Sondra Fraleigh hiking in Alsace in 2003 at age 64, photographed
by her friend Nourit Masson Sekine, butoh and visual arts photographer.
Eastwest
Institute features Shin Somatics® - an approach to healing and personal transformation developed
by Sondra Horton Fraleigh through her
teaching of dance and movement, integrative bodywork,
philosophy and meditation. Her work is informed by her
certification in the Feldenkrais® Method and CranioSacral Therapy – as also her study of Myofascial
Release, Effective Communication, Japanese Butoh, Yoga, and Zen meditation.
For
more than 30 years, Professor Fraleigh has been a leader
in the study of movement and dance. She chaired
the Department of Dance at the State University of New
York College at Brockport where she continues to teach. Her innovative choreography based
in somatics has been seen on tour in America, Germany,
India, and Japan. She served as president of the Congress
on Research in Dance, and as a Faculty Exchange Scholar
for the State University of New York. Her articles have
been published in texts on dance and movement, philosophy,
and developmental psychology.
She is the author of five books: Hijikata Tatsumi & Ohno Kazuo (2006), Dancing Identity: Metaphysics in Motion (2004), Dancing into Darkness: Butoh,
Zen and Japan (1999), Researching Dance (1999), and Dance
and the Lived Body (1987). She has also published many articles and book chapters, including "Freedom, Gravity, and Grace" in the Somatics
Magazine/Journal of the Mind/Body Arts and Sciences 22/3 (Fall/Winter 1999/2000), and she received the "Outstanding Service to Dance Research Award" from the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD) in 2003. She is currently writing a guide book for her unique somatic yoga: Shin Somatics® Land to Water Yoga (to be published by iUniverse Press in November of 2008).
Professor
Fraleigh is often a guest teacher of dance and somatic
studies in the United States and other countries. She
believes that the living body of the earth and our human
body are interwoven, and that healing the earth and
ourselves will be the major work of the 21st century.
Sondra Fraleigh's dance, Meditations,
performed in New York and Tokyo
Publications
& Papers
Speeches
& Presentations
Articles
by and about Sondra
