Would you like to learn ways to release stress & tension?
Do you spend hours sitting or standing at your job?
Do you often feel overwhelmed or exhausted?
Do you suffer from chronic pain?
Would you like to learn a simple way to feel lighter and more fluid, experience more effortless movement, be present, and to enjoy a more grounded and balanced life?
Join us for new series with Deane Juhan, internationally renowned Trager Practitioner and trainer and author of “Job’s Body: A Handbook for Bodywork”
Designed for all students as well as a movement training program for bodyworkers of all kinds; yoga teachers and students, pilates, yoga and movement instructors.
CEUs available.
Sundays 10:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. (PST) Check your time with this time converter
Dates: April 25, 2021; May 2, 2021; May 16, 2021; May 23, 2021; May 30, 2021; and June 6, 2021
Fee: Full Series is $150 before March 15 / $170 after or One Session is $35 before March 15 / $40 after
Technology: We will use zoom. You will receive the link in your confirmation email and also in an email 2 hours and 10 min before the event starts.
Recorded Video will be available for each session. If you cannot make the time but would like to attend, please register to receive the video link.
We have been living through one of the most stressful years of our lifetime. Fear and anxiety have engulfed everyone. Seldom has there been a time when the need for alleviating mental and physical stress has been more acute. Much of the mind’s stress and disarray is reflected in the body, and the body’s stress continually reinforces that in the mind. This series will provide a method for profound relaxation of the body, and through the freedom of the body’s movements an equally profound de-stressing of the mind.
The purpose of these classes to achieve a deep state of calm feeling and reflection, creative self-development and self-healing. There will be extensive live instruction in somatic integration, a movement practice designed by renowned Dr. Milton Trager
Benefits
Heightened and expanded sensory awareness
Immersion into the perpetual “now” of the body’s sensory states
Active release of tension, discomforts and habitual limitations
Freer, more spontaneous and fluid movement
Deane Juhan is an Instructor of the Trager approach to movement re-education.
Deane was an Esalen Bodyworker for 19 years, and trained in a wide variety of practices and psychological therapy. While there, he met Dr. Milton Trager and was introduced to his innovative therapeutic approach. Deane was personally trained by him over the course of 24 years. As a certified practitioner and teacher of Dr. Trager’s work, Deane became one of his initial students that were entrusted to carry on the lineage of his unique approach to deep mental and physical healing. Deane has been teaching Dr. Trager’s approach around the world for more that 40 years.
CLASS OVERVIEW
Each class will focus upon a different area of the body, beginning with those that are more peripheral and accessible and progressing to broader and deeper structures, all the way to the core and the skeleton itself. In addition to movement instruction and relevant anatomy for each progressing class, Deane will be addressing how the movements are affecting the various systems of the body: the nervous system, the connective tissue matrix, the skeleton and its joints, balance, breath, fluidity and free circulation in all fluids in the body.
Sunday, April 25, 2021 - Hands and Arms
Addressing issues in the wrists, elbows and shoulder sockets
How to seek our novel movements and the novel sensations they produce
Feeling the liquid bounce and shimmer of the tissues, their fluidity
Feeling the active elongation of muscle fibers and the relaxation of restrictive patterns
Sunday, May 2, 2021 - Feet and Legs
Addressing issues in the feet, ankles, knees and hip sockets
Beginning to open the lumbar spine
Connecting to the soles of the feet and their key sensory role in balance
Feeling weight in the joints and their sensory role in balance
Development of physical and mental grounding
Blending strong support (yang) with sensitivity (yin)
Sunday, May 16, 2021 - Shoulder Girdle
Lifting Their Burden on the Ribcage
Exploring the entire “jacket” of muscles related to the shoulder that encases the ribcage and attaches to every vertebra.
Using the weights and momentum of movement to expand and soften this “jacket”
Using a variety of gravity’s vectors (hanging and swinging from different angles) to provide space for the underlying ribs and breath
Beginning to address mobility of the thoracic spine
Sunday, May 23, 2021 - Pelvic Girdle
Establishing the pelvis as the central skeletal-muscular structure of our bodies
Exploring the extensiveness of the musculature related to the pelvis, from the sacrum up to every rib, from pelvis down to below the knees, the abdominal wall and the viscera
Mobilizing he pelvis as “the bridge that walks”
Freeing and stabilizing the pelvis and sacrum as the foundations of the spine and support of the upper body
Sunday, May 30, 2021 - Spine
Movements to unify shoulder girdle, pelvic girdle, legs, feet and spine
Adding the cervical column to the lumbar and thoracic columns
Extensively reviewing and deepening practice of all the previous classes
Moving the spinal core and its deepest muscles
Freeing every vertebra for flexibility forward, backward, side-bending, rotation and axial lengthening
Sunday, June 6, 2021 - Putting It All Together
Unify the organic wholeness of the body system
The subtleties of heightened sensory awareness are never-ending.
The body and its sensations are always in the present moment of “now”.
The conscious mind tends to flicker between the past and the future. Attentiveness to the body’s “now” is a powerful way to ground consciousness in the “now”.
The mind is far more than brain. The intimate intertwining of body and mind is co-extensive throughout our organism.
This intertwining is the source of our life force, and a gateway to spiritual consciousness.
By means of this self-development approach, we can become more comfortable in our skins, more effortless and fluid in our movements, and more peaceful in our minds.
The opposite of stress is joy.
More information about the Somatic Movement Therapy Series
The Nature of the Movements and their Intentions: The movements are never repetitive, but are continually self-exploratory, seeking novel sensations in tissues that have been caught in static holding patterns and have not been free to move and feel with fluidity and freedom. There is no repetitive “skill” that is being developed and habituated.
The intention is to move out of and beyond any habituated patterns of movement and to develop new and more adaptive ones as we meet our life’s challenges.
The movements do not involve “exercise” of the musculature. In fact, they are in many ways the opposite of “exercise” that is intended to strengthen muscles by increasing their bulk and yang power.
The movements are profoundly yin in nature, and seek to increase that contrasting power through developing better inherent coordination, ease and efficiency in movements. They are the embodiment of “less is more.” The aim is to use minimal effort to achieve maximum softening, lengthening and freeing up of restrictive patterns.
The initial stages of movement in any selected part of the body are small and very gentle. The purpose is to find the movement that most successfully results in a gentle bouncing and rippling of the inherent fluidity of the tissues and pleasant sensation. As the tissues bounce and shimmer more and more freely, the expansiveness of the movements is increased
As sensory awareness and pleasant feelings in the tissues and in the mind continue to heighten, they can become truly ecstatic in nature, carrying us far beyond any level of pleasure we had imagined our flesh and our consciousness could experience.