EMERGENT SOMATIC PRACTICE

Join us in community and practice the weekend of June 20-22, 2025 in Asheville at Haw Creek Commons

A workshop with Sage Hayes, SEP, LMT, constellations practitioner, Ecstatic Dance DJ. Accompanied by local Asheville co-organizer D Parra of Condor Counseling

This workshop is for healing practitioners of all types including therapists, body workers and movement teachers.  

What is coming to light and how can we meet it well as somatic practitioners?

With so much uncertainty and political upheaval this is a time where having a flexible and intuitive stance as a practitioner is essential with our clients. Being able to help clients generatively utilize this with deep accompaniment and a flexible somatic stance is key.

How can we utilize what’s arising through the body with generative resonance and useful grace?

When the intention is to heal, the body will show us the way. The intentions and uncertainties clients bring to somatic work can act as an embodied compass which can guide our inquiry together.  One of the biggest learning edges and opportunities in practicing somatics is learning to utilize emergent and spontaneous openings with clients.  There’s often a lot more guiding information available than we ‘think’ there is.  The nervous system and body are constantly sending out non-verbal clues which can point us in surprisingly effective and helpful directions.  Clues can show up in the form of body movements, changes in vocal prosody, phrases a client uses which might have extra weight, energetic shifts, sacred pauses, ‘random’ detours and intuitive guidance.  This emergent information which arises during sessions is a way our client’s implicit wisdom is letting us know what is important and what is ready to be explored next.  

Part of this territory includes setting conditions which gently encourage these embodied clues, to then notice when they arrive and to be able to meet them well and effectively in the moment with something exploratory and experiential.  This way of practice takes patience, courage and the willingness to open states of listening to and beyond our ‘practitioner mind’. 

Our role is to become extraordinary listeners, to become attuned to non-linear realms of somatic communication and to accompany these movements from the deep with skill and care.  Listening and moving into a more emergent somatic practice can facilitate a less dominant flow of movement during sessions and generate more collaborative change.

In this experiential workshop we will open our capacity as somatic practitioners to work with emergent somatic material arising in our sessions.   We’ll explore many ways of listening and the varied elements of what we might be listening for.  

The workshop process will aspire to model all the concepts and practices being taught.

The 5 points of the emergent somatic practice compass we will explore are:

• Anchoring in our practitioner body.  Moving from our wisdom and deep trust of the client’s innate inner medicine. Moving from an invitational stance and at the speed of trust.

• Clarifying and kindling client intentions to animate a collaborative map of healing.

• Increasing our capacity for utilization of the ‘sacred pause’ and uncertainty

• Learning to listen for non-cognitive somatic cues and clues.  Discerning between movements of adaptive habit or movements of health.  How to spot energetic willingness.

• Translating somatic information into experiential exploration and spontaneous activities.

About Sage Hayes:

Since 1999, Sage Hayes (she/he/they) has been building capacity and sight towards emergent somatic practice since beginning their work facilitating anti-oppression work in schools, churches and communities. Sage began studying healing arts in 2000 including somatic experiencing, biodynamic craniosacral therapy, therapeutic touch, developmental trauma work, family and systemic constellations and embodied anti-oppression work of all sorts.  Sage was a lead assistant with the Somatic Experiencing Institute for many years and mentors somatic students from all types of modalities.

Sage hails from Peaks Island off the coast of Maine and enjoys a vibrant local life while having the great honor to travel facilitating and teaching with somatic students around the world.  Most recently Sage has been offering embodied movement classes and somatic mentoring support with individuals and groups. Recently Sage had the honor of facilitating Love at the Center: Politicized Healing and Collective Liberation, an international gathering of healers and activists in Sicily this past fall. 

Sage is thrilled and honored to be returning to Asheville to connect with local somatics practitioners. 

Click here for more info about Sage’s background.

Location:  

Haw Creek Commons, 315 Old Haw Creek Rd. Asheville, NC 28805

Schedule:

Friday June 20th, 530-730pm: Potluck dinner gathering in Asheville, location TBA

Saturday June 21, 9-5pm at Haw Creek Commons

Sunday June 22, 9-4pm at Haw Creek Commons

Collaborative price:

In the spirit of access, cost for workshop is offered at a sliding scale. To discover where your price access point is on the sliding scale, please take the time to refer to this amazing resource by Alexis Cunningfolk, The Sliding Scale: A Tool of Economic Justice.

• $450, register here.

• $350, register here.

• $275, register here.

• Or to save your spot, you can make a $200 deposit here.  Payment in full due by June 19 2025, you can make payment via paypal, venmo or I will send you an invoice for your balance due.  

A percentage of proceeds from this workshop will go to support local trans/queer healing work in Asheville with Condor Counseling.

Payment plans available, contact sage@embodiedliberation.com.