- Body and Environment

Environmental Somatics is a form of body-oriented learning and movement education, enhancing orientation and the ability to take action while being embedded within a living, the surrounding world.

The Environmental Somatics training is an on-job specialisation in Somatic Pedagogy for the application and facilitation of body-awareness practices in environmental contexts. 

Environmental Somatics is a form of body-oriented learning in environmental context based on movement-perception-practices. It promotes embodied orientation and the ability to relate and act in our living environment. The training enables personal and professional embedding of contents and practices in different fields of action.

This training includes the basics of Somatic Pedagogy & Practice as well as its application in differently formed and inhabited urban and natural environments. The specific relations and interactions in and with the environments are tested, analysed and understood. Improvisational and compositional principles support the diverse adaptation of Somatic Practice to cultural, social, architectural, aesthetic and landscape conditions. Philosophical and cognitive scientific background knowledge support deeper understanding of the practice and its effects. In addition, basic techniques in somatic-artistic research and documentation, for the accompanying development and evaluation of one's own work are applied.

Aim of the training

The aim of the training is to understand and accompany body-perception processes, to use this knowledge for the care of our self-world-relationship and the shaping of our living-environments. Environmental Somatics are oriented towards an experienced sensory availability and bodily presence. Thus, the practice strengthens the ability to adapt and attune to situations and to act in relation. The aim is to make the practice part of our responsibility for the common good!

Additionally to the regular modules the training includes:

• 3 individual coaching sessions of 60 minutes each outside the modules
• 3 group coaching sessions outside the modules
• Individual project support and peer evaluation
• Feedback on own text production
• 2 supervised trail-presentations
• Organisational and content-related support for the final presentation and its evaluation 
• Additional teaching material

Applied methods in the training

• Feldenkrais Methode
• erfahrbare Anatomie & Physiologie
• Improvisation
• Meditationspraktiken
• Outdooraktivitäten

Including

• Body philosophy
• Cognitive Sciences
• Natural sciences
• artistic-somatic research
• fields of application

For whom is the training recommended?

The training is suitable as a complement to or a new orientation for a wide range of professional fields: for example, architects can incorporate the intensification of spatial perception into their planning designs, urban planners can take sensory aspects into account when designing social spaces, or teachers can learn mediation strategies in order to design experientially immediate spaces for their teaching in a world that is becoming more and more virtual.

The training is aimed at all those who want to use somatic strategies constructively, visionarily and respectfully to shape our living environments and our life together.

It enables the individual embedding of contents and practices in different fields of action and leads to certification by the Somatic Academy Berlin with a final public presentation. Participants learn to apply body awareness in their private, professional, social or political work.

Curriculum of the complete Environmental Somatics Training

This training includes 5 modules and 250 hours.

The modules 1-4 can be booked seperately as workshops as well. The training will be in english (with german partial translation) or german, it depends to the group.

Team

Pedagogical direction:                                        

Katja Münker (Feldenkrais Method / Somatics / Dance/Choreography / Artistic Research / Walking Art / Mountain Guiding)

Guest teachers:

• Andrea Keiz (video documentation / video art)
• Susanne Martin (PhD, Dance / Performance / Research)
• Undine Eberlein (PhD, Body Philosophy / Somatic Research)

Video-Impressions