SANCTUM
self-compassion in relationship
A DEYA Retreats and Kindful Experience
Nyuh Kuning Village, Ubud
April 22-26, 2026
A retreat on self-compassion in relationship • Nyuh Kuning, Bali
So many of us move through life carrying more than anyone can see — tending, holding, giving, reaching — until something essential in us grows faint. We pour ourselves into work, into family, into love, into responsibility, and somewhere in the flow of caring for others we begin to drift from ourselves.
Sanctum is an invitation to return.
To return to the part of you that longs for steadiness in relationship, for warmth that doesn’t cost you your centre, for love that includes you as much as everyone else. To return to the delicate space where self-respect and tenderness can live side by side. To return to the simple truth that you deserve the same care you so freely offer.
Over four days in Nyuh Kuning — a village shaped by ritual, community, and the daily gestures of devotion — we explore the art of meeting ourselves and one another with presence. Through compassion-based practice, relational inquiry, somatic grounding, and cultural encounters, we explore what it means to stay open without disappearing, to repair without collapsing, to love without losing the thread of who we are.
This is a retreat for those who feel everything deeply, who give easily, who long for connection yet find themselves exhausted by the weight of it. For those who want to cultivate boundaries that feel alive rather than defensive; who want relationships that breathe. For those who sense that compassion is not a soft skill but a way of belonging to life with their whole being.
Here, you are invited to listen — with the body, with the breath, with the part of you that already knows how to come home. You are guided into the kind of awareness that restores dignity to your inner world and creates space for repair, reconnection, and genuine intimacy.
Sanctum is where you tend the relationship you have with yourself so that all your other relationships can begin to flourish.
Register by 10 January, 2026 to receive a 10% Early Bird Discount
Our self-compassion practice becomes transformative when it is lived — when it reveals the truth of our patterns: the way we turn against ourselves in moments of doubt, the ways we reach too far in relationship, the places where tenderness goes missing. It shows us how we habitually move — toward, away, beyond ourselves — and invites us into a gentler way of being with our own experience.
In these sessions, compassion becomes a form of listening: listening to the body as it steadies, listening to the places that ache, listening to the instinct that knows when to step forward and when to rest. It is a practice of staying in contact with yourself while staying in contact with the people you love.
We’ll explore:
How to remain present with yourself when relationship becomes charged
How to repair without abandoning your dignity or your truth
How to notice when generosity tips into self-erasure
How to soften perfectionism and the inherited pressure to be “the strong one”
How to cultivate an internal steadiness when emotion rises
These capacities develop through contemplative practice, somatic grounding, and relational inquiry held within a carefully facilitated group space. The learning is both scientific and experiential; you come to understand these processes with the mind, and also with the body that will carry them into your life.
This embodied knowing is what allows compassion to take root and to reshape the way you relate — to yourself, to others, and to the tender places in between.
Why Self-Compassion in Relationship?
“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.”
- bell hooks
Our Program
Our program is curated and led by Associate Professor Amy Finlay-Jones, a therapist, researcher and meditation teacher. She is a certified teacher of several compassion-based approaches, including Compassion Cultivation Training, Mindful Self-Compassion Training, Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living, and more. Our program draws on aspects of each of these approaches, underpinned by over 15 years experience working in this space.
Relational Inquiry
Throughout the retreat, we engage in gentle, guided relational inquiry — practices that help you explore what happens in the spaces between people. These sessions help us to explore how compassion can reshape relationship - how to love with a steadier heart, to offer care without erasing yourself in the process.
You will learn to:
Trace the subtle movements of connection and disconnection
Sense the difference between yielding and collapsing
Recognise protective patterns with compassion
Allow relationship to become a site of clarity rather than confusion
The emphasis is always on safety, pacing, and attunement.
Somatic Approaches
Compassion deepens when it is felt in the body. Each day you will be supported by practices that bring you home to yourself - somatic exercises to settle and enliven, yoga to open space in body and mind, massage to release places of holding.
As you breathe, move, and release, you’ll discover how the body itself can teach compassion: how grounding makes space for clarity, how softening allows connection, how balance in your own system opens new possibilities for relationship with others. Together, these practices create an embodied foundation for the inner work, so that compassion is not just understood, but lived.
Movement & Meditation
Each day begins and ends with practices that are designed to lay the groundwork for self-compassion: gentle yoga to open the body, meditation to steady the mind, and simple rhythms of breath to anchor the nervous system.
Adapted for all bodies and levels of experience, these sessions invite you to experience movement as a form of listening inward, and meditation as a way of inhabiting the life you are already living.
Cultural Learning
Guided by local knowledge holders, you’ll encounter Balinese traditions through shared practice and authentic exchange. In offerings, ceremonies, and community life, care is expressed in ways that connect the everyday with the sacred. These moments of learning open a wider understanding of relationship—how compassion can be lived as a rhythm that binds self, other, and community.
Integration & Application
Insight takes root when given space. Dedicated time will be set aside to reflect, to shape your own practices of compassion, and to imagine how these can continue when you return home.
You’ll receive written materials that weave together research and lived wisdom, offering practical pathways for bringing compassion into daily routines and relationships. The retreat becomes a seed, unfolding into a more tender and intentional way of being.
Your Facilitator: Dr Amy Finlay-Jones
Amy is a therapist and meditation teacher whose work sits at the tender meeting point between science and the sacred. For two decades she has explored what helps human beings feel held, connected, and alive — not only through research, but through the lived, unrepeatable moments of practice, relationship, and attention. Her work is an ongoing enquiry into how we meet the holy in the everyday: how we honour our interbeing, how creativity becomes a way of listening, and how compassion allows us to inhabit our lives with more truth and less armour.
Known for her grounded presence, Amy holds spaces where people can soften without collapsing, feel without being overwhelmed, and return to themselves in a way that is both tender and transformative. Her teaching invites participants into deeper contact with what matters — the quiet instincts, old longings, and half-remembered wisdom that shape a meaningful life.
Amy brings a rare blend of contemplative tradition and contemporary science. She is an Associate Professor with a Masters degree in Clinical Psychology, a PhD in the mechanisms of human suffering and healing, and lead editor of The Handbook of Self-Compassion. She is certified in Compassion Cultivation Training, Mindful Self-Compassion, and Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living.
She is also the founder of Kindful, through which she creates programs that weave evidence-based approaches with contemplative practice, offering pathways back to belonging — with oneself, with one another, and with the wider world.
Co-Facilitator: Dr Alla Demutska
Alla is a seasoned psychologist dedicated to bringing compassion and clarity into everyday life. With a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology and over fifteen years of clinical experience across Australia and Singapore, she has guided individuals and groups through trauma-informed, attachment-aware, and evidence-based therapeutic practices.
She works at the intersection of nervous-system regulation, contemplative practice, and human connection — a terrain where grounded science meets lived experience. Her approach moves beyond symptoms to what she calls “relational presence”: a capacity to meet oneself with clarity, to listen to what the body knows, and to stay connected in relationships without losing one’s own inner ground.
In retreat settings, Alla offers compassionate guidance rooted in her wide training: psychological therapies such as CBT, ACT, DBT, schema therapy and mindfulness-based modalities, all applied through a gentle, practical lens attuned to the body.
She creates safe, welcoming container spaces where emotional honesty becomes possible, and where the messy, tender work of reconnection and repair can be done without pressure or hurry. Her work helps people reclaim their inner steadiness — so they may care for others from a place of wholeness, not depletion.
Whether in individual sessions or as part of group work at the retreat, Alla’s style is reliable, grounded and compassionate — putting nervous systems at ease, opening hearts, and helping inner wisdom and connection flourish.
Daily Schedule
Mornings
We begin the day in the soft light of Nyuh Kuning — meditation, gentle movement, breath, and writing to bring you back into conversation with yourself. These sessions are steadying, spacious, and embodied, offering a grounded inner rhythm to carry into the day. Early morning sessions are followed by a shared breakfast by the pool, accompanied by the sound of birdsong and the inimitable smell of Balinese dupa (incense).
Late Morning
Compassion sessions follow: relational inquiry, somatic grounding, and practices that reveal how we relate to ourselves and how that echoes outward into our relationships. This is careful inner work supported by evidence-based methods and a safe group container. Following this session, we share lunch, family style.
Afternoons
After lunch, the day widens. You may walk the village paths lined with frangipani, rest by the pool, wander through rice fields, journal under palm shade, or simply let your body exhale. Optional one-to-one sessions may be woven into these afternoons.
Late Afternoon
We gather again for a practice shaped by the energy of the day — softening tension, exploring repair, learning to stay with ourselves when emotions rise.
Evenings
Individual meals, unhurried conversation, and time to let the day settle. Nights are intentionally spacious so your inner work can breathe.
Suites and Rates
Your stay in Nyuh Kuning is part of the retreat itself — a village shaped by daily ritual, care, and an unforced way of being. Suites are restful, light-filled, and designed for privacy as well as connection. Each room includes a private bathroom and serene outlooks onto gardens, pool, or surrounding forest.
Superior Suites
Queen bed • Private bathroom • Option for additional single
USD $1400 triple · USD $1800 twin · USD $2200 single
Standard Suites
Queen bed • Private bathroom • Garden views
USD $1200 triple · USD $1600 twin · USD $2000 single
*Almost SOLD OUT*
Pool Suites
King bed + daybed • Private bathroom • Private pool
USD $2400 triple share · USD $2800 twin · USD $3200 single
Deluxe Suites
King bed • Private bathroom • Generous living space / terrace
USD $1800 triple · USD $2200 twin · USD $2600 single
A 10% early bird discount applies until 10 January 2026
Registration
A non-refundable deposit secures your place. After booking, we will be in touch to confirm your accommodation preferences and send your welcome pack. The balance is due three months prior to retreat commencement.
This retreat is intentionally intimate to ensure depth, safety, and personalised guidance. Places are limited, and rooms are allocated in order of booking.
A note from Amy
Sanctum is a place to lay down what has become too heavy, and to remember the part of you that still knows how to love without losing yourself. A place where compassion becomes a lived experience — felt in the body, breathed in relationship, carried gently into your life long after you leave Bali.
If your heart recognises itself here, you are warmly invited to join us