteristic of somatic education is its assumption that the human being has evolved as a self-regulating, self-correcting and self-improving organism. ”
A Quick Introduction Video For You
THE JOURNEY
Three rich days of movement towards health and restoration. Each day is sequential, building to an apex of agility and ease.
Brain Re-patterning for physical HEALING AND AGILITY
Reorganize Habits that Keep You from Peace, Contentment and Delight
mindfulness for the body and the mind
Integration Time for Self-Reflection and Rejuvenation
RETREAT MISSION
Trail’s End Healing Retreat is a beginning journey into the vastness and potential of well-being through deep personal healing, physical restoration, and creative renewal. Through intentional developmental movement practices, participants will nurture and ignite physical agility, mental acuity, emotional stability, and spiritual connection.
Immersed in the remote womb of nature unadulterated by “getting and spending” where “we lay waste our powers” (William Wordsworth), you will emerge a truer version of yourself. Allowing the necessary and often detrimental adaptations of culture to be gently recognized and discarded at will.
This experience is for anyone looking to begin healing from pain and symptoms, a dysregulated nervous system, somatic wounds, or movement restrictions to your athletic or functional performance.
“The constant happiness is curiosity.”
Are you interested in:
relieving chronic pain and symptoms or tightness?
addressing stubborn injuries that never quite heal?
calming a dysregulated nervous system?
upgrading your flexibility and functional capacity?
avoiding surgery and pharmaceuticals?
maintaining a healing lifestyle?
Retreat Agenda
Much is offered, and it is all done with peaceful ease.
Day 1
WELCOME SUNSET FEASt (5:45pm)
We will gather lakeside at sunset to feast on fabulous, nutritious food and meet our fellow-students.
DECOMPRESSION SESSION (7:15 PM)
After a warm welcome, we will move to the Hearth House for a gentle introductory session that will guide you to an Alpha brainwave state. The Alpha State is tied to achieving the highly desirable “flow state”, characterized by effortless engagement, heightened performance, and a sense of timelessness.
REST IN HOMEY LUXURY (9:00 Pm)
Return to your luxury bedding and spacious rooms for a full and good night’s rest in the quiet of the forest.
Day 2
BEGIN THE JOURNEY FOR MORE EASE AND FUNCTION (9:30-12:00)
We will move through a sequential library of guided movement lessons using bio-mechanical connections accessed in healthy human development. These lessons help us recognize and reorganize faulty movement patterns adapted to protect us from physical and emotional pain. They are not exercises, based on performance standards, but novel explorations initiated from curiosity. Exploring functional movement in gravity helps us return to sensing our “True Self” organized around thriving vs an “Adaptive Self” organized around surviving.
PERSONAL INTEGRATION TIME (12:00-2:00)
Enjoy a satisfying lunch and take some time to integrate your learning from the morning. Explore the property, swim, boat or simply find a secret retreat corner.
continue the journey of self-exploration (2:00-6:00)
Return and continue exploring easing and re-vitalizing movements. In this afternoon session, you will begin to understand how your beliefs affect your use of your body. As we daily increase our ability to sense and connect with our “True Self”, we can more easily recognize internal and external, conscious and unconscious, nervous system triggers that drive cardio-vascular strain, digestive disruption, immune system sensitivity and mental anguish, as well as orthopedic pain.
evening meal (6:00-7:30)
Another beautiful sunset meal to spend with your friends or in solitude.
FINAL REST SESSION (7:30-8:30)
More brainwave transition work to settle you into an evening of peace and connection.
Day 3
how you do life and how you can do better (9:30 - 4:00 with a 2 hour lunch break)
A cohesive integration day to bring together your physical and emotional learning. You will be given access to tools from each lesson to maintain your gains in movement and equanamity.
In addition, each movement session will include a parallel mental and emotional pattern that partners with the movements. During key sessions we will work on personal feedback, questions and revelations and realizations. There will also be supporting videos and handouts used intermittently during the sessions.
Bonus Activities
Swimming
Sauna
Paddle Boarding
Kayaking
Enjoying screened-in Boat House
Meditating in Nature
“It is the imagination that can channel the unconscious, and the unconscious that stewards the full scope of our capabilities.
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Learn more by listening to these three short videos.
Cortical Field Re-Education (CFR) is based on the work of Moshe Feldenkrais. It is a system of pain and symptom relief. Nascent neural pathways forged as a child for functional movement are distorted through insult and injury. Rediscovering these early movement patterns redirects forces and loads away from overused tissues that “age” or “don’t heal”. CFR also helps you recognize choices and beliefs that keep you trapped in emotional suffering. Reorganizing these out-dated frameworks begins the restoration of function on all levels of consciousness.
Melissa Krikorian
Melissa is a physical therapist with over 25 years of experience and a Cortical Field Re-Education® (CFR) Trainer. She uses the most current neuroscience research to inform how she works with groups and private clients to restore physical function and emotional ease.
Melissa has been working with the human body for 35 years starting as a Physical Trainer in the 80’s, licensed as a Physical Therapist in the 90’s and providing Continuing Education for California Physical Therapists until 2020. She has presented at UCLA Physical Therapy Outpatient Department and at UCI Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute. She teaches internationally, at Esalen Institute and has her own private practice in Tyler, TX.