Current/Upcoming Offerings

These courses may be taken for personal enrichment or for professional development. Stated prerequisites must be satisfied.

Faculty: Suzanne River and GRDGS Faculty

Studio Location:
2601 2nd Ave. South, Studio 3, Minneapolis MN 55045

Registration: Please register on time. Classes will not be offered if we do not have a minimum of registrations by the due date.

You may attend any one class at any time by calling the office the day before. Cost $35

10% discount on first course for dancers, body workers and yoga teachers

Register three weeks before the beginning of course or intensive.
Register two weeks before three day intensives.
Register one week before the one day classes.

Methods of Registration:

Online: Coming soon

By mail or fax: Download registration form and fax 651.257.9697 or mail with a $50 deposit to:
GRDGS Office, Attn: Suzanne River, 10700 Lindo Trail, Lindstrom, MN 55045

651-257-8697   dance@globalsomatics.com

Spring Summer 2008 (online calendar)

Special Offerings

SO1 –Global Somatics™ Sunday Workshop
"A thematic introduction to the Global Somatics™ Process."
Sundays, 10:00-4:00
$70 each, No prerequisites
April 6 -- Glory in the Glands

SO3 --Global Somatics™ Healing Paradigm
February 10 and March 23
Sundays, 2:00-5:00
$50, No prerequisites
May 18, June 29, July 20

During this 3-hour lecture demonstration, Suzanne River will present the underlying theory of the Global Somatics™ Healing Paradigm. Each participant will be offered a healing session by Suzanne, Global Somatics™ Practitioners and Trainees, and the circle.

SO1 -- Conscious Embodiment: Intro to Global Somatics™
May 16-18 or June 27-29 or July 18-20 10:00am - 6:00pm
Register two weeks prior to weekend
$300, No prerequisites

“This adventure was truly magical moving from the inside out. I felt safe and free to research the mystery of my bones, organs, muscles and fluids. I learned so much in a short time that felt timeless!”

If you are seeking a dynamic, experiential understanding of your Natural Body and an approach to exploring it with others Conscious Embodiment is for you! Global Somatics is a powerful and pioneering approach to experiential anatomy, developmental movement and the energy field created by Suzanne River. This three-day workshop will draw from the Global Somatics curriculum to meet the desires of the particular students. Every Conscious Embodiment workshop is unique! Through breath, energy, movement, touch, voice, and process you will uncover the living intelligence of your body. You will come home to yourself.

• Develop a consciousness from a cellular level
• Explore your movement, mind, and touch from your bones, organs, muscles, nerves, and fluids
• Evolve personally through doing developmental dances
• Expand your skills in movement, bodywork, yoga, athletics, and other body-mind disciplines
• Integrate your physical body and energy body

Intensives (online calendar)

BS2 -- Knowing Bone: Embodying the Skeletal System Description
June 11-15, (Weds -- Sun) 9:30 -- 5:30 Saturday 11:00-7:00
$500 No Prerequisites

The skeletal system grounds the self in its core architecture. Your bones contain your organs and allow you to move through space. Alignment of the bones affects respiration, circulation, digestion and brain functions. Embodying the bones frees movement, organizes thinking and brings clarity, effortlessness and form to one's life.

• Meet and know every bone and joint in your body by name, touch, movement and sound
• Learn special techniques and principles that communicate with the bones and enhance effortless movement
• Discover skeletal lines of force that integrate the limbs with the spine
• Evaluate and repattern skeletal alignment and movement imbalances
• Engage the three layers of the bone and bone cells

The Body as Choreographer
Teachers: Judith Howard and Suzanne River
July 7 – 9, Mon-Weds, 9:30-4:30
$200 $50 discount if register by June 15

Judith Howard- choreographer/dancer and Suzanne River- Teacher of Global Somatics and Body-Mind Centering have designed this interplay of dance composition and performance with experiential anatomy. Here is a delicious opportunity to create dance work sourced in the somatic experience of your body! Participants will work in a supportive environment and receive feedback during the process. The workshop will culminate with an informal performance.

BS3 -- Organic Dance: Embodying the Organ System Description
July 10-13 (Thurs -- Sun) 9:30 -- 5:30 Saturday 11:00-7:00
$400 No Prerequisites

Learning to engage my organs in yoga asana has made the postures alive, dynamic and ever- changing! Certain postures use to be impossible for me or cause me a great deal of physical stress. Now, I enter these poses by initiating from my organs. When I meet muscular resistance I know I have lost awareness of my inner organ supports. What a truly wholistic practice yoga has become!"
Global Somatics participant and Yoga Teacher
Your organs are the home of your authentic self -- emotions, memories, desires and dreams. They are responsible for your internal survival through breath, nourishment and elimination. Embodied organs support postural tone and bring volume and three- dimensionality to movement. You will increase your internal comfort, expand your emotional range and tap sources of inspiration and passion.

• Learn how to breathe, move, sound and touch from each of your organs through techniques and improvisation
• Discover the relationships between the bones and the organs
• Analyze and repattern imbalances in individual organs and the system without harmful intervention
• Express your creative self through art and singing
• Apply organ work to yoga asanas

Kids Make MagicMoves™
July 22-24 Tuesday-Thursday
9:30-10:30 AM 4-5 years $50
10:45-12:00 6-7 years $60
1:00-2:30 PM 8-9 years $75
2:45-4:30PM 10-12 years $80

MagicMoves™ is an innovative movement education and dance training program for children ages 3 – 16 developed by Suzanne River. The curriculum integrates studies in creative movement, modern dance technique, Global Somatics™ Process and performance within a communal environment. Students become natural and unique dancers capable of accessing their body’s wisdom. Each class includes sharing circles, guided movement improvisation, practice of movement patterns, experiential anatomy, hands-on repatterning, composition and performance.

BP3—Breathing Freely: Embodying the Breath Description
and Moving Perceptions I: Embodying the Senses Description
August 7-10, Thursday - Sunday, 9:30-5:30 Saturday 11:00-7:00
$400 Register by July 17
No prerequisites

Your Breath is free and totally supports you in all your life processes! Your Breath connects to All that Is and reflects the creative dance of your reality! This course helps you to honor and respect the manifested structures of this invisible natural process.

• Explore conscious breathing through external respiration (lungs), internal respiration (cellular)and light respiration (the energy field)
• Access the lobes of your lungs, bronchial tree and nasal conchae
• Balance the pelvic, thoracic, shoulder, vocal, and cranial diaphragms
• Gain awareness of your own breathing patterns and facilitate breath repatterning in others
• Practice specific breath and movement patterns
• Study the Learning Wheel as the science of perception
• Experience bonding, defending, and learning as psychophysical processes based on perception through touch and movement

DM3 -- Developmental Movement III: The Vertebrate Patterns Description
Aug 14-17 (Thurs -- Sun) 9:30 -- 5:30 Saturday 11:00-7:00
$400 No Prerequisites

The Vertebrate Patterns express the integration of the Pre-Vertebrate Patterns and require the activation of the reflexes, righting reactions and equilibrium responses (RRR). You will explore all the developmental movements that take place after birth and have the opportunity to complete missing patterns.

• Embody the Vertebrate Patterns through improvisation and set movement forms: spinal, homologous, homolateral and contralateral
• Explore the movement cycle of Yield - Push - Pull - Yield - Reach - Pull
• Observe these patterns in movement and mind.
• Repattern using relevant Pre-Vertebrate Patterns and RRR
• Initiate the Vertebrate Patterns from the fluids, organs and bones
• Apply the Vertebrate Patterns to yoga, dance composition and contact improvisation

Past Classes and Events

• Summer and Fall 2003
• Spring 2004
• Summer 2004
• Fall 2004
• Spring and Summer 2005
• Fall 2005
• Winter, Spring, Summer 2006
• Fall 2006
• Winter, Spring, Summer 2007
• Fall 2007
• Winter 2008