A week of professional development supported by the power and beauty of the Algarve ocean
Develop the skills and inner posture that create magic in all your groups
Are you dreaming of facilitating your very first group, OR have you been leading circles and workshops for years?
Either way, you know that exercises alone are not what people remember. They remember how it felt. They remember the safety in the room, the depth of the conversations, and how something significant shifted inside them.
In this Group Work Retreat, we help you to create more of this potency in groups. This retreat invites you to deepen the art of creating spaces where people feel safe enough to soften, connect and surprise themselves.
That magic comes from using Soul-based Coaching techniques, and it comes from our inner posture - the way we receive, and the way we lead from love.
For the receiving, we lean into the Path of Beauty. Not just aesthetics, but beauty as a way of receiving life itself - the ocean, the silence, each other, the ordinary joys of a walk in nature or a slow morning.
When we give ourselves permission to receive before we lead, to nourish ourselves before we create, and to stay in relationship with ourselves while serving others, our presence changes. The groups we facilitate become softer, safer and more alive - because we bring more of ourselves, not because we do more. And more happens as a result.
And for leading from love, we practice leading authentically from a full heart rather than from performance or control. Love, here, is not a technique either. It's what happens when we stop managing a group and start caring deeply about the people in front of us - their process, their pace, what they need as a group in this exact moment rather than what our plan says should happen next. While at the same time staying firmly rooted in the desired outcome, the context and container that your people came for.
This is the posture we want to hand to you:
an extension of holding space, a felt sense that your own aliveness - received, relaxed, and offered in love - is changing the room, even without words.
If you long to facilitate groups that feel both beautifully held and deeply alive, join us in Portugal.
Join us at our 2027 Group Work Retreat!
This is a week built for both craft and cup-filling: sharp enough to leave you a better facilitator, spacious enough to leave you nourished.
Become a master at your group facilitation craft
Bringing Soul-based Coaching to facilitate groups brings a whole new layer to your craft. To develop your skills you need practice, and what is better than practice with direct feed-back from the Retreat Team!
Between us, we have decades of experience bringing well-crafted, powerful group sessions to life, and we want to share what we have learned with you. So that you can:
- Find the courage and clarity you have been looking for to finally bring your group dreams to life, or:
- Bring the true depth and impact that you want your sessions to have to your group settings too, no matter if they are focussing on healing and personal work, community building or even corporate settings.
We offer teachings and experiences that you can incorporate into your own offerings.
You will have the opportunity to design and/or test one of your workshops, with in-depth and supportive feedback from all of us at every stage. And you will practice running core exercises that help you set the culture and tone that supports the depth of the work you want to invite the group into. So that you know you can meet whatever unfolds with a deep trust in the processes you design.
Note: a group application of Soul-based Coaching is usually NOT an in-depth 1:1 coaching process. So if you are experienced with Soul-based Coaching 1:1, expect less maturing individual metaphor landscapes and more modelling the group, balancing group processes and individual processes in a solid riverbed, with the path of beauty as its fuel.
This is what awaits you...
Bring your Group Facilitation Skills to the next Level: Group-Facilitation teachings which lead into you guiding group exercises and receiving live feedback on your technique, expanding your skillset and deepening your confidence in your professional skills.
Test-Drive Your Next Group Offering: Bring your workshop idea or running order, try it out with the group, and refine it with real feedback - so you leave ready to run it the moment you're home.
Walk the Path of Beauty: Experience what changes when beauty becomes more than something you appreciate, it becomes the place from which you live, create and lead.
Strengthen Your Receiving Muscle: Relax, open your senses, and nourish yourself through daily ordinary magic, guided embodiment, movement and pleasure practices - with plenty of space to slow down, swim, wander, or simply do nothing at all. And see your presence and therefore your work become more powerful.
Lead from a Full Heart: Let what you've received turn into how you show up for others - trading control and performance for presence, so your groups feel held before you even say a word.
Soften, Connect and Grow: Feel held by our experienced team and each other, and deepen connection within a like-hearted community through shared meals, temple practices and ritual.
Leave Inspired and Nourished: Return home with a tested offering, sharpened facilitation skills, and a felt sense of what it's like to lead from a full cup instead of depletion.
The Path of Beauty - A Way of Life
Our culture teaches us to work hard first, and only then, if there's time, allow ourselves to enjoy life. The Path of Beauty turns that order on its head: it invites us to receive first - to slow down enough to notice what nourishes us, and let beauty, nature, relationship and stillness fill us, so that whatever we create grows from abundance rather than depletion.
For us, beauty isn't decorative or reserved for special occasions. It's love made visible - the care we bring to a space, the attention we give another person, the willingness to be fully present with what's here.
Our home away from home in Portugal
We are returning for the third time to a magnificent spacious villa in a little village called Galé, only a 10 minute walk from several beaches.
The villa will be our home during the retreat, where we’ll live and do the teaching sessions, workshops, The Non Linear Movement Method®, temple practices and hang out together.
The villa has a big pool, a large cosy living room and a kitchen where we’ll eat breakfast and you can choose to prepare your lunch. There is room for 12 participants to stay in shared accommodation in the villa. We also offer the option to stay in a private room either in the villa or in an apartment, 10 minutes walk from the villa.
Nearby you can find restaurants, cafes and supermarkets.
Portugal is very hospitable and easy to get around only speaking English.
Experiences of earlier Soul-based Coaching retreats
Your guides
We are excited to bring this retreat to you! We, Annemiek and Wren, are part of the Academy for Soul-based Coaching trainer team and we both love guiding women's temples in the tradition of Chameli Ardagh's Awakening Women.
For the fourth time, we are very happy to co-create our annual retreat with Corinne Konrad Calder, Mirjam van Ruth (both Certified Soul-based Coaches), who also have wide experience in guiding groups and individuals in embodiment, healing and change work.
Between us, we have a beautiful mix of magic to pour from and support you in a nourishing deep dive.
Who is this for?
This retreat is for women, who:
🌿 Are experienced facilitators, who knows that there is more depth and impact to be had, more alignment to be found in what you offer and what you heart tells you is waiting for you.
or
🌿 Who are dreaming of offering the skills and experiences you have to groups, so that others can benefit from your massage, yoga, healing skills, your embodiment practices, your experienced wisdom of life's threshold like health challenges you navigated, becoming a mom, navigating divorce, the initiation of menopause - you name it.
either way:
You want to offer your participants an experience that stays with them, and has lasting positive impact. You long for a mix of Yin & Yang. You want people to root from their soul wisdom, not just try to take on an expert's advice. You want to help liberate and empower your participants.
Open to all, no matter how experienced or inexperienced you are.
(And because this is different from previous years, for clarity: you may be an alumni from the Academy for Soul-based Coaching, or have Clean Language experience, but you don't need to be.)
When you would like to immerse yourself in the magic of leading groups using Soul-based coaching techniques, develop your skills, and nourish yourself with beauty and deep connection with like minded women, you are welcome!
What does this week look like?
Mornings that move between teaching and practice, feedback that sharpens and deepens rather than corrects.
Free afternoons that are genuinely yours - a swim, a walk, a coffee somewhere with a view - before we gather again in the late afternoon to further explore through workshop or movement, letting the morning's insight settle into the body.
Evenings that soften into dinner together (or by yourself if you long for quiet time) and sometimes an optional ritual or a quiet yoga nidra to close the day.
Practical Information
The retreat is held in English.
Dates & Times
Schedule
- Onboarding call on Zoom
- Saturday, April 17th 2027: arrival from 2 pm, the program starts at 4.00 pm
- Sunday - Friday: full retreat program days
- Saturday, April 24th: check out at 10 am
- Integration call on Zoom
Including:
- The luscious 7-day retreat program
- Seven nights with accommodation in shared double rooms in our villa or one of our two private rooms (which will be in the villa or in a shared apartment near the villa)
- Daily breakfast & lunch at the villa
- Two catered dinners at the villa
- We take various food allergies and main preferences into account
Excluding:
- Flights & transfer
- Dinner for 5 nights
- Travel insurance
How to get there
The village is called Galé, just outside Albufeira, in Portugal's stunning Algarve coast.
You can fly to Faro, Algarve airport (45 min by car from the villa).
Or fly to Lisbon international airport. From there you can go by train, rent a car (2,5 hours drive to villa) or take a domestic flight to Faro.
And check out the cancellation policy and T&C below.
Secure your place now:
Early bird price available until October 20th
Book your place now in the
Group Work Retreat
Algarve, Portugal
17th - 24th April, 2027
Private Room
1 person in single room
Including:
7 nights accommodation
Luscious 7-day retreat program
Daily breakfast and lunch
2 catered dinners
Your Investment
€3775
€3319
2 spaces available
Book my place with a private room!Shared Room
1 person in shared twin room
Including:
7 nights accommodation
Luscious 7-day retreat program
Daily breakfast and lunch
2 catered dinners
Your Investment
€3349
€2895
10 spaces available
Book my place with a shared room!
Email us if you want to pay in instalments
We do not charge extra for payment plans, because they place extra burden on people with less access to resources. We are however a small organisation and it makes a big difference for our financial well-being to receive payment in full, so that we can meet our financial obligations when they arise. So we kindly ask you to pay in full when you are able to.
Our cancellation policy
(please read carefully)
The number of participants is limited to 12 people. Your registration is binding.
In case of written cancellation between now until January 17th, 2027, we will refund 50% of the retreat fee.
Because of the obligations towards the retreat venue and other necessary arrangements, there are no refunds after January 18th, 2027 (although you can arrange from someone else to take your place.)
Disclaimer:
You need your own travel insurance.
The retreat will go ahead with 6 or more participants. Book now, so everyone knows that yes, we will be seeing each other in Portugal in April!
We recommend waiting to make your travel arrangements until we have confirmed the retreat can happen.
Check the full Terms & Conditions here.
Do you have any questions about the Retreat? Reach out to us with an email.
Copyright 2022 Academy for Soul-based Coaching | Terms & Conditions