30 May – 1 June 2025 in Wageningen

MASTERCLASS: “DEVELOPING THE CAPACITIES OF THE ELDER – WHAT EVER AGE YOU ARE!”

Being a therapist, whether with the body or the mind requires certain skills which are traditionally the capacities of the ‘elders’ in society. For instance:  mentoring, active listening, non-judgement and holding-space. Although all of these sound like verbal communication skills, they are also expressed and felt by the WAY in which you touch someone and move their body so flow equally within both bodywork and talking.

These abilities can also be developed when you are younger. The key is to realise that they are not rules that you follow but come naturally from your work on yourself. For instance, if there are parts of yourself that you haven’t integrated then you will inevitably be triggered by people who express similar features. If you have faced and embraced your own demons then clients can sense that and feel safe to be themselves so you naturally hold a secure space for them.

In this workshop we will focus on developing these capacities through the way you do bodywork and also through processes by which you explore yourself. The workshop continues the journey through Human Development started in November 2024. However, it is accessible to anyone and we will review the stages of life we explored in the previous workshop.

Each stage expresses the flowering of one of the deep energy functions of East Asian medicine and by working to activate these functions you can find a way to integrate the challenge of that stage of life. Movement Shiatsu contains particular processes and bodywork techniques for stimulating these ‘developmental energy functions’ and Inner Qigong provides ways to practise and strengthen them on your own.

In this workshop we will focus on developing the following:

• Becoming aware of  core patterns through somatic exploration, voicework, drama processes and movement.
• Working with emotional issues through movement and touch
• Using techniques from Movement Shiatsu and Inner Qigong to resolve traumas which block natural development.
• Reviewing the Six Forms of Touch which show how different aspects of therapeutic dynamics can be conveyed through the WAY in which you touch and move a person.

The course is a follow up to course “Stages Of Life” in November 2024, but is also accessible to everyone who is working with any kind of bodywork. 

This workshop is aimed at people who have attended workshops with us in the past but is accessible to everyone who is comfortable working with bodies.

In past workshops we have taught certain techniques using only one or two parts of the body to demonstrate them. In this workshop we will dive deep into the most important of these techniques and show how to apply them more generally to many parts of the body.

We will work in depth with the following spending a whole day on each theme.

• Bones and Joints: Facilitating Alignment and Freedom:

Touching bone and releasing deep control patterns. Using Dancing Touch with  all the joints in the body to help them harmonise and move together without internal conflict.

• Muscles and Fascia: Facilitating Connection and Integration

Working with chronic tension and collapse: helping  muscles  to  have balanced tone so that they act as pathways of communication and connection through the body rather than blocking movement.

• Organs and Spontaneity: Bringing unconscious energy into awareness:

Contacting each of the inner organs and helping their movement to spread  into the whole body. Facilitating spontaneous movement to help energetic self-adjustment.

Masterclass 1: 30, 31 May and 1 June 2025
Masterclass 2: 14, 15 and 16 of November 2025

Location for both: KenKon
Nieuwe Kanaal 11, Wageningen
Times: 10 to 17 o’clock

Investment for each masterclass incl. daily lunch (vegetarian): €395,-,
€95,- upon registration, the remainder before the start.

(For people familiar with our school: these trainings really is in Wageningen! And not in our current working space in Nijmegen.)