Embodied Anatomy: The Heart of Perception

This means:

• all attendees will receive pre-class videos to prepare for our time together, a follow-up quiz to grant a Continuing Education certificate, a permanent recording of the zoom class
• ONLINE ONLY TICKET: participate in a live or recorded zoom class (11am-1pm) with lecture, demo, and QA session
• IN-PERSON TICKETS: attend the above lecture in-person plus an additional break and hands-on demo/ practice time (limit 10 tickets - see safety information below)

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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.
• Guided embryologic movement
• Building a meaningful perceptual framework with a client/ patient/ performer

​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:

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?

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.

TICKET DETAILS

ONLINE ONLY (11am - 1pm): To participate, you'll need a phone or a webcam-enabled computer, and be available to participate in a focused way during the live class

or watch the recording on your own time.

IN-PERSON (11am - 4pm): To participate, you'll need note-taking materials, movement-friendly clothing.

SAFETY INFORMATION: For the safety of all participants, we will be masked and sanitizing throughout class time in a well-ventilated classroom. Based on the number of cases of COVID-19 in King County, we do require participants to be fully vaccinated (2 weeks post final dose) to attend in-person. Tickets include an attestation to vaccination status. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

**If you have previously attended this class's ONLINE only version and are interested in attending the in-person class, please do contact us at [email protected] for a link to your discounted ticket option.

CONTINUING EDUCATION CERTIFICATION

• ONLINE TICKET: This 3-hour Online Continuing Education class is open to all musicians, and also clinicians, movement teachers, somatic educators who work with musicians.

• IN-PERSON TICKET: This 5-hour Continuing Education class is open to all musicians, and also clinicians, movement teachers, somatic educators who work with musicians.

Both meet the WA state CE requirements for massage therapy.

Event Venue

Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, Seattle, United States