The Workshops

Chris Taylor

Chris grew up in Hawaii on a foundation of the Aloha Spirit. The understanding that we must work together and support each other in a positive way.

He started practicing AcroYoga in 2013. After seeing a transformation in himself Chris understood the power working with others on trust, connection and playfulness. In 2016 he was accredited by the AcroRevolution school of acrobatics and the YogaSlackers school of slackline and acro.

He has a keen ability to teach in a fun and simple way that people of all ages can enjoy. Besides AcroYoga practice Chris enjoys Partner Acrobatics, Acro Therapeutics, Slackline and Surfing. Chris loves to be silly and feels a deep sense of gratitude to be able to share the foundational techniques of Acro Yoga and enjoying life which he learned from great teachers.

ConSensual Acro Yoga – Trust to Touch

ConSensual Acro is all about deepening our connection to self, deepening our authentic Fuck Yes and feeling the relation of human bodies.

Where can we find a rich and pleasurable connection with another human. Is it in the way we make eye contact, or maybe the way we gracefully hold hands while supporting another? In this workshop we explore the often disregarded and disgraced interplay of sensuality in AcroYoga. Starting with a foundation of trust building, consent practices and playful relating we will find comfort with our community.

Feeling and relating by touch will allow visual and social judgments to dissolve. Finding ourselves being embodied beings ready connect.

Daniel Mang

I have been interested in how social domination takes root in the body, and bodies as sites of resistance, in some way, since my late teens. Contact improvisation has been my primary movement practice since 1986. I also do aikido and am strongly influenced by the Feldenkrais method, Body Mind Centering and ideokinesis. I have been teaching contact improvisation since 1990 – mostly in Europe, but also in North America, Asia and Australia. My pedagogy is informed by my background as a professional bodyworker, my studies in physiotherapy and osteopathy, my experience with various approaches to improving communication and resolving conflict, and by my politics. I see my interest in radical social theory and my love of contact improvisation as two aspects of the same desire. I am based in Sweden.

Contact, Affect, Politics

How people create, interpret and name the emotions, feelings and moods they experience while doing contact improvisation will differ according to their upbringing and life experiences. In this workshop, we will explore the wide diversity in how people have learned to sense their bodies and feel their feelings. One particular theme we could explore is how and why people sort their feelings into “sexual”, “sensual” or other, specifically in the context of contact improvisation.

We will work with the fundamentals of contact improvisation, such as: the relation to gravity, the physical contact between movers and the momentum of moving bodies; modulating tone, sharing weight, and waking up our reflexes and sense of balance. We will explore touch and movement as relational practices and situate our physical practice in the world. We will work with personal boundaries, communication, sensation and emotion, the gaze, economies of appreciation and more. We will address the norms that govern how we live and experience our bodies and how society ascribes meaning to different kinds of touch and different zones of the body. All levels of experience and all kinds of bodies are welcome.

Robert Newton

Robert Newton has been exploring and expressing his potential -through theatre, body work and personal development workshops for 25 years. He has a theatre degree, and studied Decroux corporeal mime technique with Théatre Omnibus. He delved into Humaniversity Therapist Training (in Holland and Quebec) and is an accredited Humaniversity AUM Meditation leader. For two years he co-lead tantra workshops with Kavitro Roy. Robert is energized by exploring our potential to feel, express, and share with bodies and emotions, and is joyful to share those kinds of activities that helped him transform and connect more deeply to himself and others.

Corps sensuel et d‘âme d’Éros

“Corps sensuel et d’âme d’Éros” is workshop that explores with the awareness of our bodies as vessels for sensual souls, and thrill of feelings we get playing the archetypes of: human and angel, beatific and sensual -using movement, dance, guided imaging and partner work. It is given within the container or a ritual or sacred space to deepen connection.

Stefanie

Stefanie is a nature connection facilitator, singer, dancer, and generally playful human. She co-founded an organization that offers year-round nature connection experiences for people of all ages. She is part of the musical group Fruiting Bodies, an all-women vocal harmony group accompanied by harp (fruitingbodiesmtl.com). She has studied contact improvisation on and off for a good third of her life, and studied Axis Syllabus for several years, attending several Nomadic Colleges around the world. She is excited to offer a workshop that fuses for the first time her passion for nature connection with her fascination and delight of sensuality.

Body of animals, bodies of soil

I invite you to join me in embodying a few more-than-human experiences, to heighten our awareness of the forest and its animal inhabitants in an immersive, sensory way, as well as our own animal experience. We will start by studying different ways that animals locomote, as well as using our mind’s eye to imagine what these animals might be experiencing while they move: what is the rabbit feeling as it bounds away from its predator? What is the smell of the injured doe that the cougar is stalking? What does the moonlit wind feel like through the fur of the galloping wolf?

We will then learn some camouflaging principles, in order to sensuously blend in with the forestscape both outwardly and inwardly. We will suit ourselves and each other up with mud, sticks and leaves, follow a score where each participant has a chance to both be and witness others, and finally return the forest to a similar state that we found it with little trace of our play.