Learn About Somatic Movement Education
Saturday, Nov 10 — Fitness, Yoga, Self-Care Activism, Embodied Ritual, Fluidity & Form
9:00-10:45 am
Riding Rhythm & Rest: Somatic Movement Education in Fitness and Wellness
Taught by Jennifer Maeve Moloney
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In this workshop we will explore how SME practices–movement, breath, sound, body awareness–can be applied to cardio fitness through rebounding and dance, and to active recovery practices through fascial release and gentle body rolling.
We will explore:
• Fluidity and Resistance
• Riding Rhythm / Grasping Groove
• Compression/Expansion
• Affective freedom: ways in which SME supports the flow of our emotions through our bodies
• Trusting impulse within structured movement disciplines
9:00-10:45 am
Treating Our Own Trauma
Taught by Kathy Benners
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This class is aimed toward the investigation of hands -on self-treatment, one or two schools of calming breath practices, and offering some of the work of Emilie Conrad’s Continuum Movement practice. A class devoted to “toning the Vagus nerve,” there will be a small introduction to what the Vagus nerve is and what it does in our body.
1. The class will open with a breathing exercise for stress and Anxiety.
2. A simple description and demonstration of self-lymphatic drainage and how it can easily be practiced on oneself anytime or anywhere, as a self-practice that does not take very much time.
3. A simple introduction to fascia tissue, why it is important to understand, and how using breath, sound, and slow movement tends to make the fascia softer and more flexible. This helps to create a sense of calming down and recognition of “how we move is how we think.”
11:00 am-12:45 pm
Embodied Self-Care is Radical Activism
Taught by Megan Bathory-Peeler
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It is a radical act to claim and inhabit our bodies with love and appreciation for who we truly are. In a society that holds us all to unattainable standards and takes pleasure in pointing out our short-comings and limitations, to live strongly rooted in ourselves is radical activism. This workshop will provide time and space to playfully rediscover and reclaim connection with our bodies from the inside out. With sound, movement, stillness, and silence, we will put together a bouquet of different ways to refresh and re-embody ourselves in a moment when we are on the go in our daily lives. Embodied with Self-Care, we can then practice stepping into: “Okay, what’s next? How can I best serve or show up for others without losing connection to myself? How can I do what I am here to do with pleasure and joy when faced with globalized distress or hardship?”
11:00 am-12:45 pm
Conduits of Connection: Exploring our hands and our eyes
Taught by Sara Mulry
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Through a series of personal explorations, partner work and group exercises, we will put time into this workshop opening our hands and eyes and noticing how that affects our abilities to connect & be present with others. Stretches, self massage, and short Somatic Movement explorations will open the session, followed by partnered hand massage, assisted eye movement stretches and movement improv in pairs with time for journaling. Finally we will briefly discuss vulnerability and connection between individuals-strangers, friends, or partners and set up an eye-gazing and hand holding conga line. The session will conclude with a Q&A and an offer to create a group handprint painting!
1:45-3:45 pm
Medical Yoga
Taught by Sofia Sundquist
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Medical yoga is an easy, and beautifully intense way to experience yoga movements. Developed in 1990 at Karolinska institute, Sweden there is now evidence-based research validating the practice. Movements concentrate around joints to nourish, loosen, soften, and invite relaxation along with pulsing movements to awaken, trace and feel bodily sensations. Breathing practice acts as a bridge between body and mind, facilitating a union of body and emotion, inviting selflove and compassion towards whatever we discover in ourselves and others.
Positive clinical results include: Pain reduction (especially spinal), reducing anxiety, sleeping disorders, fibromyalgia, arthritis, and high blood pressure. Medical yoga is practiced in over 100 hospital, clinics and studios in Sweden.
The class will include: Transitioning from the outsider to the inside, breath awareness, warming up and moving into intense movements, deep relaxation, and a short meditation/chant/song.
1:45-3:45 pm
Embodied Ritual: Creating movement and meaning through ritual practice
Taught by Lillian Stamey
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This workshop invites us to explore various facets of ritual through embodied movement. Using somatic movement methods to explore feeling, sensation, imagery, and metaphor, we will delve into the phenomenology of ritual: what is my direct experience of creating and performing ritual practice? With a greater interest in how ritual may serve our everyday lives and act as a support for self-care, we will play with making our own personal rituals through movement, found materials, and writing. This workshop encourages us to dive deep into personal inquiry, turn our attention inward, and listen to inner sensorial experience to explore our ritual practice.
4:00-6:00 pm
Tibetan Ritual Dance and Authentic Movement: Inner and Outer Cosmologies
Taught by Lindsay Gilmour
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(This workshop is deeply connected to Lillian Stamey’s workshop on Embodied Ritual)
Currently I am in Dharamsala, India on a Nehru Fulbright research grant researching ritual dance in Tibetan Buddhist nunneries. While witnessing the rituals I find myself experiencing the ritual through the lens of an outer witness in Authentic Movement, tracking the sensations in my own body trying to gain a better understanding of the inner working of the mover. I am interested in exploring the overlap between the inner state of Tibetan Buddhist ritual dancers, who enter a meditative state envisioning themselves as wrathful and peaceful Buddhist deities, and the inner state of movers engaged in Authentic Movement practice. In my own Authentic Movement practice I have had experiences where I tap into my own wrathful and peaceful energies. In this workshop I would like to use Tibetan Buddhist ritual dance and Authentic Movement as a framework to tap into our inner cosmologies through moving, writing and drawing.
4:00-6:00 pm
The Connective Web
Taught by Tal Halevi
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This guided movement journey inspired by Body-Mind Centering® will explore the history of the body as a fluid-filled membrane, which is a starting point for considering the dynamic relationship between flow and form. In this workshop we will experience the condensing and expanding rhythms of cells, and pulsating wave-like movements found in the ancient hydraulic systems of sponges, jellyfish, starfish, and in-uterine experience. We will also trace the evolution of the intricate connective webbing of the fascia, which articulates and integrates the core with the periphery of our body, illuminating the embodied experience of our connectivity.
6:00-6:30 pm End of Day Gathering, Sharing, Dreaming
8:00-10:00 pm Watermark Arts Performance
Fee: $20
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Watermark Arts, an endeavor that brings together somatic experience and artistic expression, in an evening of dance, poetry and art.
Elaine Colandrea, artistic director, www.watermarkarts.org.