You are invited to enjoy three weekly on-line still.being.moved events: Tuesday and Friday daytime and Wednesday evening.
Details appear in the calendar below. ALL TIMES LISTED ARE CENTRAL. These events are free — or by donation, if you prefer.
And now that it feels relatively safe again to gather in groups, I’m resuming in-person retreats to delight and enliven your body, mind, and spirit.
Here are tentative dates for Spring 2024 retreats: March 20 - 24, April 24 - 28, May 15 - 19. The retreat space is in Taylor, Texas — just northeast of Austin.
You can contact me or leave your email below to receive announcements for events and retreats.
“My whole being enjoys Kathryn’s movement events! Her enticing, inviting words and inclusive feeling tone open the psychic door to uninhibited creative expression. I always leave class with an energy reset, enjoying an enhanced embodiment and my heart in a better place.”
Class and Event Descriptions
Conscious movement on and off my mat have kept my body healthy and strong over decades. My years of learning and teaching classic Nia and traditional hatha yoga have taught me how best to recognize, honor, and tend my body’s idiosyncrasies. In the process, I have cultivated awareness of how to help others learn to balance, strengthen, heal, and enjoy their bodies.
I have explored movement for other purposes—recognizing, embodying, and releasing emotions, for example—that also enhance well being. Over time, I have developed teaching practices that incorporate and transmit these benefits.
My in-person classes, typically small and intimate, take place in my home studio. Such sessions may be helpful for inexperienced students planning to enter an established class, for people wanting a class experience but not ready to return to a public setting, or for those seeking personalized instruction.
As noted above, I currently offer on-line events originating from my home studio. Check the calendar for details.
On-line events are free, although donations are accepted for a friend in need (see “Help for Christina” under Writing). The suggested donation is $10 to $20.
Targeted private sessions are $60 for an hour. Couples and friends are $75 for the group.
Still.Being.Moved
Selfistry (https://selfistry.com), a self-discovery system for personal development I’ve been exploring for several years with its originator, Sarah Marshank, includes a somatic practice I particularly love. Its name—still.being.moved—references the three opportunities (represented as spaces) offered within the experience: meditation, cultivation of a witness observer, and freeform movement.
You can read about how I met and fell in love with still.being.moved here.
The experience begins with a brief orientation to the practice. Over the next 45 to 90 minutes, depending on the length of the event, music supports our choices as we interact with each space as inspired. In the movement space, anything goes. The invitation is to dance, to bring in elements of other practices such as yoga or t’ai chi, or to simply stand and sway, sit and rock, or crawl or roll around on the floor. Again, anything goes.
In the witness space, we observe ourselves and each other without judgment. (Note: this is potent medicine.) In the stillness space, we sit.
Simple. Juicy beyond words.
Our practice ends with an optional circle, where we are invited to respond to the question “What did you notice?” Our words are held in respect and confidence, as for every practice I lead.
After each still.being.moved event, I experience awe and profound gratitude for our shared vulnerability and wisdom. Each time, I trust even more deeply in the healing power of groups uniting for their members’ own benefit and for the collective good.
Yoga
My priority is physical safety throughout our hour-long class, as I encourage participants to use sensation to determine whether a position or movement is appropriate and wise rather than going for a particular look or pushing toward some imagined outcome.
Such tender exploration leads to enhanced compassion for ourselves as we learn to hold the body’s quirks and limitations in respect and loving kindness, to discern and appreciate what the body can do and cannot do, and to recognize the folly of insisting the body do something beyond its capabilities.
My tight-loose teaching approach begins with detailed instruction to guide people into safe alignment in each asana. I then encourage them to gently explore—and even to play—within the postures to find whatever version brings a sense of joyful grounding and empowered spaciousness. Gorgeous music accompanies our ending relaxation.
Nia Moving to Heal
Moving to Heal (M2H), a music-inspired practice within the Nia Technique, begins with a stable base and moves upward and outward through the body’s core. We track and respond to sensation, returning repeatedly to center and stillness. During our 75-minute class, I offer gentle suggestions that each person interprets in a way that serves his or her body’s needs and abilities in the moment.
M2H meets each participant where he or she is in terms of flexibility, agility, mobility, stability, and strength. Chairs, mats, walls, cushions, and other props are available at all times for safety and comfort.
The sacred space in which we are alone together (low lighting, no conversation or intentional touch) provides the opportunity for individuals to experience the class uniquely, with the privacy and freedom to focus deeply and safely on physical sensation. The result: a self-created sensation-informed healing movement session.
Core Play
Drawing from three practices—Yoga, mat work from the Pilates Method, and floor play from the Nia Technique—my hour-long Core Play classes emphasize strength and stability of the pelvis and torso.
Classes begin with warmup activities and breath work to ready our bodies for exercises that can range from mild exertion to a strenuous workout, depending on the intensity, range of motion, and number of repetitions one chooses to apply. This choice will depend upon the immediate feedback the warmups provide about the energy and strength available to a person on a particular day.
Classes tend to be fast-paced. Precise instructions allow participants to engage safely and effectively in individual activities while moving quickly from one activity to another. Options to hold a resting pose, skip an activity, and do fewer repetitions are always available and encouraged. Bottom line: we work hard, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. And we tend to laugh a lot …
Classes end with a cool down sequence and stretches tailored to the day’s activities. People typically leave sweaty and exhilarated.
Nia FreeDance
Similar to Moving to Heal, Nia FreeDance (NFD) is a music-inspired practice within the Nia Technique. During our 75-minute NFD class, we journey through four realms: physical, emotional, imaginal, and spiritual, guided by music and subtle verbal prompts.
The NFD practice encourages freestyle movement—or stillness—in response to the music and my cues, as well as to what each person brings to the practice in each realm: the sensations alive in the moment in our bodies, the emotions that are moving in us, the conjurings of our imagination, and our unique way of self expression. I am frequently awestruck by the variety and depth of expression that arise during this experience.
As in M2H, we practice alone together. The music typically follows an arc: meditative to seductive to lively to ecstatic to lyrical to mellow and back to meditative. Most of us begin and end lying on the floor with the unexpected-and-wonderful happening in-between.
For the final 15 or 20 minutes, we sit quietly in circle with the invitation to respond—or not—to the question “What did you notice?”
Enneagram explorations
When a group of four or five folks — beginners through experts—coalesces around a topic, I’ll arrange a meeting (Zoom, for now) and send invitations. The next event—not yet scheduled—will examine enneatype and sexuality. Contact me if you are interested (or just curious).
Seasonal Rituals
For the past decade, my practice has been to devote an evening during equinox and solstice times for reflection, movement, and intention setting. For Autumn Equinox 2022, we will celebrate Sunday 9/18, Tuesday 9/20, and Wednesday 9/21. See the calendar for details.
Nurture and renew
Current group retreat offering:
]This section is being updated for Spring 2024 offerings, tentatively scheduled for March 20 - 24, April 24 - 28, May 15 - 19. Please check back soon.]
General offerings:
Individual, couple, or two friends. Day-long or weekend — you pick the dates. Locations: Taylor, Texas, near Austin. We focus, depending on your interest, on one or more of these topics.
Self Care: diet, exercise, lifestyle, sleep, emotional health
Relationship: boundaries, sharing space, attracting a mate, letting go of a mate, parenting
Communication: empowering language, self talk, I statements
Career: work transition, retirement, writing
Sensuality: sensual touch, sensual movement, self-pleasure, partner pleasure
Spirituality: empathy, dreams, prayer, meditation, grief
Contact me for more information.