Tactile Anatomy Immersion: Get to Know Your Organs

Our organs keep us alive and in good health—but how well do you actually know them in your own body? Can you sense them? Did you know the pancreas feels like a wet bag filled with overcooked oatmeal, or that the heart is more of a vortex than a pump?

Join Bex Naj, Elena Lake, and Dr. Myles O'Donnell for a day of organ stories and embodied exploration. Elena will introduce the art of tactile sensing and help you connect with your own innate sensing capacities. Myles will share locations, functions, and textural cues for various abdominal organs, along with stories from their clinical practice. Bex will guide you into the “mind” of each organ through gentle movement, partnered touch, dialogue, and group explorations of organ dynamics.

Possible organs we’ll explore include the lungs, heart, esophagus, stomach, blood, pancreas, liver, small intestine, large intestine, and kidneys. We’ll work with tactile and experiential cues on our own torsos, with partners, and with props—cradling water balloons to explore hydrostatic pressure, or reenacting embryological patterns through group movement.

Our organs can store mechanical tensions that radiate to other parts of the body—such as the shoulders or neck. Myles will demonstrate organ release techniques on volunteers, while Bex leads partnered touch and dialogue to help us sense our organs from the inside out. Together, we’ll discover how their origins, shapes, and relationships offer insights into our whole selves.

Myles and Elena are bodyworkers specializing in visceral manipulation, an organ-focused modality that fills a major blind spot in muscle-centered bodywork. Bex is a Somatic Movement Educator whose teaching blends anatomical and embryological knowledge to cultivate greater body literacy and self-understanding.

Dr. Myles O’Donnell, DC is an Oakland-based somatic chiropractor specializing in somatic trauma-work, Bio-Geometric Integration, Visceral Manipulation, and Osteopathic Manual Therapy. They help untangle webs of trauma stored within the body’s tissues with gentle precise touch. Their practice emphasizes uncovering the hidden intricacies of the body and guiding clients towards a greater understanding of their own healing potential. Learn more about Myles at www.somaconnectionchiro.com

Elena Lake is probably the only bodyworker in the world with a degree from MIT in Math, Computer Science, and Physics. After graduating, she spent two years as a machine learning engineer. She learned a lot on that life path, including the heavy toll that stress takes on bodies and spirits. So she pivoted. Now the second chapter of her life is devoted to holistic healing, the nervous system, and high-resolution tactile sensing for helping people inhabit their bodies as a comfortable home. Learn more about Elena at www.elenalakebodywork.com

Bex Naj has been a dancer and mover her entire life. She is an E-RYT 500+ and Somatic Movement Educator. She has practiced yoga for more than two decades, taught private and group yoga, somatics, self myofascial release, and fitness classes for more than 15 years, and has spent the past decade immersed in Body-Mind Centering®, a somatic modality for exploring consciousness through your body, your movement, and your mind as a continuum of experience. She is working towards becoming a Somatic Movement Therapist in this modality. Her facilitation style reflects her deep enthusiasm for articulating nondual philosophy through the laboratory of embodied and relational research; that is, moving together. Learn more about bex at http://bexnaj.yoga

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The Berkeley Alembic, 2820 Seventh Street, Berkeley, United States