An archive of videos from our Community Dojo—a program that offers a free 60-minute session once a month for anyone with an interest in learning about or seeking to deepen into their understanding and embodiment of Somatic practice.
Wendy will guide us as we come together, practice, and explore how a purposeful resilience practice can resource you and open things in your life.
Richard Strozzi-Heckler could not make the call on Tuesday, so Strozzi Instructor Stephanie Meux stepped in to lead our Community Dojo and guide participants through a series of practices.
Stephanie explained how somatic practices help support us in developing somatic competency. Many of us developed chronically-held patterns as a strategy to protect our sense of safety, dignity, and belonging. But those patterns may no longer be useful and block our being open to new possibilities.
In the year’s first Community Dojo, we will explore new beginnings and transformation through the body to lead to a different future. As opposed to a more simplistic notion of ‘new year's resolutions,’ we will work on exploring how we can manifest the new future by embodying the actions and behaviors needed to realize it.
In this Community Dojo, Strozzi Teacher Pete Hamill will help us explore embodied transformation as a means to becoming our future. He’ll help us move beyond planning and into ways of being what we desire.
Ending cycles in our lives can be complicated, so how do we do it?
As we move into a new year, it is more important than ever to recognize how endings are a profound invitation for transformation. As this era of transition continues in our larger world, how do we skillfully end one phase of life and begin a new one? Completing well allows for being present with and open to wise, heartfelt new beginnings.
Somatics helps us learn how to ally with another on their soma’s terms, rather than our own projection of what support looks like. It also helps us to learn to meet ourselves in allyship rather than treating ourselves like an ongoing project to be fixed.
In this Community Dojo session, Senior Strozzi Teacher Staci K. Haines will help us explore somatic allyship and the alignment and differences between allyship and solidarity.
We each have a complex history of learning, teachers, and experiences (integrated or not) — but do we have the capacity to allow ourselves to rest on these, and allow them to inform our actions?
During this session, Pete Hamill will guide us to explore how to feel into the wisdom we’ve accumulated from our practices, teachers, and life experiences — by exploring somatic depth.
Fear and vulnerability are major emotions that can both intelligently inform us and paralyze us.
During this session, Richard will teach us that by engaging with our fear in a direct way we also cultivate fearlessness… which opens up the possibility of living more in joy.
The world keeps changing, as always…
Right now, we’re in a particular chapter of change, with more pressure than before. How might a greater capacity to be in healthy relationships serve our world today?
During this session, Wendy Haines will help us to explore, through our Somas, how building more capacity for mutual connection and dignity, can help us support what we care about most.
In this moment it can feel like there is a constant barrage of bad news.
Somatics allows us to recognize what is happening inside of us.
How do we keep noticing what the impact on our individual and collective bodies are in this moment?
During this session, Dara Silverman will teach methods for recognizing and dignifying old patterns we might be defaulting to.
Somatics understands that safety, belonging, and dignity are core needs for all people.
During this session, Staci K. Haines will help you understand that our bodies learn on “yes” – meaning we practice and change toward what we want, not solely away from what we don’t want.
We’ll practice together, and then focus on allying - as an orientation, a way to support somatic healing, and to build more collective strength and awareness.
The jo, a wooden staff used in the martial art of Aikido, is one of the foundational tools of our work, helping you bring in your intention and feel yourself in development of new capacity.
During this session, Susie Nichols will introduce new participants to the jo and reacquaint those who may have set their jo aside for a time.
We’ll explore the connection between our somatic practice, our bodies, and our commitments. Susie’s practice will help to align your commitments to the values that matter most to you.
During this session, LeeAnn Mallorie will help you take presence beyond the meditation cushion — and into ongoing relational practice in your day-to-day life.
Join LeeAnn to discover how to stay embodied and present, even under pressure, and bring connection to your relationships.
During this session, Pete Hamill discusses how whatever we have embodied gives us a set of predominant moods. He explains how this plays in role in our inability to experience joy when we're collapsed with shame.
Join Pete as he teachers how we can explore what it is to step into the space of opening, how we need to attend to and honor our historic conditioning, and the possibilities that emerge for feeling and action when we are in a place of choice.
During this session, Maggie Williams will lead you through an exploration of how our long-held patterns can keep us feeling stuck and frustrated.
Join Maggie as she teaches us where these patterns come from, how they've served us, and how we are now over-using and over-relying on some of them. She'll discuss how you can use them in a way to heal and transform.
During this session, Wendy Haines will explore the connection between our somatic practices, our bodies, and our commitments.
Join Wendy as she leads us through a practice that will help us align our commitments for the new year with the values that matter most to you.
During this session, Lead Teacher and founder of the Strozzi Institute, Richard Strozzi-Heckler will teach us why completing with dignity is an important part of moving towards a more embodied life.
Join Richard has he walks us through practices that we can incorporate into our daily lives as we prepare to say goodbye to 2021 and hello to 2022.
During this session, Staci will explore the practice of extension, both in terms of giving and receiving. She will discuss how we can extend our attention toward our declarations and visions, to guide our practices over a longer horizon of time, and to extend our care and curiosity to others.
She will also lead an exploration into using extension as a practice of receiving. Just as we aim to give to others, we should also condition ourselves to accept care and support form those around us.
During this session, Giulio Brunini will lead an exploration into the patterns that keep us from practicing regularly. He will teach us ways that we can open up new perspectives to re-energize us and put us back in action.
After your time with Giulio, you will feel more confident and equipped in your journey towards embodiment, even when your schedule feels restricted.
During this session, Giulio Brunini will explore which practices will truly serve your purpose, support your growth, and help you become a more powerful leader.
He will offer useful distinctions on how to design your somatic practices based on what it is that you want to cultivate. He will explore which practices will help support your growth and grow into the person you want to become.
During this session, Maggie Williams will explore how to support your conditioned tendencies genuinely and authentically. She will discuss how to listen to what they are trying to take care of and how to support the opening of the tissues themselves.
She will also lead an exploration into why blending is so important in our quest for sustainable transformation. Through her teachings, we will learn why we shouldn't uproot our conditioned tendencies, but rather work with them to cultivate greater embodied emotional intelligence.
During this session, A.J. will explore how we can embody our early adaptations and patterns deep within our body in our armoring bands.
He will also show us how these patterns can guide and affect our decisions, choices, belief systems, and moods. He will walk us through a few bands specifically and contract areas to support them with a blend. Doing this can help us feel the contraction and support the softening of our bands. This softening is what ultimately leads to sustainable transformation in our lives.
During this session, Michael will explore how to take an embodied approach to conflict and learn how to stay aligned within, even in the most intense circumstances..
He will help us understand how conflict and embodiment are connected while also teaching us practices to help us stay embodied when we're struggling with personal or professional conflicts.
During this session, Michael will explain why overcoming the feeling of intimidation and vulnerability is necessary if we want to powerfully extend ourselves out into the world and create the impact that we long for.
He will teach us how to clearly and directly state our needs through our requests so that we can make compelling offers that will lead to the contribution we are feeling called to make.
During this session, Wendy will guide us through learning to understand and befriend the habits that are keeping us from unlocking new possibilities.
She will walk us through practices to use to have a felt sense of what is possible when we stop working against ourselves and, instead, use our ways of being to work towards what we truly want out of life.
During this session, Wendy will explore how the conditions of today's world are continuing to impact our ability to align with our true visions for the future.
She will guide us through various ways to discover or deepen our resilience practice to build capacity and resources to fuel happiness, connection, and well-being.
During this session, Dara will build on last week’s session regarding consent practices and move into how to set and hold boundaries to protect the values and concerns that mean the most to us.
Understanding, setting, and holding true to our boundaries will only help us to become more embodied and at peace with the world around us
During this session, Dara Silverman takes us through an exploration of the importance of setting and holding boundaries that align with our cares and concerns.
Establishing boundaries is one of the first things we can practice as we start to build somatic awareness. As we become more versed in our somatic awareness and practices, re-evaluating our boundaries is a way to keep ourselves aligned with what matters to us most.
During this session, Pete will take you through an exploration of the patterns that get in the way of living and acting from purpose. Known as “conditioned tendencies,” these behavioral habits often show up when we’re under pressure.
Pete will share somatic practices that support you to recognize how these patterns show up in your body during times of stress — and actions you can take to return to your center.
In this session, Giulio Brunini guides us through practices that will help to develop personal and organizational commitments to make a lasting impact on your life, your work, and the world at large.
He challenges us to answer the question: how do we create meaningful and impactful commitments that live out our values, especially during times of struggle or unreset?
In this session, Dara Silverman guides us to notice what's moving in the body and build an awareness of where we hold back — and she shares some strategies for feeling more.
As you watch and follow along, ask yourself how you can use all that Dara is sharing to reclaim your sense of balance, even in our decidedly unbalanced world.
In this session, we explore how the ever-changing landscape of this global pandemic, on-going social movements, and the stresses of daily life is causing us to respond in a more reactive and less responsive way.
We define embodied transformation and reviewed the three components of how we change — somatic awareness, somatic practice, and somatic opening.
We also engage in embodied practices that give us a felt sense of each of these components that we can start using in our daily life right away.
In this session, Giulio will guide us to understand the relevance of practice in the context of embodied transformation. We will explore the principles of embodied practices and how they represent a foundation from which we can transform and grow.
During the session we will also be in practice together as we experience how to center in stillness and in action.
In this session, we explore the importance of longing in our emotional, energetic, and spiritual development. There are stages of longing as well as practices that open us to this luminous, vast, and potent energy, according to Richard — Founder of the Strozzi Institute & the Strozzi Somatic Coaching Certification, and the original architect of Strozzi Somatics.
As you watch and follow along, ask yourself, Why is longing so important to my emotional, energetic, and spiritual development? What practices can I do that will open me to this energy?
In this session, Staci guides us to explore how to be with and hold complexity. There is so much of it. Complexity often asks us to grow and change, as well as hold contradictions. How can we open to these changes, and find new skillful ways of responding?
Living in a time with increased pressure we may find ourselves even more susceptible to stress and overwhelm, and we may be more reactive. This is understandable and very human. It can also be amplified if we are part of a social group that has experienced systemic discrimination or oppression.
During this session of the Leadership Dojo, we explore somatic practices for working with the activation in our body so that we are better able to return to a place of greater responsiveness rather than reactivity.
Creating a better future for ourselves, our organizations and the planet asks more from us than just having a good idea and putting a few action steps in place.
Real change will test our motivation, asking us to dig deeper and listen to our truest longings.
That's why the most powerful and sustainable commitments are those that come through the body.
Much is changing, and there is some good news amidst a very difficult time collectively. We are still navigating a pandemic and for many of us, changed lives. As we face this next phase, how do we continue to allow our own grief as an aspect of healing, and support others in theirs? This is an opportunity to practice together.
We are in a time of great change and sustained pressure can cause us to act and behave in ways that are not aligned with our values. It is in these moments when we need practices to support our systems to regulate so that we have access to our ability to respond rather than react. In this Leadership Dojo Susie will be sharing practices that guide us back to our center and more alignment with what we care about most.
Experiencing satisfaction requires us to have a reliable, embodied competency for completion, whether in the round of day-to-day life, in our pursuit of goals that matter dearly to us, or in collaborative projects with others.
In this session, Alta reviews the significance of centered completion, what it makes possible, and what can get in the way.
2020 has asked a lot of us. As we enter this season of reflection and closure we turn our embodiment practice toward being with what is in our hearts without judgment, fear, pushing it away, or grasping.
During this one-hour session, we explored practices for being present in our bodies. We explored how these practices invite new possibilities and empower us to take new actions that are in alignment with what we care about.
Change is the one thing that is certain, in ourselves, our lives, and the world around us. But many of us expend a lot of energy on either attempting to resist or at least outwit or out-maneuver the inevitable. Blending with the changes as they arise instead can offer us a path to greater freedom and aliveness.
We are in it for the long haul. Under many dynamic pressures, we'll explore how we can continue to take centered action and sustain ourselves. We'll unpack sustainability (for people), what is it? What does it mean to be self responsive, connected to others, and taking action, over time? What does pleasure have to do with it?
No matter how self-aware we are, it can be difficult to see ourselves as others see us. Therefore receiving a grounded, powerful assessment from a thoughtful leader or coach is one of the fastest ways to improve our leadership. Nonetheless, many of us still struggle to offer our assessments to colleagues and clients in a clear and centered way.
In this session, led by LeeAnn Mallorie, we practice the core skills of both giving and receiving somatic assessments, including getting buy-in, situating an assessment in the context of a person's declaration, and offering somatic grounding.
We will also review the importance of centering when delivering and receiving assessments, and explore the ways we habitually lose center in this critical leadership context.
In times of instability and unpredictability, it can be difficult to make choices or imagine the future.
By cultivating a strong center we can establish a still point: a place within ourselves that is steady, even as everything around appears to be in chaos. Centering connects us to what we value most—not just as a good idea—but as an embodied practice.
How do we grieve honestly, while letting it deepen us? Can grief widen our capacity for love and joy?
In this one-hour session on Befriending Grief, Staci K. Haines, a lead teacher in Somatics and Trauma, and author of The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice, leads practices designed to help us explore befriending grief together.
