Embodiment Foundations
Embodiment Foundations is offered as either a 50-hour personal development program, with classes online and in person or as a 25 hour online course, your choice. This program is designed to help you discover and cultivate your body’s innate intelligence, improve your 'body connectivity' and embrace a more deeply embodied way of living as a resource for life. This unique program guides you on a transformative journey that will positively impact your personal, family and professional life.
Embodiment Foundations is offered 2 times per year: January through March, and July through November (depending on sufficient enrolment). Our intention is that you leave this course feeling rejuvenated, inspired, clearer on your life’s path/goals, more connected with your body, and more expressive, confident and knowledgeable as a moving being. We invite you to destress and have lots of creative fun too! Come join us on your own personal embodiment journey, gaining new tools and ideas for body awareness and movement activities that you may also wish to share with others if you are a movement or embodiment professional.
The Tree is our EF program mascot, as a metaphor for the human body-mind. Come explore rooting, grounding, rising in level change, oscillating, core flow and connection, spiralling, pulsing, yielding, pushing, reaching and integrated movement. Participants will be invited to sense, feel, follow, trust and express from authentic impulse as well. Using experiential anatomy we will also map our body-brain connection and harness our Body Systems support for movement expression. What if more ease, pleasure and support for movement and being can be found? This is our exploration. Open to beginner movers.
FEES: $1875.00 plus GST 5% tax for total of $1968.75 Canadian dollars (is approx $1418 USD, CHECK CURRENT EXCHANGE)
Next Course: Online classes span September-November, 2025. Intensive retreat in person: July 26-29 ’25 (on Saltspring Island, BC)
HOURS: 50 total ~ 25 hours of online classes plus 25 hours in-person during a four day intensive/retreat July 26, 27, 28, 29, 2025.
(Optional: just attend the 25 hours in person OR online for reduced fees of $975.00 CAD plus 5% gst tax).
TIME: Online classes are weekly on Wednesdays 5-7pm Pacific Time Zone. In person retreat days are 9:30am-4:30pm (with one hour lunch break).
LOCATION: Online by Zoom, and in person on Saltspring Island BC, Canada (at Honest Farms studio).
INSTRUCTOR: Hana Kamea Kemble and/or other members of The Movement Arc’s teaching staff.
DEADLINE to register for July intensive/retreat is May 30, 2025.
Online class dates are September 3, 10, 17, 24, October 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, Nov 12, 19, 26 (2025) . Plus 3 asynchronous hours of videos and films and a 1/1 hour personal meeting with course instructor is included in tuition.
Benefits of the Program
- Discover your body’s functional and expressive movement potential
- Harness your body connectivity as a neuromuscular organizer
- Understand basic principles of somatic theory and inquiry
- Learn about introductory aspects of Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies
- Explore your felt sense of the inside of your body using experiential anatomy
- Connect with the layers and beauty of your body’s systems as a resource
- Play with peers in fun, movement-oriented expressive activities
- Learn how to harness your body-sourced creativity
- Experience more joy, ease of movement and wellbeing!
Who is this course for?
The course is open to new movers as well as those with some movement and dance background, and is for people interested in deepening their own embodiment as a personal development and creative journey. This gives a foundation that may lead as desired to next steps of enrolment in another of The Movement Arc’s training programs, or just provide a stand-alone enriching experience.
Please note: We are not teaching you to be a facilitator of somatic expressive movement in this program (that is the focus of our other Expressive Movement Facilitator program), nor is this a therapy group; rather the focus is on using somatic education to enliven your connection with your own moving body and self and harness your embodied understanding, knowledge and creativity.
- Have curiosity and interest about somatic movement practice.
- Have good capacity to work well in a group learning environment.
- Have an open mind to learning through embodied experiential processes.
- Have energy, time and commitment to fulfilling the course hours and participating in earnest.
- We recommend all students applying to this program have taken our introductory workshop Dipping Your Toes In as a way for instructors and students to meet and get to know each other through movement. This is not a pre-requisite however to joining the Embodiment Foundations program.
- Students are asked to submit a short letter of intent that includes information about their current interests and background in movement and goals for taking this program. You can also just fill in the Contact Form on this site and write a bit more details in that.
- Schedule a free 20 minute conversation with program director Hana by phone or Zoom to answer any questions you may have. www.calendly.com/hanakamea
All questions and application submissions can be sent to:
Monica Hernandez, Administrative Coordinator info@themovementarc.com
or call Hana at 604-781-6040
Expectations
Students can arrive ready to move and dress appropriately. Students will also need good internet connection and to have uploaded the latest available version of Zoom. Together, we will create working group agreements. Students will need to make any special needs, including learning differences known to any instructors before the program start. We welcome students of all abilities, gender identifications, ages.
For those students enrolled in the full 50 hour program, you are expected to attend the intensive in person. We are not able to accommodate hybrid learning by filming the intensive. If you were to miss the intensive due to illness or other emergency, you would be welcome to attend the following year’s in person intensive and would receive your course completion certificate after all classes are completed. Students need to attend 80% of the classes live in order to receive a completion certificate.
**In-person courses are dependent on COVID safety protocols; if we cannot meet in person due to any new government regulations regarding any new pandemics we will meet online, likely with revised schedule. Our sick policy is that if sick with any symptoms, please do not attend the intensive days, you can return for any of the following two years for intensives free of additional charge. All tuition payments are final and non-refundable unless a course enrolment cancellation is made at least 30 days prior to course start date, in which case a $300 CAD admin fee/deposit is kept.
Registration Process
