Photo credit: Blake Horn
Learn About Somatic Movement Education
Sunday, Nov 11—Repatterning Movement, Perception, & Attention in Work, Life, Health, & Practice
9:30-11:15 am
The Continuum of Yoga—exploring posture, breath, sound and moving meditation
Taught by Bobbie Ellis
Register for this class
Discover new unexpected possibilities combining Continuum’s fluid movement and sound play with the principles and practices of Yoga. An introductory program designed for everyone interested in or experienced in Yoga or Continuum, as well as people exploring new approaches to conscious embodiment, meditation, and soothing nervous system. We will explore:
- How the body’s fluid nature informs yoga practice, breath function, and awareness in embodied meditation.
- How sound can change structure by contacting the body’s living waters.
- The body as a natural creative expression not an object to be manipulated.
- Pouring our bodies into and out of asanas as a living, fluid process.
- Learning to change habitual tempos discovering deeper ways to listen to the body’s living matrix.
- Yoga and Continuum breathing practices.
- Curiosity, receptivity and discovery.
- Inner resources for resilience, adaptability, and change.
- The difference between discipline and devotion.
9:30-11:15 am
Skimming the Surface
Taught by Valerie Green
Register for this class
Skimming The Surface, an expressive movement workshop series, is designed to integrate movement, feelings, emotions, and images. This class features somatic based expressive movement exercises leading participants on their own personal movement journey within a nurturing and safe group environment. When using the language of movement rather than words, a different kind of image or emotion may arise which bypasses the controlling and censoring mind. Words label what we know. Expressive movement reveals the unknown. For example, sensations, feelings, emotions, images that have long been buried can be revealed. Repressed emotions shut down the immune system causing pain and illness. This workshop aims to find a physical expression to the feelings, whereby a healing process can begin.
In addition to the aspiring and professional dance community, Valerie Green has offered this workshop extensively to adult populations that may be overcoming diverse forms of trauma.
11:30 am-1:15 pm
Moving Thoughts: The Wisdom of the Unconscious
Taught by Gena Rho Smith
Register for this class
The way we move, the tension or pain we hold in our body is often elusive. The root cause of our discomfort sits just below the surface of our awareness. The patterns of holding in our musculature can mirror how we think, live and create in the world. Conversely, our inner dialogue or internal voice can be a window into how we inhabit our body. We will explore the somatic work of Thomas Hanna as a means to listen attentively to what we are not awake to, our unconscious life. Hanna’s somatic work can vividly help us sense and feel how muscular contraction and contractive thoughts are deeply intertwined.
11:30 am-1:15 pm
LiquidBody’s Somatic Strategies for Increasing Performance in Work and Life
Taught by Caryn Heilman
Register for this class
This workshop is for anyone sensing there is an easier way, to meet the demands of work and life—onstage or off. We will warm up with sound, breath and gentle somatic movement to catalyze sensation and focus our awareness on our body’s fluidly formed inner landscape. Accessing this flow of movement can open up new possibilities for “dancing with life” from the coherency of our cells. We will practice:
- Sensing gravity as a constant source of support for working relationally.
- Meeting the unexpected with the resources of the parasympathetic system where vagal tone is more likely to stay balanced.
- Connecting to developmental stages before your current structure formed; and
- Imagine future states where organization is optimal and responsive in the moment.
Finally, we will let go of tensions and yesterday’s patterns and focus on responsive ways to organize optimally from moment to moment.
2:15–3:45 pm
Grace, Inspiration: Form and Fluidity of Continuum
Taught by Melanie Gambino
Register for this class
Our body’s and mind’s own ability to self regulate and to thrive with creative impulses and vibrant health is innate. As we explore the practice of Continuum we begin to feel our edges expand and self limiting habits begin to soften as our vitality and sensation are enlivened. In this workshop we will explore movement through breath, wave motion, micro and macro movements, sound, inquiry, sensation and awareness in a variety of contexts. Through our practice our ability to be creative, nourished, supported and energized by our atmosphere and the greater field increases. When we engage with our own in this way inspiration, grace and fluidity begin to fill every cell and molecule of our being and our perception begins to shift. New discoveries abound, awakening and alivening greater possibilities, revealing new worlds within and all around us. Greater options to participate with the eternal movement of ourselves and our world become clear when we return to the origin and quality of water. This fluid system lives in, around and as our being. It is constantly resonating with planetary pulsations and the universal bio-intelligence of an ever unfolding life process. Come explore and enjoy being human through the movement of Continuum!
2:15–3:45 pm
Releasing Restrictions, Befriending Body
Taught by Kathleen Brazie
Register for this class
Living in a competitive, disconnected, fast-paced, and technologically-based culture leaves many of us feeling trapped by movement patterns and coping habits that no longer or never did support our whole well-being. These conflicts create physical-emotional-mental blockages that can alienate us from our own embodied experience. In this expressively creative session, we explore ways to actively feel, acknowledge, and release blockages and patterns of body, thought, emotion, and spirit that have caused frustrating stagnation. Moving with breath, sensation, touch, visual images, imagination, and creative expression, we allow space to let go of what restricts our ability to fully embody individual uniqueness. Feeling into supportive images such as inner parent, warrior, and shaman, we befriend our power and beauty. Instead of feeling body as betrayer or stranger, we discover what we need to experience trust and faith in life, movement, spirit, and authentic self.
4:00-6:00 pm
Biodynamic Movement “Movement of Wholeness”: Perceiving fluidity within and around the fascial and cardiovascular system
Taught by Ali Fischer
Register for this class
This workshop will be a vigorously playful and restful movement session that invites a sense of completeness with oneself and unity with one’s surroundings. By making movement awareness ultimately a spiritual practice, its intention is to facilitate a space for students to shift (or change conscious state – transmutation) to fluid body consciousness and to attentively connect with the environment in hopes of heightening intuition, creativity, a sense of timing, integration and joy. We will do this through guided meditation and movement exercises to explore our perception of fluidity. The class is meant to build context around the definition of wholeness and fluidity; experientially research the cardiovascular and fascial system; and somatically explore bodily impulse. We will learn together how to strengthen our ability to attune to our body as a resource for heightened self-awareness and bodyself wholeness perception.
4:00-6:00 pm
Marine Biology of the Five Primary Diaphragms:
Rejuvenating The Female Ecosystem
Taught by Dr. Eden Fromberg
Register for this class
Recalibrate the time/space continuum of your body via somatic movement explorations encompassing the five primary diaphragms of the body: feet, pelvis, respiratory, collar, brain. Explorations will integrate breath, sound, movement, balls of all sizes, and other stretchy and springy inspirations of external and internal buoyancy.
The diaphragms of the body are unique, reciprocal tension membranes that stretch from front to back, dividing body cavities while providing dynamic, functional support, and orienting the spine in relation to the organs. These transitional zones are where restriction and imbalance are often held in the body, protective mechanisms that nevertheless disrupt everything from posture and organ function to blood flow and nervous system efficiency, translating into physical and emotional symptoms. Restore resilience and flow within and between diaphragms and body cavities, regain buoyancy, discover your organic expression, and delight in being inspired by your own innate, biological intelligence. All capacities welcome.
6:00-6:30 pm End of Day Gathering, Dreaming, Sharing