Environmental Somatics Training

28 May 2025 - 04 October 2026

A qualification for body-awareness practices in environmental relations

With Katja Münker and Andrea Keiz, Susanne Martin & Undine Eberlein

The Environmental Somatics Training is an on-job specialisation in Somatic Pedagogy for the application and facilitation of body-awareness practices in environmental contexts. The training takes place in cooperation with Somatic Akademy Berlin.

Environmental Somatics is a form of body-oriented learning and movement education, enhancing orientation and the ability to take action while being embedded within a living, the surrounding world.

In 5 modules over 1,5 years this training includes the basics of somatic pedagogy and practice as well as its application in differently formed and inhabited urban and natural environments. The specific relations and interactions in and with the environments are tested, analysed and understood. Improvisational and compositional principles support the diverse adaptation of Somatic Practice to cultural, social, architectural, aesthetic and landscape conditions. Philosophical and cognitive scientific background knowledge support deeper understanding of the practice and its effects. In addition, basic techniques in somatic-artistic research and documentation, for the accompanying development and evaluation of one's own work are applied.

The aim of the training is to understand and accompany body-perception processes, to use this knowledge for the care of our self-world-relationship and the shaping of our living-environments. Environmental Somatics are oriented towards an experienced sensory availability and bodily presence. Thus, the practice strengthens the ability to adapt and attune to situations and to act in relation. The aim is to make the practice part of our responsibility for the common good!

Practicing Environmental Somatics means

• continuing fundamental learning as it is inherent in our being alive!
• strengthening physical & mental resilience in a playful and exploratory way!
• fostering change with awareness & engagement!
• experiencing being in connection as a support for shaping the future!
• enabling experimental-creative application & dissemination in our fields of life!

Background

With our senses and our ( self-) movement, we are constantly in an exchange with our environment. In the process, we simultaneously 'understand' ourselves and the world around us. Environmental Somatics uses the ongoing sensory reference to our environment to enable us for decision-making and to 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 body experience in different situations and environments as a source for regeneration & trust, resilience & focus, communication & creativity and for reflected ability to take action.

During the training, various urban and natural landscapes as well as public spaces are visited in order to get to know the principles of human perception in diverse environments, to stimulate one's own ability to sense and to experience new modes of relatedness through unfamiliar frames of perception.

An understanding of learning and development theories, embodiment philosophy, perceptual physiology and anatomy is conveyed in playful-artistic and research-evaluative course units. The experiences of movement and perception are thus grounded in a theoretical understanding. Particular relationships and interactions with the environments are tested, analyzed and discussed, and compositional design tools for teaching are tested. In this way, an application-oriented basic knowledge in the field of somatic pedagogy is formed.

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

Additionally to the regular 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 own text production
• 2 supervised trail-presentations
• Organisational and content-related support for the final presentation and its evaluation
• Additional teaching material

Methoden & Inhalte
• Feldenkrais Method
• experiential anatomy & physiology
• Improvisation
• Meditation-practices
• Outdoor-activities

Input aus
• Body philosophy
• Cognitive Sciences • Natural sciences • artistic-somatic research • fields of application

The training is suitable as a complement to or a new orientation for a wide range of professional fields: for example, architects can incorporate the intensification of spatial perception into their planning designs, urban planners can take sensory aspects into account when designing social spaces, or teachers can learn mediation strategies in order to design experientially immediate spaces for their teaching in a world that is becoming more and more virtual.

The training is aimed at all those who want to use somatic strategies constructively, visionarily and respectfully to shape our living environments and our life together.

It enables the individual embedding of contents and practices in different fields of action and leads to certification by the Somatic Academy Berlin with a final public presentation. Participants learn to apply body awareness in their private, professional, social or political work.

Voices from participants

Barbara: Thanks to the Environmental Somatics training, I feel more connected to myself and the world. More freedom instead of obligation, more spaciousness instead of pressure. At the same time, I have also received a lot of inspiration for my professional work, learned concrete practices and developed new ideas. Katja Münker made this learning possible through her innovative approach as well as her competent and experienced way of guiding and wonderfully accompanying me individually and the group as a whole. The different modules were both an exciting challenge and a great pleasure and I would not have missed the support between the modules.

Christian: I am deeply grateful for the profoundly enriching learning journey I experienced throughout the Environmental Somatics training.
Thank you Katja Münker! Environmental Somatics offers a grounded approach to cultivating body-oriented theoretical and practical skills, fostering aliveness, awareness, and action capacities at personal, collective, and systemic levels. By designing and facilitating embodied and embedded learning experiences, this training program makes a unique contribution to a new "conviviality of the living" (Thomas Fuchs) —something that both people, places, and the planet deeply need more than ever today.

Video-Impressions

Environmental Somatics Background & Practice

Environmental Somatics Presentations 2020

Module Body & Environment May 2021

Team

Pedagogical director: • Katja Münker (Feldenkrais Method / Somatics / Dance/Choreography / Artistic Research / Walking Art / Mountain Guiding)

Guest teachers:
• Andrea Keiz (Video-Documentation / Video-Art)
• Susanne Martin (PhD, Dance / Performance / Research)
• Undine Eberlein (PhD Philosophy / Somatic Research)

Daten 2025 / 2026

Modul 1: Body & Environment / in & around Berlin 28 May - 01 June 2025

Modul 2: Orientation & Paths / Alps 27 September - 04 October 2025 Modul 3: Research & Documentation / Somatic Akademy Berlin
28 & 29 March 2026

Modul 4: Dimensions & Connectedness / Baltic Sea 23 - 30 May 2026

Modul 5: Designs / in & around Berlin 29 September - 04 October 2026

Notes

• Modules 1, 2 & 4 are certified as educational leave in Berlin.

• The modules 1-4 can be booked seperately as workshops as well.

• The training will be in english (with german partial translation) or german, depending on the actual group.

Costs

Full Price for certified training-program: 2600,- €
+ additional costs for trip into the Alps (accommodation, meals & travel approx. 500€/pers.) + additional costs for trip to the baltic sea (accommodation, meals & travel approx. 500€/pers.)