Nature Immersion & Movement Retreats
Spring Awakening: 21st - 25th of May 2025
Sun Ray Shire | Sedro-Wooley WA
As Featured In...
If you’re hungry for personal growth and a reconnection to play, body, nature, and community, Evolve Move Play offers our flagship retreat.
Experience a more human vision of fitness and a roadmap toward a more heroic version of you!
There are moments in life when time seems to disappear.Times when you’re completely embedded in the now.
When each moment is potent with meaning.
In those moments when we’re concentrating intensely, when we are deeply embodied. In the moments when we are embedded in rich environments and facing high consequences.
It’s in those moments we feel most alive.
This is the flow state.
Bringing meaning to life. Making experience optimal.
Rediscover The Joy Of Movement
Swinging, vaulting, weaving lines through red cedars. Climbing slick stone through pounding water. Leaping from boulder to boulder while gulls wheel overhead.
Dancing, wrestling, striking in the sand. Chasing and evading through the forest. Connecting body to body with other humans. Growing through shared struggle.
Return to the Source is sitting quietly in the woods listening to birdsong. Feeling the wind on your skin. Immersing yourself in alpine lakes and waterfalls. Remembering to breathe
Singing and storytelling around the campfire. Sharing home-cooked meals. Sweating in a wood-fired sauna. Plunging into cold water.
At Return to the Source, we help you build a meaningful movement practice and rediscover the child-like joy in movement.
We share the tools to master your movement, reconnect to play, to nature, to self and to others.
We bring together movement practice, mindfulness, and nature connection.
Through the flow experience and through reconnecting to the elements missing from modern life, we recover a deep sense of meaning.
Through our practices we grow as humans, we gain insight, and share deeply meaningful experiences.
Reconnect to nature, movement, body, play, and tribe.
“Ultimately, this is so much more than a physical experience of returning to the physical aspects of what makes us human. It is about returning to community, returning to human connection and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable with others, and just having fun. This was quite honestly one of the best experiences of my life and I would love to be able to attend again.”
Jamie R
What To Expect
Evolve Move Play is a self cultivation practice combining movement, mindfulness, nature connection and community.
We believe movement is the best foundation for self development. It teaches and informs us at all the levels of our body. When we learn courage, creativity, empathy & resilience through movement, these lessons are not just mental or emotional, but physical as well.
Developing A Meaningful Movement Practice:
The Four Pillars Of Movement
Pillar One: Body Integrity
When our body systems are not well integrated, weak, or immobile, our structures perform poorly and we are at risk of injury. Body integrity practices focus on building the resources of the body itself and the relationship between the various body systems.
Isolated joint strengthening and mobility development exercises
Elastic function development exercises
Structural integration development exercises
Pillar Two: Body To Environment
Being able to move with grace, ease and flow through the environment is one of the most powerful experiences we can have. Parkour is the best general approach to the development of these abilities. Parkour in nature reconnects us with the environments that are most nourishing for us.
The 6 elements of natural parkour
Fundamental locomotion skills
The Principles of Flow
'Aliveness' games and drills
Pillar Three: Body To Object
Everyone loves the feel of a well aimed throw or a nifty catch. As humans we have a unique capacity to manipulate objects in our environment. For a complete development of our human potential, handling simple object manipulation becomes essential.
Throwing, catching, juggling, swinging and striking games and drills
Development of fundamental manipulation skills
Pillar Four: Body To Body
Finally, we need to be able to move well with other humans or animals. We are social creatures, a species of hunters and warriors. Play fighting and dancing are human universals.We bring these together in combination with martial arts to develop more physically literate and competent human beings. Our aim is sensitivity in movement, focusing on well-coordinated partner movement, feats of acrobatics, and fundamentals of defense in violent encounters.
Roughhousing & Contact improvisation games
Fundamental martial arts skills & principles
We'll Also Be Exploring The Benefits Of...
Mindfulness
Mindfulness practices give us a capacity to gain greater insight from our physical practice, better access to flow in our movement, and improved transfer from our movement practice into life. Physical skill is not sufficient in itself.
Meditation is learning to control your attention.
Contemplation is the pursuit of changing how you pay attention to the world.
Nature Connection
The natural world can be read like a book. There are stories around us told by the shapes of the trees, by the tracks of the animals, the songs of the birds. As a culture, we have become nature illiterate. Reconnecting with these languages can offer a deep sense of meaning and connection.
Nature games build awareness and sensitivity to the natural world, local flora and fauna, the language of birds and the lifestyles of animals in the Pacific Northwest.
Discover nature awareness through sit spotting, nature walking, tracking and gathering.
Community Practices
As tribal creatures, we form our identities in relationships with other people, but our modern society has lost this connection. We feel disconnected and alienated, and desire to reconnect with community and friendship.
The retreat itself is the grounds for deep connection and we intentionally amplify that through:
Dialoguing
Story telling
Shared meals
Music
Saunas and Cold Plunges
“It’s odd to think about how powerful that one jump has been in my life. I mean, speaking literally, it’s just a jump between two rocks, but I draw on that experience all the time. Not JUST when I’m faced with physical challenges, but when I need to find the courage to speak up, to be more authentic, to be vulnerable, to try something new, to stop the internal dialogue that says “who are you to think you can do this.”
Maura
When Is The Next Retreat?
Spring Awakening: May 21st to 25th 2025
Sunray Shire | Washington State
Alexander Bourke
No movement background
Michael Tankovich
Asst. Athletic trainer for Seattle Seahawks
Brian Unger
No movement background
Andrew Denhard
Varsity Football, State hurdler in track and field
Who Is This For?
If you are passionate about movement and nature, and want to develop a movement practice that will bring the most meaning to your life, then this experience is for YOU.
We crafted the EMP method to be adaptable to all levels. We’ve had students as young as 11 and as old as 73 join us with no difficulty. Our students have spanned the gamut from untrained novices to elite parkour and MMA athletes.
For experienced movers and teachers, not only will we be covering ways to use the materials with your own students and clients, but previous participants have continued to rave about the quality of our methods and how it has improved their own teaching for years after they took our seminars.
Whether you are a novice mover or expert movement instructor, our methods are fun and simple enough for you to be completely immersed with self transformation.
F.A.Q
Do I need to be skilled at parkour? I wonder if I am too old? Too unfit? Too young? Too much of a novice?
If you can walk or run, you’re ready for us! We’ve had students of all ages and levels from 11 to 70’s come join us and have a blast!Some of the students you see in our videos learned these amazing movements while training with us. This seminar is for all movement backgrounds whether you’re an elite athlete, coach, or just getting started.
Is this dangerous?
We evolved to run, jump, and climb, and have natural instincts for what is safe. Any athletic activity carries some risk, but these movement practices are far less dangerous than they are usually believed to be.
Our approach focuses on helping you progressively learn your own limits. Over the history of our teaching, our injury rate is less than half that of more mainstream sports like playing soccer.
With our roughhousing we introduce elements like lifts, striking, and grappling only after teaching breakfalls and developing good partnering techniques. We start with games that have strong safety limitations before progressing as students’ competency grows.
While we ask students to gently push their personal limits, we never ask or expect students to “keep up” or perform beyond their capabilities. We want to teach you to listen to your body; this is the most powerful safety protocol.
Can I use this in my movement style when I return home?
We encourage you to continue practicing and build the seminar so you can effectively continue the practice afterwards. You will learn wonderful things to share with training partners, friends and family. If you are a coach yourself, we are happy to have you use the material you learn, so long as you cite our work and do not try to use our name without an EMP certification.
What should I bring?
Upon purchase you’ll gain access to an online prep course that will provide all the important details for planning your trip and preparing for the event.
Here’s a short list of general items we recommend to bring.
Athletic clothes
Swim gear
Rain gear (just in case)
A water bottle
Sun protection if desired
Camping gear if you choose to camp
Musical equipment, movement toys, bushcraft projects, and anything else you would like to share during down times
A notebook & writing implements
Most importantly, your taste for adventure and spirit of play
Can I bring my spouse or a guest?
We would be happy to offer a group discount for multiple attendees. Contact us at [email protected] or book a call to secure your group.
I’m trying to book my travel. What do I need to know? Where do I stay?
If you're flying on for any event, we advise you to speak to a member of our team after booking your place on the retreat to ensure you have the correct information regarding start times and end times for the retreats.
What is the refund/ cancelation policy if I cannot attend?
Because our seminars are often in high demand and extend over multiple days, we need to know who can come far in advance. This allows our team time to prepare an amazing, custom experience for everyone.
Click the link below to learn more about our Refunds, Cancelations and Event Transfer policies.
Evolve Move Play Retreat Cancelation Policy
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Outdoor movement education and training to build HEALTHIER, HAPPIER HUMANS!
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