RESTORATIVE PARENTING
pathways to intergenerational healing
THE SHANTI SPACE, PORTUGAL
Saturday 29 & Sunday 30 March
10am - 6pm
Parenting is beautiful—and it’s also one of the most challenging roles we take on. This two-day retreat is an invitation to pause, reflect, grow together and nurture what might be needed during this season of your parenting journey.
We are on a humble healing journey seeking to integrate reparative practices, where relational principles of connection to nature, ourselves and each other are the roots from which future generations will continue to heal, grow and thrive.
We are rooted in the understanding that healing and wellbeing are inextricably linked to the quality and frequency of connection that we experience, encounter and offer one another.
For many of us, parenting brings an awareness to the parts of ourselves that are still in need of healing. It takes great courage to hold that awareness, to grieve and continue to choose pathways that can lead to intergenerational healing.
Life is full of everyday stressors. These stressors are not isolated events, but rather are cumulative and interconnected somatically to the ways in which stress and trauma have been stored in our bodies. Often, when our stress response is activated, we may notice how difficult it can be to sustain, find and return to connection. In these moments, we can suddenly find ourselves on pathways, that although familiar, may no longer serve us, nor benefit the well being of our relationships. For many of us, despite our awareness and intentions, we can feel stuck in our relational patterns and ways of responding out of our protective or reactive states of being. These responses are there for a reason and deserve compassionate attunement, to nurture what might be needed
This weekend is for parents, caregivers and anyone seeking to create trusted pathways to deepen, maintain and sustain connection when their stress response is activated.
This workshop is designed to support parents and caregivers in experiencing and nurturing a more secure attachment creating long lasting, generational shifts.
Together, we will strengthen a developmental lens and neurobiological understanding, to support the parallel process of healing.
Restorative Parenting offers the deepest forms of nourishment and self-care for parents and caregivers through somatic embodiment and principles that can be applied to guide us throughout our parenting journey and the developmental stages yet to come.
Our practice is guided by relational principles that create trusted pathways that are nourished by connection. We will practice being gentle with ourselves and each other as the highest value is connection, not perfection. As we stumble forward, and inevitably make mistakes, there are endless opportunities to deepen pathways that support us in choosing and re-choosing connection through the redemptive beauty of repair.
Through connected relationships, new somatic memories are co-created. These integrated neuropathways increase our ability:
to respond from embodied connection when our stress response is activated
strengthen a more secure attachment (attachment and detachment)
develop our capacity to soothe our own nervous system through attunement, so that we can more easily lend our nervous system to our children
nurture a culture of repair
create meaningful shifts in our relational patternsee
king to integrate reparative practices,
“If it is harmful for one person in the relationship, then it is harmful for both, and ultimately the relationship. Healing cannot take place at the expense of another.”
This weekend Restorative Parenting immersion experience is a wonderful way to prioritise one’s healing and learning journey as it allows for a more concentrated time to deepen somatic embodiment for creating and sustaining neuropathways for connection and moving towards a more secure attachment.
During this immersion we will:
Provide evidence-based practices to nurture secure attachment.
Support emotional co-regulation—for both you and your children.
Nurture your internal wisdom through attunement and connection.
Create a supportive space for reflection and somatic practices.
Develop a shared language, lens and principles for parents/caregivers to apply together.
Seek to create long-lasting generational shifts through the parallel process of healing.
Together, we’ll explore:
The science of attachment and how it impacts family dynamics, our relationship with stress, as well as shapes our relationship patterns.
Bottom-Up Regulation and how to apply this knowledge to attunement and co-regulation.
The essential role of making requests and the value of resistance.
Essential communication tools and relational practices for the family.
Gentle somatic techniques to deepen connection and soothe your nervous system.
*Trauma Informed care is for all of us. This workshop will be designed and held through trauma informed practices. We all benefit from being treated with dignity, the offering of choices, knowing what to expect to happen next, predictability, rhythm, consistency, consent, validation, collaboration and experiencing connection.
**While this retreat will be therapeutic and restorative in nature, it is differentiated from therapy. The facilitator will carefully and gently hold space to ensure that Restorative Parenting remains the guiding practice throughout the retreat.
GROWTH AND LEARNING, PSYCHOTHERAPY, RESTORATIVE PARENTING
Meet Mar (she/her) MSW, LCSW (Registered Clinical Supervisor)
Hello! I am a Licensed Psychotherapist, dedicated to intergenerational healing. I received my MSW in 2007 and began my clinical practice partnering with interpreters to provide trauma counseling for children, teens, adults and families with extensive, compound trauma due to historical trauma, as survivors of war, forced migration and ongoing systemic resettlement stressors. In addition to psychotherapy, I remain committed to defining quality standards through an equitable lens and centring culturally and linguistically diverse communities of the global majority. I am rooted in the belief that we can only be trauma informed to the extent that we are linguistically sustaining and culturally aaffirming.
I am trained in EMDR, Child Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), Somatic Experiencing®, PolyVagal Theory, and Level II trained in Natural Lifemanship®. I integrate and adapt each of these models and theories through an Ethnomutual and Equitable Triad Lens, to ensure we are defining trauma informed care as trauma informed for all. I am anchored by the core principle that healing occurs in the context of connected relationships that restore trust- through cumulative somatic encounters of experiencing dignity and choice.
I approach healing through both a systemic and attachment lens that is rooted in somatic embodiment. This understanding is interconnected with my journey of motherhood and inner child healing, which has served to kindle my commitment and passion for attachment work as essential for intergenerational healing.
I bring an authentic presence, empathy, attunement, and non-judgmental approach to our partnership. Within your body is an internal wisdom and knowing, that often has been quieted beneath the layers, yet still remains. I will be there to support you as you sense into your internal wisdom.
Through these experiences, we will seek reverent curiosity (Rowen White) and compassion regarding how the body might be responding to stress in the present moment, nurture what is needed, and then create new pathways for experiencing connection. I look forward to supporting you as you deepen internal pathways for meaningful, sustaining, long lasting healing in your life through somatic integration of mind, body and spirit.
I share life’s journey together with my husband, our two precious daughters, and our beloved Newfoundland and Border Collie. We enjoy the simple beauties and rhythms of daily life, mutual growth and learning, and repair alongside each other. Together we are seeking to deepen our understanding of gratitude and reciprocity in caring for Nature and the many beings whom we share land and sea.
For more information about our facilitator: www.yarrowequine.com
LOCATION: The Shanti Space
Shanti, Sanskrit for Peace or to T. S. Eliot “The Peace which passeth understanding.”
The Shanti Space is a sanctuary for personal development & empowerment; a space to rest and restore well-being whilst bathed in abundant nature.
The venue, an old Quinta set in a national park endowed with beautiful fruit trees, giant oak corks, grape vines, vistas and a stream at the end of the garden where many often encounter their neighbours; deer and wild boar.
TRANSPORT
The nearest airport is Lisbon only 25 minutes away.
The easiest way is to come in Uber / transfer.
It will cost about 40€ and 25-30 minutes of travel.
DELICIOUS PLANT-BASED MEALS & SNACKS
The food we eat every day can be a medicine with the power to transform, nourish, strengthen and heal imbalances. We have a plant based approach providing nutrient dense dishes; mostly organic, locally sourced or from our garden and delicious!
We like our food to be eclectic and colourful, packed full with flavour, superfoods and antioxidants that cleanse and enrich the body, mind and soul. When we design our recipes, we look at the seasons, the environment and food energetics to maintain and support harmony in the body.
Key things we feel are important to remember: its got to taste good, enjoy what you eat, use local and seasonal produce, have fun in the kitchen and eat an inclusive, broad diet.
This is a restorative parenting immersion suitable for anyone wishing to deepen their understanding in the field of parenting, child development & conscious relating, offering tools, healing & transformation to benefit your entire life & those around you.
DATE
Saturday 29 March - Sunday 30 March 2025
2 Full Workshop Days
Start: 10am
Finish: 6pm
RATES
full two day workshop + two-course lunches
€350*
*10% discount for two people coming together book here
** If finances are currently unavailable for you to join this please reach out so we can see how we can support you.
Option to stay on-site
private king accommodation single
2 nights €210 (sat + sun)
3 nights €320 (fri, sat + sun)
private king accommodation per couple
2 nights €300 (sat + sun)
3 nights €450 (fri, sat + sun)
Enquiries
booking@theshantispace.com
Please be aware that this workshop is for adults only. You are welcome to arrange childcare & for your children to be on-site provided they are supervised.
