Somatic Education &
Embodied Meditation
Workshops
Coaching
Private Sessions
Erika Berland
Erika Berland is a nationally Registered Movement Therapist, a Certified Practitioner of Body-Mind Centering and a Senior Meditation Instructor.
She has an extensive background as a dance and movement teacher as well as a performer and has taught workshops in experiential anatomy and dance applications of Body-Mind Centering in numerous studios, schools, and universities throughout the US and Europe.
Erika was a founding faculty of the MFA Theater: Contemporary Performance Program at Naropa University (2004-2020) where she developed a program integrating meditation, somatic movement training and dharma art principles. She and her partner, Wendell Beavers have offered independent training and workshops through their company, Somatic Performer for over 10 years.
“This book is for anyone who wants to sit with ease, presence, and vitality. If you are just beginning your search into quiet sitting, Erika offers basic guidelines to direct you on your path. If you are already immersed in the deep practice of contemplative sitting, she opens the way to subtleties of consciousness through embodying your body systems. This is a gem of a book.”
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Founder of Body-MInd Centering(R)
Trainings and Workshops
Coaching and Private Sessions
Sitting: The Physical Art of Meditation
Current Events
Somatic Meditation Practice: An Online 10 Week Forum
With
Erika Berland
Based on her book:
Meditation: The Physical Art of Sitting
A gathering of a community of meditators focused on integrating deep experiential knowledge of the somatic body into mindfulness/awareness practice. These one hour sessions will include Erika’s guided somatic instructions based on her book “Sitting: The Physical Art of Meditation,” as well as the opportunity to practice together the heart of meditation as embodied presence
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Monday’s beginning March 3, 2025
4:00 PM Pacific/5:00 PM Mountain/6:00 PM Central/7:00 PM Eastern
Guided Practice Sessions are one hour with additional ½ hour
discussion forum offered following each session.
A gathering of a community of meditators focused on integrating deep experiential knowledge of the somatic body into mindfulness/awareness practice. These one hour sessions will include Erika’s guided somatic instructions based on her book “Sitting: The Physical Art of Meditation,” as well as the opportunity to practice together the heart of meditation as embodied presence.
You can pay for the series or drop in by session. The sessions will be recorded and the recordings will be available for the week so that you can use them to deepen your practice and touch back into the material. As an experienced Meditation Instructor, I am also happy to engage with you privately through email or zoom, if questions arise or individual guidance related to basic meditation practice is requested.
Cost: $120 for the 10 sessions or $15 for drop-ins.
Familiarity with Erika’s book is highly recommended since much of the material will be drawn from the book’s information and exercises. Meditation: The Physical Art of Sitting can be purchased online from Amazon. A recording of an in-depth 7-week course based on the book taught by Erika in the Fall of 2020 is also available for purchase
Trainings, Workshops
and Private Sessions
The Physical Art of Sitting: Experiential Anatomy and the Posture of Meditation
Workshops and Courses based on Erika’s book, offer practical instruction on how to release habitual patterns of tension and relax more fully into the meditation posture. Principles of physical alignment, basic anatomy, simple exercises and imagery are utilized.
Coaching and Private Sessions
Along with effecting deep physical change my primary goal is to guide students toward a new Body/Mind relationship. Gentle non-invasive touch and verbal suggestions encourage a shift in awareness, which in turn helps to facilitate the healing or re-patterning of habitual responses.
Somatic Training for the Performer
Somatic Performer Workshops are jointly taught by Wendell and Erika as intensives of various lengths. Each workshop we choose an aspect of the Body Mind Centering(R) material to research by applying experiential anatomy and developmental principles and concepts to improvisation (Viewpoints), physical acting ( Grotowski), dance making and personal movement research. The workshops offer methods of psychophysical and embodied research to support individual artists in creating original work across aesthetics and genres.