We are welcoming new students to the Somatic CI Collective & Certificate Program, Amsterdam
“I am confident that you can move from where you are at to a state of inspired dance & embodiment.”
- Christine Cole
This year: All of the embodiment, the collective, the transformations, the dances
PLUS:
A program that builds your capacity and tools for teaching, which prepares you to build a thriving CI practice and community
AND
Fulfills the requirements for Certification as a RSDE, Registered Somatic Dance Educator through ISMETA !
The collective grows into a live organism of interactive people dancing, which becomes an intelligent community alive in embodied research, mirroring the community of cells, systems and movement patterns that the body and nervous system work.
The dream is to bring together a kick-ass, engaged, flourishing group of teachers, who go out and build their own vibrant following and community! We empower people to dance their way to trust, get messy, and learn tools to become the teacher you didn’t know you could be.
The SomaticBODY approach of radical Embodiment: Systems, Developmental, & Hands-on techniques to invoke alignment flow, specificity or alignment
Underlying Practices and Principles of Presence, Aliveness, YPRP
Movement Development as research, Labbing as a method
Teaching Rhythms of Learning, autonomic and CSF flow patterns that underlie nervous system balance
Principles of Joy, Improvisation, Movement, Somatization
Collective, SB Facilitation Method to create thriving community
The living anatomy of our bodies, which enliven our contact dances and life in general. The program will open us to flow, spontaneity, presence, and bring grounding, alignment, and new skills.
These five modules unlock the cellular knowledge of various tissues in the body. This one-year program will help students embark on a path of continued research into movement and somatics and has the potential to bring about great changes. It informs your body, your life, and all other practices you do.
The Teacher Trainees will meet additional times:
each Thursday evening BEFORE the Modules
Arrive a day early for Olde Vechte and stay in the afternoon
each student will become a module teaching assistant: join the planning, the teaching, get insight into how decisions are made during the module, how the material and the trajectory of student is tracked and discuss the teaching and your development.
you will teach in Olde Vechte once in the 2 years and get mentoringand feedback throughout
MORE ONLINE themes throughout the year!
We will meet four times for three days in Amsterdam, and in June we will meet outside of the city for a 4 day intensive.
Module 1: Fri Nov 22 - Sun Nov 24, 2025
Location: Studio 239
Module 2: Fri Jan 22 - Sun Jan 24, 2026
Location: Studio 239
Module 3: Fri Apr 2 - Sun Apr 4, 2026
Location: Studio 239
Module 4: Jun 9 - June 12, 2026
5 full days
Location: TBD, Olde Vechte or Studio 239 (outside of Amsterdam; lodging not included in price)
Module 5: Fri Sept 12 - Sun Sept 14, 2026
Christine Cole
displays a radical trust in embodied experience as the primary way for groups to co-create knowledge. She has taught at the school for Body-Mind Centering®, and runs her own trainings worldwide, currently in Russia, USA, Thailand, China and Israel. Christine has long term practices in contact improvisation, post-modern and improvisational dance, authentic movement, improvisational theater, writing, and voice.
SomaticBODY exists to re-ignite the amazing truth of the body, how we become the embryological and evolutionary beings we are. Radical trust in embodied experience is the primary way for groups to co-create knowledge.
This is a terrific way for CI dancers, teachers of dance, or CI to add a wide breadth of new somatic information to your practice. These embodiment modules become toolkits for your personal warmup or teaching tools. This group is open to all with some experience in CI and will provide the ground for the expansion of your own dance and understanding of how the body is inspired to move.
No previous experience with Somatics, yet a base in Contact Improvisation is required. If you are unsure if this Program is right for you, please contact us.
You want to put movement, touch and learning into the center of your work and life, or give it more value in what you are doing now in your personal and business life. We offer tons of time to recommit yourself to embodied learning, time for your body to move, rest, engage, receive and express itself truthfully; this is a process - We guide you through it.
Most of our students have many different short or long trainings under their belt, but are looking for one that allows them to bring it all together! These students are willing to make space in their lives, the time and have the willingness to shift. They may not know HOW they can change, or WHO they are below the layers, but they are more willing to go on an unknown path, than stay in stagnancy.
Somatic Body&CI trains students to become professional facilitators of embodiment, movement, perceptual and relational development. After running three SomaticBODY programs, we are seeing that our students indeed have a solid background and tools: Indeed they start their own practice and gather clients & students. Once you complete this program, you are qualified to apppply all 150 hours toward an independant application to join the International Somatic Movement Association - ISMETA and be recognized as a Registered Somatic Movement Educator (RSME) and Therapist (RSMT).
SomaticBODY& CI works as a 1 year cohort. We believe that is how learning works: in discourse, in a group. You will engage with people in your field that will play, explore, learn with you, and support you through the ups and downs of the training - your transformation. We will challenge you on a basis of trust and within the framework of somatics.
Well honestly, most of our time is in delicious learning of anatomy and developmental movement, in embryological origins of tissues, in sourcing from moving authentically, and learning about being a good witness, being present. There is lots of time to dance, move, howl, sing, discuss, play and improvise. The systems approach and the developmental patterns provide a lens through which to assess groups and in private practice - You will leave with ample opportunities to APPLY these concepts.
This year is about setting up the ways to learn somatically ( which challenges some of your usual patterns, like the brain thinking it knows something before we do it). It is about the experience. As such, it can be exciting, challenging, and disorienting.we also put embodied learning in a frame of pedagogy - so you can learn how people learn - this is very freeing and exciting.
Our students completely up their teaching game, add tools to their therapeutic practice, even create movement centers, teach dance, they report that heir personal life blossoms, even affection their progress in seemingly unrelated jobs, like architecture, wilderness training, or running businesses. Many students find that their PRESENCE draws people to them, they recognize coherence, aliveness and trust.
