Environmental Somatics Training as Continuing Education
DE+EN | a qualification in body-awareness practices in environmental settings
Environmental Somatics is a form of body-oriented learning and movement education, enhancing orientation and the ability to take action while being embedded within a living, the surrounding world.
The Environmental Somatics training is an on-job specialisation in Somatic Pedagogy for the application and facilitation of body-awareness practices in environmental contexts.
Environmental Somatics is a form of body-oriented learning in environmental context that promotes orientation and the ability to act in our living environment through movement and perception.
This training includes the basics of Somatic Pedagogy & Practice as well as its application in differently formed and inhabited urban and natural environments. The specific relations and interactions in and with the environments are tested, analysed and understood. Improvisational and compositional principles support the diverse adaptation of Somatic Practice to cultural, social, architectural, aesthetic and landscape conditions. Philosophical and cognitive scientific background knowledge support deeper understanding of the practice and its effects. In addition, basic techniques in somatic-artistic research and documentation, for the accompanying development and evaluation of one's own work are applied.
------------------
200h / 5 modules + add-on workshop / with Katja Münker + 3 guest teachers
The Environmental Somatics training takes over 1,5 years and consists of 5 modules. The first 4 modules can be booked separately. Depending on the group, it will be in German OR English.
Ausführliche Seminarinformationen
Aim of the training
The aim of the training is to understand and accompany body-perception processes, to use this knowledge for the care of our self-world-relationship and the shaping of our living-environments. Environmental Somatics are oriented towards an experienced sensory availability and bodily presence. Thus, the practice strengthens the ability to adapt and attune to situations and to act in relation. The aim is to make the practice part of our responsibility for the common good!
Additionally to the regular modules the training includes:
- 3 individual coaching sessions of 60 minutes each outside the modules
- 3 group coaching sessions outside the modules
- Individual project support and peer evaluation
- Feedback on own text production
- 2 supervised trail-presentations
- Organisational and content-related support for the final presentation and its evaluation
- Additional teaching material
Applied methods in the training
- Feldenkrais Methode
- erfahrbare Anatomie & Physiologie
- Improvisation
- Meditationspraktiken
- Outdooraktivitäten
Including
- Body philosophy
- Cognitive Sciences
- Natural sciences
- artistic-somatic research
- fields of application
For whom is the training recommended?
The training is suitable as a complement to or a new orientation for a wide range of professional fields: for example, architects can incorporate the intensification of spatial perception into their planning designs, urban planners can take sensory aspects into account when designing social spaces, or teachers can learn mediation strategies in order to design experientially immediate spaces for their teaching in a world that is becoming more and more virtual.
The training is aimed at all those who want to use somatic strategies constructively, visionarily and respectfully to shape our living environments and our life together.
It enables the individual embedding of contents and practices in different fields of action and leads to certification by the Somatic Academy Berlin with a final public presentation. Participants learn to apply body awareness in their private, professional, social or political work.
Curriculum of the complete Environmental Somatics Training
This training includes 5 modules and 200 hours.
The modules 1-4 can be booked seperately as workshops as well. The training will be in english (with german partial translation) or german, it depends to the group.
Module 1 | May 28 - Jun 01, 2025 | Body & Environment | in & around Berlin
|
Module 2 | Sep 27 - Oct 04, 2025 | Orientation & Ways | In the Alps
|
Module 3 | Mar 28 - Mar 29, 2026 | Research & Documentation | Berlin Somatic Academy
|
Module 4 | May 23 - May 20, 2026 | Dimensions & Connectedness | At the Baltic sea
|
Module 5 | Sep 29 - Oct 04, 2026 | Design of environmental references | In & around Berlin
|
|
|
Team
Pedagogical direction:
- Katja Münker (Feldenkrais Method / Somatics / Dance/Choreography / Artistic Research / Walking Art / Mountain Guiding)
Guest teachers:
- Andrea Keiz (video documentation / video art)
- Susanne Martin (PhD, Dance / Performance / Research)
- Undine Eberlein (PhD, Body Philosophy / Somatic Research)
Video-Impressions from the Module Body & Environment 2021
Die Teile
Body and Environment
Module 1 with Katja Münker | in and around Berlin
This module teaches the basics of somatic pedagogy and its application in environmental contexts: Experiences in the application of somatic approaches will be gathered in...
Orientation & Paths
Module 2 with Katja Münker | in the Alps
This module focuses on the development of movement, orientation and navigation in mountainous terrain. Based on Feldenkrais method & experiential anatomy, the orientation...
Somatic Research and Documentation
Module 3 with Andrea Keiz & Susanne Martin
This module uses strategies and forms of reflection from artistic research and applies them to somatic processes. Artistic Research has been developing since the last decades...
Dimension & Connectedness
Module 4 with Katja Münker | Baltic Sea
This module expands and deepens orientation skills by exploring the experiential dimensions of height, depth, expanse, closeness, and distance. Philosophical and...
Design of environmental references - somatic composition
Module 5 with Katja Münker | in and around Berlin
The last training module aims at an individual application of the contents of modules 2-4 and of somatic pedagogy in environmental contexts. Strategies for the design of...
Seminarleiter*innen
Katja Münker
www.movement-muenker.de/
Dance | Choreography | Performance | Somatics | Artistic Research | Walking Art | Mountain Hiking Guiding
Continuing education lecturer and director of Environmental Somatics and EMERGE/ Somatic in Dance at the Somatische Akademie Berlin. Member of the German Feldenkrais Association & ISMETA-registered RSME/RSMT/RSDE.
Trained as a physical therapist, Feldenkrais teacher, and mountain hiking guide, as well as in contemporary dance, (contact) improvisation, instant composition.
Conscious and embodied learning, the potential between individual freedom and collective inclusion in the environment, as well as joy, ease, and consciousness in the movement are the focus of her teaching. Her research-oriented practice is informed by deep-sensing investigation and reflecting evaluation. Beyond teaching her work includes performance projects, conference papers, and publications focusing on somatics and choreography, as well as on walking. Regular teaching at universities including FU Berlin, UdK Berlin, and HZT Berlin. Artistic research collaboration with AREAL_artistic research lab Berlin.
Dr. Undine Eberlein
undine.eberlein@gmail.com
Philosopher, author, research in the field of body phenomenology, course leader Tai Chi and Qi Gong.
Studies at the FU Berlin and doctorate in philosophy on "Einzigartigkeit. Das romantische Individualitätskonzept der Moderne" (Campus 2000); research associate at the FU Berlin and University of Magdeburg as well as lecturer in adult education; in addition, training as a course instructor in autogenic training, Tai Chi and Qi Gong as well as somatic research; research in the field of body phenomenology and editing of an anthology "Intercorporeity, Movement and Tacit Knowledge - Zwischenleiblichkeit und bewegtes Verstehen".
Susanne Martin
www.susannemartin.de
choreographer, performer, researcher, and teacher in contemporary dance.
She presents her work internationally in solo performances and collaborative stage works. Her artistic practice and research focus on improvisation, contact improvisation, critical practices and narrations of age(ing), artistic research methods, and improvisation-based approaches to knowledge production and knowledge dissemination. Festivals that presented her performances include: International Dance and Theatre Festival (Gothenburg), Aerowaves (London), Nottdance (Nottingham), Opera Estate (Bassano del Grappa), Tanec Praha (Prague).
Her PhD dissertation Dancing Age(ing): Rethinking Age(ing) in and through Improvisation Practice and Performance was published 2017 by transcript. In her postdoctoral research at EPFL, Switzerland (2018-2021) she examined dance improvisation in its potential to rethink and advance processes of learning and researching in a technical university.
credit: Frank Post
Kosten & Daten
Costs
Complete Environmental Somatics training
2200€
+ additional costs for trip into the Alpines (accommodation, meals & travel approx. 500€/pers.)
+ additional costs for trip to the baltic sea (accommodation, meals & travel approx. 500€/pers.)
Modules 1-4 are seperately bookable.
Paying via monthly installements is possible: 10 × 230€
Dates
Module 1 | May 28 - Jun 01, 2025 | Body & Environment | in & around Berlin |
Module 2 | Sep 27 - Oct 04, 2025 | Orientation & Ways | In the Alps |
Module 3 | Mar 28 - Mar 29, 2026 | Research & Documentation | Berlin Somatic Academy |
Module 4 | May 23 - May 20, 2026 | Dimensions & Connectedness | At the Baltic sea |
Module 5 | Sep 29 - Oct 04, 2026 | Design of environmental references | In & around Berlin |
|
|
Anmeldeinformationen
- Earlybird: 1900.00 EUR
- Full Price: 2200.00 EUR
Get to know Environmental Somatics in an audio walk:
During this audio walk Katja Münker will introduce the practice and background of Environmental Somatics and to the structure of the training. Please ask Katja Münker to get the link.