Pre-conference workshops
Wednesday, March 25th, 14-18h / 2pm - 6pm
Prof. Dr. Thomas Heidenreich
(Social Work, Health and Care, University of Applied Sciences, Esslingen)
Embodiment in mindfulness-based interventions
Description: Mindfulness-based interventions (MBI) such as mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) have become prominent in both clinical and prevention settings. While the main aim of MBIs is to enable participants to be more mindful (e.g. intentionally maintaining an attentional focus on the present moment without judgment), embodiment exercises such as the body scan, walking meditation and yoga postures play an important role in teaching. The workshop gives an overview of MBIs, their foundations as well as the empirical status regarding efficacy and possible mechanisms of action. Embodiment exercises that are part of MBIs are introduced experientially in the workshop.
Dr. Miriam Kyselo
(Philosophy, Phenomenology and Enactivism, University of Basque Country)
Enacting the Self - A Bodily Exploration of Self with Others
Description: This workshop offers an opportunity to explore the dynamics of self-construction in interaction
with others at the embodied level of self-experience. Through movement, stillness and touch we
will discover in individual and group exercises how feelings of distinction and separation and of
openness and connectivity that form part of our everyday social existence find expression in our
bodies. In a playful manner we will raise awareness of our role and position as an individual in a
social context that at times aims to engage with but at others also to disengage from others. The
exercises will be based on a mix of guided and improvised activities derived from Yoga,
Vipassana meditation practice, and contact improvisation dance.
During the practical session participants are invited to bracket scientific or reflexive judgment
allowing them for a short period of time to simply be (bodily). After the practical session we will
have a feedback-discussion round in which the workshop participants are then invited to share
and reflect on their previous experiences.
Post-conference workshops
Saturday, March 28th, 15-18h / 3pm - 6pm
Dr. Diana Fischman
(Dance/Movement Therapy, Educational Sciences, Instituto Universitario Nacional del Arte IUNA, Universidad de Buenos Aires)
Transcontextual Metapatterns in Dance/Movement Therapy
Description: This workshop is an invitation to observe metapatterns (Volk, 1995; building on Bateson) in
its relation to transmodality (Stern, 1985,2004), forms of vitality (Stern,2010), and metaphor
(Lakoff& Johnson, 1980,1999) as embodied in human experience and understanding. We explore meaningful
movement patterns of group dynamics (Schmais, 1998) embedded in our ways of relating, and how the theoretical
concepts can apply to Dance Movement Therapy. We discuss movement symbolic efficiency (Levy Strauss, 1963;
Schott Billmann, 2009) as imbued in movement patterns from an embodied enactive perspective (slides,
movement experience and video).
Dr. Suzi Tortora
(Dance/Movement Psychotherapy , Dancing Dialogue: Healing & Expressive Arts, New York)
The Dancing Dialogue: The Felt-Experience of Embodied Implicate Knowing and Its Role In
the Development of Self, and Self - Other Relationships
Description: There is growing interest in the infant's experiences that occur outside of verbal conscious awareness.
These nonverbal experiences have been analyzed to explain the infant's experience of self and other in the developing
attachment relationship; how the infant learns to process information in her developing sense of self; infant memory;
and infant psychotherapy. "Implicit knowing" (Stern), "moment-to-moment implicit processes" (Beebe and Larchmann),
"intersubjectivity" (Trevarthen), "body to body-biology to biology" (Pally), and "perceptual-cognitive-affective-
sensory-motor schemata" (Gaensbauer) are some of the current terms that describe these nonverbal processes.
Through experiential explorations this workshop will highlighting the imperative role body/movement experience,
nonverbal understanding, and nonverbal expression play in the development of self and self and other.