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You work with bodies — your own and others’.  You try to help folks move, perceive, and inhabit their bodies more skillfully.  How do these skills arise?

 

How can a person find their own path into embodiment?

 

This class is about the breakthrough moments in that process — how to prime a mind for a richer connection with the body.  We will be drawing connections between disparate and deep methods. We will weave together insights from modern embryology, fascial anatomy, and somatic neuroscience.

 

We will highlight some profound relationships between traditions like Yoga, Martial arts, Meditation, as well as more recent schools like Somatics and Contact Improv.  We’ll meld the scientific and artistic aspects of the mind-body connection.

 

Whether your interest in embodiment is clinical, creative, expressive, or exploratory, this class will deepen your perceptual skills.

 

 

methodology

We’ll be focusing on the Heart, both in terms of its precise anatomy and its metaphorical significance.  Participants will leave with new skills and insights in:
 

• Guided meditation with a somatic focus — ‘Surfaces and Centers’

• The embryologic origins of the heart, pericardium, diaphragm, and vagus nerves.

• Palpation of the pericardium-diaphragm

• Guided embryologic movement

• Postural observation and standing palpation for fulcrums/pivots

• Building a meaningful perceptual framework with a client/patient/performer

 

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what is embodiment?

Embodiment is an exciting new field of study, with numerous useful approaches.  For our purposes we define it as “The skill of perceiving, identifying with, and expressing the internal state of the body in the present moment.”

 

To speak in a grounded way about this subject, it helps to develop artful connections between different scientific modes:

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From the perspective of embryology, how did this body form itself in the first place? What are the deep kinships between the body’s various tissues, and can awareness of these kinships instigate a richer experience of them?

 

From the perspective of somatic psychology, embodiment depends on certain conscious and subconscious processes. Are you aware of sensory changes in your body? Do you respond to them as gifts, as nuisances, as threats? Are you able to relate dynamically with other bodies, and with space?

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From the perspective of neuroscience, the key processes are interoception, proprioception, and affective self-regulation.  Where is the body in space? What are its physiologic signals? How does the brain integrate what it feels and how it feels about that information? Under what conditions do these brain systems learn/adapt? There is tremendous complexity in this field, but we can draw some careful inspiration for our daily embodiment practice.

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continuing education certification

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ONLINE OR IN-PERSON

 

This 4-hour Online Continuing Education class is open to all clinicians, movement teachers, somatic educators, and artists, and meets the WA state CE requirements for physical therapy and massage therapy.​

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NOTE: All virtual classes have a 'live' option, or can be viewed on your own time.All attendees will receive pre-class content, live class recording, supplementary materials, and a follow-up quiz for CE credit.

 

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