Somatic Education &
Embodied Meditation

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)

HEALTH & WELL BEING, ONLINE PROGRAM

Location: Shambhala Online

The Physical Art of Meditation

March 7, 2026 @ 3:00 pm (Time zone:America/New_York)

March 7, 14, 21, 28 / April 4, 11, 18, 2026

Saturdays from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. ET

About this Course:

Join this unique seven-week course of somatic contemplations and guided meditation practice with Erika Berland based on her book, Sitting: The Physical Art of Meditation. This course is open to anyone wanting to significantly deepen their embodied sense of their meditation practice – and is particularly beneficial for those who feel their connection to their body is limiting their ability to further their meditation practice.

Together we will explore the physical “art” of meditation, with emphasis on the creative aspect of working with both the sitting posture, as well as other traditional postures of standing, walking and lying down. Through guided somatic practices, based on experiential anatomy and utilizing direct physical and anatomical imagery, we will increase our body awareness and discover a deeper sense of body-mind synchronization.

Using Erika’s book, Sitting: the Physical Art of Meditation as a guide, each session will present both the view and practices of a deep dive into embodiment and its relationship to meditation practice altogether.

Some areas we will explore are:

• Basic anatomy and skeletal alignment of the sitting posture. By clearly imaging our skeletal architecture and understanding how the forces of compression and suspension act on our bones, we can bring our structure into alignment with the forces of gravity and achieve a more effortless verticality.

• The internal support of our soft structures, our organs. Our organs offer both a pathway to deeper emotional and psycho-physical feeling as well as powerful, soft support for our structure.

• Our muscular diaphragms. The pelvic, thoracic, vocal and cranial diaphragms offer horizontal support for our verticality.

• A deeper somatic experience of our breath as the object of meditation. We will explore both our external breathing with our lungs as well as cellular breathing.

• The role of the nervous system in re-patterning our habitual body-mind patterns. Understanding how our nervous system functions gives us access to re-patterning our body-mind so we can deeply relax into our meditation practice as well as increase our mindfulness-awareness in our daily lives.

Each live session will include:

• Meditation and guided explorations of embodied meditation practice
• Talks & Contemplations
• Q&A and Discussion Groups
• Connection with other meditation practitioners

This course also includes access to Erika’s e-book, Sitting: the Physical Art of Meditation. The hard copy can be purchased here.

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.

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.