Somatic Yoga
Flow Repatterning
Contact Unwinding
Mindfulness Meditation
Depth-Movement Dance Therapy
Sondra Fraleigh founded Eastwest Somatics Institute in 1990 to foster community and to train somatic teachers and therapists. Human development — from infant to individual — infuses Shin Somatics® therapies.
Download Somatics as Philosophy (PDF)
See Our International Workshops
See Sections One and Two on Youtube
Somatics is a field of movement study and bodywork practice stemming from the Greek word — soma: the body as experienced.
Soma is our body of nature and infinite awareness — as explored at Eastwest
Shin is a Zen word that has several related meanings: body, mind, heart, soul, center, and tree trunk. One of the magical meanings of Shin is patience, also important in our work.
Shin Somatics® is an educational and therapeutic method evolved at Eastwest that utilizes the encompassing meanings of the body through Shin and Soma
Our students learn Shin Somatics® Therapies, moving consciously in groups and with individual clients. Our work with individuals is based on an understanding of movement patterns and how to translate these into hands-on therapy.
We train therapists and teachers in somatic yoga. Land to Water Yoga is a specific form based on infant movement patterns and human development. Mindfulness Meditation is part of our yoga process. Flow Repatterning underlies all of our movement work. The Feldenkrais Method influences our approach®.
Moving with nature is a core principle of Shin Somatics, just as nature allows everything to be itself and to grow.
- Dynamics of posture
- Walking well
- Comfort in sitting
- Balance of the body's chakras (energy system).
- Adaptive Yoga for those with special needs
- Land to Water Yoga, based on infant and human development, from oneness to individuation
- Mindfulness Meditation
- Flow Repatterning of the nervous system (whole body responses) through movement awareness with groups and individuals
- Use of gentle touch and movement ease
- Contact Unwinding, a supportive use of Contact Improvisation in partners, employing hands-on bodywork skills
- Focusing imagination and awareness in the listening body
- Interpersonal communication for optimal living
- Dance/Art/Life Experience
- Excavation of body memories and possible-selves
- Dance in the environment with the camera as witness.
- Depth-Movement in the studio: dance improvisations in relation to art and non-judgmental witnessing.
- Metamorphic Dance, butoh influence
Shin Somatics® Movement Therapists work with flow and integration. We trust that the human being can attune naturally to gentle movement patterns introduced with clear intentions toward integration of the whole organism. We encourage resilience, the body's natural capacity to heal through movement. In individual work, we introduce subtle hands-on movement patterns to clear away the clutter of the nervous system, relieving stress and trauma at a cellular level for better function of the whole body—mind complex—the soma.
ancient tower, and I have been circling
for a thousand years, and I still do not
know if I am a falcon, a storm, or a
great song.
~ Rilke
When butoh teacher and community activist, Harada Nobuo, saw Eastwest students doing bodywork in Japan, he said: I see the etheric dance.
Seven Shin Somatics Certification Workshops are required for graduation. Please refer to the Certification Page and Requirements Summary page for more information.
Workshop Locations: Eastwest Workshops have been taught in Brockport, New York; New York, New York; Santa Barbara, California; Saint George and Zion in Utah, Tokyo and Fukuoka, Japan; Tuscany, Italy; London and East Sussex in the UK; Wales; Green Gulch Zen Center in Marin California; Kalani, Hawaii; Auckland, New Zealand; Shreveport, Louisiana; and Memphis Tennessee.
Additional Upcoming Locations: Tanglewood Nature Center in Elmira, New York; Ojai California; Brighton in the UK; Golden Bay, New Zealand.
Our Home is the beautiful color country of Saint George and Zion, Utah. We are supported by the Red Hills Wellness Center in Saint George.
Workshops Formats: Our certification workshops are taught in several different formats. Each one is a 5-day intensive, or the equivalent — about 7and ½ hours a day, including lunch breaks, and morning and afternoon short breaks. The following represent various formats we offer toward certification:
Certification Workshops
Small Group Tutorials
Travel Retreats
Home-Stay Retreats and Mentorships
Individually Designed Home Study
Our 5-day workshop intensives are for certification credit, but non-certification students can take morning-only sessions for a reduced fee. Morning sessions involve Somatic Yoga and Flow Repatterning. Bodywork is taught in the afternoon sessions for certification students. Certification students take full-day intensives.
Workshops may be offered under various theme titles, or they will simply be called Shin Somatics Certification Workshops.
- Dancing Down the Bones (experiential anatomy, will appear in every workshop, and in several contexts)
- Dancing on Your Path (often an environmental travel retreat theme)
- Imagery and Myth (learning how to focus movement and bodywork imagery)
- Somatic Yoga (a broad category, applications of somatic practices to yoga)
- Land to Water Yoga (our developmental yoga, with book for home study)
- Meditation in Motion (often includes butoh-influenced metamorphic dance)
- Lessons in Somatic Kinesiology (with guidelines for home study – walking on air can be downloaded)
- Intuitive Dance and Integrative Bodywork (weaving the strands together)
- Advanced Bodywork for Graduation (Level Seven)
The themes of the workshops declare emphasis areas, but all of the themes weave throughout the program. Each workshop covers the required methods in our training program leading to certification: a) somatic yoga, b) depth-movement dance therapy, c) flow repatterning with groups and in shin somatics bodywork. These are related aspects of Moving Consciously that deepen over time; just as it also takes time to embody dance techniques; moving consciously takes time, and teaching others how to move toward optimal living is still another step.
The workshops are multi-level, expect for Level Seven, which all graduating students take together. The more experienced students act as mentors—even as they continue to learn along with beginning and intermediate students. One of the ways you learn shin somatics hands-on work is through having experienced practitioners give you the lessons. Thus the beginners learn from the more experienced students, and eventually become mentors themselves.
Advanced Bodywork, Level Seven: The advanced students review the use of Flow Repatterning in bodywork. They also review intuitive dance employed in various depth-movement contexts as they prepare to teach and practice the three parts of our method: Somatic Yoga, Depth-Movement Dance Therapy, and Shin Somatics Therapy.
and its Relationship to ISMETA — www.ismeta.org
Seven Shin Somatics Certification Workshops are required for graduation. Please refer to the Requirements Summary page.
Seven levels (seven workshops) are required for graduation; this means seven 5-day workshops. 2-day tutorials count for 1/2 level of certification credit with some additional homework. When you complete the Eastwest program, you are eligible for certification as a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist RSMT or a Registered Somatic Movement Educator RSME through ISMETA - with a recommendation from the director of your program. Each level costs $886 at the present time. Please study the full website, and email further questions.
People often wonder about the sequence of the workshops. Students can take any 7 workshops, and they can repeat workshops for credit as well.
Why?
The themes of the workshops declare emphasis areas, but all of the themes come up in any one workshop - and each workshop covers the required material in our training program leading to certification. The workshops are multi-level. The more experienced students act as mentors—even as they continue to learn along with beginning and intermediate students. One of the ways you learn the somatics hands-on work is through having experienced practitioners give you the hands-on lessons. Thus the beginners learn from the more experienced students, and eventually become mentors themselves. The advanced students focus more on teaching aspects of somatic movement patterning, bodywork, and intuitive dance, as they prepare to teach this work.Our students come from many different walks of life. Several are dancers and visual artists. Many other fields are represented. Everyone has in common a love of movement. You do not need previous experience in dance or movement studies to be a student of somatic movement therapy and education. We bring everyone into the Shin Somatics® processes together, and people move through the program at their own pace. Some finish in a year and a half, but most take from two to four years to finish. The process can also extend into the teaching level, which is Level eight. After this level, students who wish to extend their education with more workshops or a few workshop days, pay only $25 a day. Retreat prices are not discounted, because they include the cost of rooms and often meals.
Full time students and those with financial need can apply for partial scholarships, which reduces the cost of tuition. In some cases, there are work-study scholarships for reduced tuition.
Please feel free to contact workshops@eastwestsomatics.com if you have further questions.
