Two-Day Workshop

The Embodied Teen: Teaching Somatic Movement Practices to Adolescents and Young Adults with Susan Bauer

February 7 and 8 • 12-3pm Eastern U.S. time
Find your local time here.

We are pleased to repeat this popular course, with an extra day for added depth and further opportunity for community engagement.

In teaching somatics to teens and young adults, how do we guide our students, while empowering them with a sense of agency in relation to their own bodies? In this workshop, we will examine methods to skillfully invite students into somatic activities, scaffolding the learning so they gain confidence by building their capacity for embodied practice. Workshop participants will be guided in a sample movement exploration based in embodied anatomy, followed by a brief presentation/discussion based on the presenter’s “Eight Pedagogy Principles” from her book, The Embodied Teen. Participants first gain experience with the somatic practices, since enhancing one’s own embodied experience is central to the ability to teach the material, while the pedagogy principles offer a framework to adapt based on one’s particular background and student population.

This workshop can be beneficial to professionals in many fields, including psychologists, dance therapists, somatic educators, dance teachers, and a wide variety of mental health professionals. Based on the presenter’s life-long study of dance, Body-Mind Centering®, Ideokinesis, and Bartenieff Fundamentals, the curriculum is also informed by research in neuroscience, adolescent psychology, mindfulness, and social-emotional learning. Much of this research supports the fact that the body can be seen as the root for healthy development and social-emotional growth. Providing sound somatic movement education to adolescents therefore helps to equip them with essential tools for their well being—now and into adulthood.

Participants will learn:

• To craft a somatic movement practice suitable for teens and young adults (and/or adult ‘beginners’)
• Three basic ‘starting points’ for teaching somatic movement practices with youth
• Participants will learn specific methods to scaffold the learning over time in order to build the capacity for somatic activities of increasing depth and complexity

Header image photo ©Susan Bauer, 2025

SUSAN BAUER, MFA, MSME/T, RSDE is a dance/somatic educator, Fulbright Scholar, founder of Embodiment in Education™, and author of The Embodied Teen: A Somatic Curriculum for Teaching Body-Mind Awareness, Kinesthetic Intelligence, and Social and Emotional Skills. She has taught for over three decades in the U.S and Asia, informed by her extensive background in dance, Body-Mind Centering®, and Authentic Movement. Susan offers an Embodiment in Education Teacher Training Certification Program for professionals and has a private practice as a Master Somatic Movement Educator / Therapist. She has served on the Board of Directors of ISMETA and holds an MFA from the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA and an MA in Dance and Movement Studies from Wesleyan University. Susan’s passionate vision of a more holistic model of education—inclusive of movement and body-mind awareness—fuels her quest to support the well-being of adults and youth alike in these challenging times. https://susanbauer.com/

Course Information