The Intensive Workshop description below includes the following information:
Course Title and Description
Faculty/Course Info
Calendar link (includes details of daily schedule)
Full Program Description (includes details of workshop structure and content and registration information)

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Intensive Workshop:
Embodiment in Education: Professional Development for Dance / Movement Educators
June 16 - June 20, 2008 - 1 week

Faculty
Susan Bauer, M.F.A., M.A.

This workshop serves as an introduction to a cutting-edge approach to using somatics with teens and college-level adults. Through experiential and student-centered methods, we model a respect for one’s body that empowers students through the development of kinesthetic awareness, enhanced perception of one’s cultural conditioning, and a healthy respect for self and others. We will also address complex issues of including movement and touch in an educational setting. (Based on Experiential Anatomy, Body-Mind Centering®, and other somatic modalities.)

This workshop is ideal for practitioners and teachers of dance, yoga, martial arts, and other forms, as well as for all those inspired to expand their own dance / movement practice with a more embodied presence. [Note: Although geared toward professional educators, this workshop is also open to all those with an interest in somatics, dance / movement education, and/ or education.]

2008-2009 MOC Program Calendar

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Full Workshop Program Description: Embodiment in Education: Professional Development for Dance / Movement Educators

As educators, how can we bring somatic movement approaches into education in a way that is valuable and meaningful to students themselves? Drawing on the vast field of somatics, we can first expand and support the fullness of our own embodied experience. This provides the basis from which we learn to facilitate this process effectively for our students in order to support them in their process of growth and learning.

This workshop draws upon several somatic modalities including Experiential Anatomy/ Kinesiology, Body-Mind Centering®, Ideokinesis and Bartenieff Fundamentals™. By integrating the methods of various somatic modalities, workshop participants experience multiple perspectives on movement re-patterning and methods of embodiment. Each modality offers different tools for developing greater kinesthetic intelligence and for further integrating body and mind.

The Embodiment in Education workshop provides an introduction to specific approaches to integrating somatic movement practices into dance / movement education. Classes are rooted in experiential exercises to provide opportunities for you to learn about your own habitual movement patterns and how they may cause pain or restrict your full range of motion. You will learn how to change maladaptive patterns within your own bodymind and experience new, more integrated movement first - so that you can support others with a depth of knowledge that is rooted in embodied knowing.

Essential to this process, you will also begin to examine the various socio-cultural factors that may have influenced your body, your movement, your experience, and/or your particular choices of movement / dance forms. Developing a heightened awareness of our own cultural conditioning is essential in gaining the compassion and insight needed to help facilitate discussions about such topics with teens and young adults.

As dance / movement educators, it is also essential to understand the particular needs of the various age groups and populations with whom we are working. Toward this goal, each experiential course will include discussions about pedagogy as a means to address the application of particular experiential exercises with specific age groups / populations. Discussions will include faculty input, participant / group input, and time for questions and answers.

Finally, when focusing on education involving touch and movement, complex socio-political, gender, and other such issues may arise. How can we include touch and movement in a safe and supportive manner? How can we discuss somatic-based approaches with other educators and administrators? How can we advocate for our embodied approaches within various educational contexts? We will address these complex issues together to support the integration of our work in the workshop with that of our professional lives.

As in each MOC module, we include group process circles as a way to foster group cohesion and assure that emotion, spirit and critical thinking are nurtured in individuals and as a collective body.

Course Topics
The main course for the Embodiment in Education Intensive Workshop is the following:

• The Mindful Body: Experiential Anatomy for Teens and Young Adults

Additional support courses in this intensive include the following:

• The Body Politic: Touch and Movement as a Social Force
• Group Process Lab
• Integration Class
• Professional Application Lab

(see 2008-2009 MOC Program Calendar for specifics dates / times for each course topic)


The Mindful Body: Experiential Anatomy for Teens and Young Adults
Experiential Anatomy is a creative / humanistic approach using movement, touch, drawing, partner work, and creative writing to embody and personalize your learning. In this process, you become your own ‘lab,’ to move, experience, and learn from. This embodied approach is based on Body-Mind Centering®, Ideokinesis, and Bartenieff Fundamentals™.

How can we engage teens and young adults with this valuable material in a way that is both accessible and meaningful to students themselves? How can we help them to develop greater kinesthetic awareness and increased mindfulness? This course is an introduction to a curriculum in Experiential Anatomy designed to address these questions—thus providing a base for students to discover more about themselves, their movement patterns, body mind relationships, lifestyle choices, feelings, and connections to themselves and others. By engaging in this work, students gain valuable tools that enhance their dance / movement experience and contribute to improving the quality of their adult lives.

Developed by MOC Program Director Susan Bauer, the curriculum is based on twenty years of working with teens and college age adults as a dance educator, along with extensive studies of Body-Mind Centering® with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Ideokinesis with Irene Dowd, and Experiential Anatomy with Andrea Olsen and Caryn McHose. Susan is the author of 'A Body-Mind Approach to Movement Education'. (See Faculty Bios for further information).


Additional Topics:

The Body Politic: Touch and Movement as a Social Force
Despite the proven necessity of touch and movement to human survival, our contemporary society maintains a complex, often fearful relationship with touch and movement. Especially in regard to education, our society has had to ask itself hard questions: What happens to children when no distinction is made between friendly and harmful touching? And yet, could it be that learning to touch each other in healing, positive ways is indispensable to integrated learning for the individual and to productive change in society as a whole? How, then, can we facilitate such explorations in a safe and supportive manner? This session is designed to ask the difficult questions necessary to begin to address these issues.

We will draw from the work of various educators and somatic practitioners, such as Deane Juhan, who has been a professional bodyworker for thirty years and is the author of Job's Body: A Handbook for Bodywork and Touched by the Goddess: The Physical, Psychological and Spiritual Powers of Bodywork. (See Faculty Bios for further information).

Group Process Lab
In these sessions, participants engage in large and small group discussions as a means to delve more deeply into specific philosophical, educational, and/or pedagological issues that have emerged from within the group. This approach empowers participants to share the wealth of experience and knowledge they bring as movers / educators to each other and to gain community support for their questions and ideas.

Integration Class
This class provides an active, physical embodiment of the material studied thus far through self-directed, improvisational activities. As we remember that the time to ‘digest’ is just as important as the time to ‘take in’, we can enjoy the process of allowing the space and time for our bodies, minds, and spirits to be informed by our experience.

Professional Application Lab
This session allows participants to bring specific application questions to the group and / or faculty for consideration. Session includes movement activities, facilitated discussion, and group feedback.


Registration Information
For fee information, please see our Tuition page.

To register for the workshop intensive or to learn more about this program, contact us at info@movingoncenter.org or at (510) 834-0284. You may also register by downloading and completing our Application and sending it along with your deposit to us at Moving On Center.

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