Environmental Somatics – Somatic City 2026

The Environmental Somatics training is a part-time specialization in somatic pedagogy for the application and teaching of body awareness practices related to the environment.
Environmental Somatics is a form of body-oriented learning related to the environment that promotes orientation and action in our living environment through movement and perception.

The training covers the fundamentals of somatic pedagogy and practice, as well as their application in diverse and lively urban and natural environments. The respective relationships and interactions in and with these environments are tested, analyzed, and explored. Improvisational and compositional principles support the diverse adaptation of somatic practice to cultural, social, architectural, aesthetic, and landscape conditions. Philosophical and cognitive science background knowledge supports a deeper understanding of the practice and its effects. Furthermore, basic techniques in somatic-artistic research and documentation are taught, for the accompanying development and evaluation of one’s own work.

Aim of the training
The aim of this training is to understand and support body perception processes, to use them to nurture our self-world relationship and shape our living environments, and to incorporate them into our responsibility for the common good. Environmental Somatics practice is oriented toward experienced sensing ability and physical presence, thereby strengthening agency and situational adaptation and attunement.

Practicing Environmental Somatics means:

• continue fundamental learning as it is inherent in our being alive!
• Strengthen physical and mental resilience through play and exploration!
• Bring about change with awareness and commitment!
• Experience being connected as support for shaping the future!
• Enable experimental and creative application and communication in our areas of life!

Through our senses and our (self-)movement, we are constantly in dialogue with our surroundings. In doing so, we simultaneously “understand” ourselves and our environment. Environmental Somatics uses the constant environmental connection of our senses to enable us to make decisions and place our actions in a meaningful context while we are exposed to the challenges and stimuli of our environment. Skills are trained to use our own bodily experience in different situations and environments as a source of regeneration and confidence, endurance and concentration, communication and creativity, and for the ability to act thoughtfully.

During the training, participants will visit various urban and natural landscapes, as well as public spaces, to learn about the principles of human perception in diverse environments, stimulate their own sensory abilities, and experience new experiences of relatedness through unfamiliar frames of perception.
In playful, artistic and research-based, reflective sections of the course, the teaching units are dedicated to understanding learning and development theories, embodiment philosophy, perceptual physiology, and anatomy. This provides a theoretical foundation for experiences of movement and perception. The respective relationships and interactions with the environments are explored, analyzed, and discussed. Improvisational and compositional principles support the diverse adaptation of somatic practice to cultural, social, architectural, aesthetic, and landscape conditions. This creates an application-oriented foundation in the field of somatic pedagogy.

The training takes place in 5 modules over 1.5 years, part-time in Berlin and the surrounding area, as well as with 2 trips to the Alps and the Baltic Sea. Modules 1, 2 & 4 are certified as educational leave in Berlin.

In addition to the teaching 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 your own text production
• 2 accompanied trial presentations
• Organizational and content-related support of the final presentation and its evaluation
• additional teaching materials

Methods and content

• Feldenkrais Method
• experiential anatomy and physiology
• Improvisation
• Meditation practices
• Outdoor activities

Input from

• Body philosophy
• Cognitive sciences
• artistic research

The training is suitable as a supplement or reorientation of a wide variety of professional areas: For example, architectscan incorporate the intensification of spatial perception into their planning drafts, urban plannersr can consider sensory aspects when designing social spaces, or teachers can learn teaching strategies to create immediate experiential spaces for their lessons in an increasingly virtual world.