Background for Instructors and Tutors
Somatic Foundations of Presence, Touch, and Movement has grown out of my years of teaching, tutoring, and practicing the Trager Approach. It draws on the touch and presence I have shared with more than 10,000 clients, as well as the interdisciplinary explorations that have shaped my own movement and embodiment.
From the beginning, my teaching has been shaped by the lineage of Milton Trager—his vision that freedom, ease, and play could be learned directly through the body, not as an abstract ideal but as a felt experience. Alongside that lineage, my own path has been nourished by decades of encounters with students and colleagues, and by conversations across the arts, sciences, and somatic traditions. What I offer here is not a departure from Trager’s work, but my particular articulation of it: what I have found myself returning to again and again in guiding students toward presence, curiosity, and depth.
For instructors and tutors, Somatic Foundations offers one developed iteration of the 24-hour Mentastics course within the Trager Certification Training Program. From the late 1980s onward, our instructor group recognized the need to teach Mentastics on its own, not only woven into other classes. That recognition led to the adoption of a dedicated three-day course in the 1999 international curriculum, created collectively but always enriched by individual voices, backgrounds, and teaching styles.
The version presented here reflects my own contribution to that ongoing evolution—distilled from many years of teaching and refined through countless encounters with students. The demonstration video, companion booklet, and growing online library are not prescriptive. They are offered as a foundation and a support: to help clarify the language we use, to provide touchstones for guiding movement and awareness, and to encourage creativity as you shape the learning environment for your students.
When I speak of “Somatic Foundations,” I am naming both a lineage and a field of practices. They arise from Milton Trager’s original explorations, but they also carry the imprint of my life experience and the lives of those I have touched, tutored, and taught. They are offered here in the spirit of transmission: as seeds that may take root differently in each instructor’s soil, but always with the same intention—that we cultivate freedom, ease, and joy in ourselves, and help others do the same.
