Jennie’s movement-based expressive arts practice is grounded in the Tamalpa Life/Art Process, a process developed by dance pioneers Daria Halprin and Anna Halprin, and informed by the work of Anna’s husband, renowned landscape architect Lawrence Halprin.

In the Tamalpa process, we track sensation, emotion, and associations, then move, giving expression to our physical, felt, emotional, and imaginal bodies. We move and are moved. Then we use sketching, poetic writing/journaling, and voice to psychologize and explore the interplay of body, mind, and creativity. Our life material becomes art. Creativity becomes a way of life.

The Tamalpa process is valuable in contexts of healing and balancing, creativity and arts, and spirituality.

In witnessing each other and being witnessed, we cultivate our own inner witness. Group member observations are their own aesthetic responses, from their own self knowledge. We do not fix, advise, interpret, analyze, or deconstruct each other. The process is therapeutic, but it is not therapy.

We practice in small group circles of four to eight people. Circles are held at Jennie’s home studio in the Paris Mountain area of Greenville, SC.

No expertise in movement/dance, visual art, or writing is needed.  Please modify your movement to suit your physical abilities and needs. Appropriate for adolescents through seniors, female and male. 

Upcoming Retreats

REMEMBERING BODY: Embodying the Felt Sense

Saturday, April 26, 2025

10 AM – 3 PM

That visceral sense of something intuited and on the edge of awareness, which philosopher Eugene Gendlin calls the “felt sense,” resides somewhere in us other than the brain.  It lives in the wholeness of the body/mind.  In this workshop, we use aspects of Gendlin’s technique of Focusing to play with what wants to be made explicit.  We take time to listen, locate sensation and follow it, allow words, mirror, respond.   A creative process of waiting, subtle gesture or expansive movement, sketching, writing, and speaking embodies what’s present. 

No expertise in movement/dance, visual art, or writing is needed. You are welcome to modify any acivity to suit your body. Held at my home studio.  Time is 10 AM to 3 PM.  Limited to four people.  Bring your own lunch and journal. I supply tea and art materials. 

Limited to four people. Cost: $75. Email me at jenniewake@gmail.com and I’ll send you a link to register and pay.  Retreats do fill up.  Sessions that do not fill in a timely way may be cancelled.