Logo for Embodied Living with a silhouette of a person meditating, incorporating a leaf and root design.

A seasonal offering within Embodied Living.

Joy Seeker Gatherings & Retreats

Where women who have spent long enough dimming themselves come to remember what their body feels like when they’re connected, creating, and discovering the joy within.

Dear Joy Seeker,

Do you remember the last time you felt genuinely light?

Not just "okay." Not just functioning. But actually, bodily light. The kind of feeling when you laughed until tears streaked your cheeks, or when you got your hands dirty making something just for the pleasure of it, or sat outside and felt the season shift and thought: oh. I'm here. I'm actually here.

If that feels like a long time ago, or like a version of you you're not sure you can find anymore, you're in the right place.

Within the Embodied Living community, Joy Seeker gatherings and retreats are how we meet in person, season by season, to do something quietly radical:

let ourselves come alive again.

Through creative play, embodied ritual, and the unhurried rhythm of seasons, we're practicing the art of being fully human. Not just productive. Not just managing. We are genuinely, messily, joyfully here.

This is for you if you've been holding it together for so long that you've forgotten what it feels like to let go. If you're craving something real: laughter, color, women who get it, and permission to stop performing.

You don't have to earn this. You just have to show up.

A collage of nature and wellness themes including a person practicing yoga on a beach at sunset, a woman holding a flowing scarf at sunset, barefoot on flowers, a tea cup with flowers and an open book, colorful paint supplies with brushes, and close-ups of daisies and wildflowers. Texts read 'Calling All', 'Joy', and 'Seekers'.

Joy is Nervous System Care

We gather not just to escape the world’s despair and anxiety, but to actively shape a new reality.

One where joy is an act of courage, and connection is the medicine.

Here's something nobody tells you:

When your body has been living in survival mode bracing for the next hard thing, managing, coping, pushing through, your capacity for joy doesn't just get deprioritized. It becomes offline.

Curiosity, wonder, play, creative delight. The ability to be moved by a dandelion popping up through a crack in the sidewalk or to pause, look up, and find shapes in the clouds aren't something we have to grow out of. Finding the whimsy is not frivolous. It’s how your nervous system knows it's safe.

They're the signals your body is waiting for:

you can relax now. You don't have to brace anymore.

At Joy Seeker gatherings, we work with clay, watercolor, collage, or whatever natural materials the season calls for. But this is not a crafting class, and you are absolutely not being evaluated on what you make. The materials are a doorway, not a destination.

What we're moving toward is presence. The felt sense of being in your body, in the season, in the space with these women. Because the act of creating is one of the fastest ways back into your body.

When your hands are working with something real and textured and present, your nervous system stops scanning for threat.

We stop managing and start being.

What you create in the process is yours to keep or leave. What stays with you is harder to describe: a softening, a breath, a memory of what it felt like to just play.

Joy Seeker gatherings aren't an escape from your real life.

They're a practice of coming back to it.

Joy Seeker gathering and retreats are a space where the inner child is welcomed home. A place to set down the burdens of perfectionism. Where you let go of the myth that you must earn your worth.

A place to rediscover the wild, whimsical parts of yourself that the world has tried to make you leave behind.

What Awaits You

Joy Seeker gatherings are where the Embodied Living community comes together in a seasonal rhythm of unhurried movement, creative exploration, and real belonging.

  • Seasonal in-person gatherings & retreats tied to the wheel of the year, honoring each season's invitation— what is it asking of us right now?

  • Process-based creative exploration using clay, watercolor, collage, and natural materials where the point is never the product. Creating together in ways that mirror the season (planting intentions in spring, releasing in autumn, resting and dreaming in winter).

  • Somatic movement and gentle, trauma-informed yoga woven throughout to help your body arrive, not just your mind

  • Connection with the Embodied Living community of women who understand what it means to be tired in a way sleep doesn't fix and are longing for reconnection with themselves, others, and the natural world around them

  • Embodied Letters — small, monthly invitations to stay in the rhythm between in-person meetings sent straight to your inbox'

  • Between-gathering practices — Access to the Embodied Living Library with guided somatic practices, mindful meditations, and creative rituals

The Wheel of the Year

Our bodies already know the ancient rhythm of the seasons, we've just been trained to override them.

Long before calendars, women lived by the turning of the year.

They planted in spring when the earth was ready. They harvested in fall before the cold came. They rested in winter — actually rested — because the land did, and so could they. They celebrated the solstices and equinoxes as embodied orientation: a way to feel where they were in the turning of things.

When we align ourselves with seasonal rhythms, when we honor the natural impulse to slow down in winter, to bloom in spring, to play and ripen in summer, to release and grieve in fall — something in the body exhales.

This is a return to the ancient, body-based framework for living with more ease.

Seasonal flower and plant illustrations, including elements representing winter solstice, imbolc, spring equinox, and summer solstice, with associated seasonal symbols and text.

The Wheel of the Year is a gentle map of the seasons. A way to honor nature’s cycles and celebrate the turning points in our lives. Rooted in ancient traditions of cyclical living, it invites us to pause every six weeks for moments of reflection, renewal, and connection.

Reminding us that growth is not linear — it spirals, it pauses, it blooms and falls and roots again

You don’t need any prior experience, just a willingness to notice, honor, and celebrate the beauty of each season alongside a supportive circle of women.

Ready to Find Your Way Back to Joy?

Join the Embodied Living community and start receiving the monthly Embodied Letter as well as your welcome gift:

My free 5-Day Somatic Reset Guidebook to support overwhelmed nervous systems from survival into presence.

All Belong Here.

What are the Joy Seekers saying?

  • Booksgiving: Book-swap & Wellness Gathering

    “Booksgiving was the reset I needed heading into the holidays... Marisa and Lauren curated a chill, connected vibe that allowed me to relax with other clinicians and settle in with authenticity. So many networking events can feel forced, and require a level of energy that I just don't have amidst the responsibilities of my practice and family demands. It was so refreshing (and cup-filling!) to attend this event! Thank you!”

    — Alexandra S. (Fellow Joy Seeker)

  • Booksgiving: Book-swap & Wellness Gathering

    “I had the opportunity to attend ‘Booksgiving’ with Marisa Mundell with Creative Process Counseling and Lauren Soutullo with Embodied Living and I am glad I took the time to make the drive from Miramar to do it.

    They created an immediately calming space where I felt welcome to choose my adventure, and they provided activities with which I could choose to relax into the familiar or expand into something new.

    These two hours gave me the opportunity to connect and share space without feeling social pressure to ‘perform’ with small talk and left me feeling lighter with a smile on my face.”

    — Jennifer B. (Fellow Joy Seeker)

  • Winter Soulstice: A Seasonal Journey for Sacred Creativity

    “This experience is great for those looking to intentionally connect with themselves and have gentle accountability while doing so. Marisa and Lauren did a great job facilitating deeper insight via prompts and activities and the ritual box they made was super cute and personalized! I definitely recommend :)”

    — Amber B. (Fellow Joy Seeker)