8-Week Training

Guaranteed Outcomes

• I have an overall sense of optimism for my health. •

• I listen to sensory information, including pain, and leverage it to accelerate my body's natural capacity to heal. •

• I understand more about my anatomy and physiology; I can sense various structures, tissues, and systems in my body and I understand what they do and how they work. •

• I am curious to learn more about my body and mind. •

• I know that my quality of perception affects my emotions, sensations, and expression and I know how to become aware of my quality of perception and try on different qualities. •

• I am more playful. •

• I dance better. •

• I logically understand that direct-from-the source (my body) sensory information is key in my ability to self-regulate and I have the skills to access this information and make use of it. •

• I recognize when I feel safe and when I do not, and I have a greater capacity to explore what's contributing to these feelings. •

• I have more skills to support others in their process of connecting with their bodies. •

You will self-assess if these statements ring true for you upon completing your training and education. If they do not, you have the option to continue studying until they do or receive a full refund of your tuition.

How We Study

Weekly Lessons

Seven 2-hour live lessons with your coach. Each lesson includes practical somatic training, perception training, and embodied theoretical education.

Safe and Supportive Group

Small cohorts are designed to be safe, supportive, and collaborative. Practice and learn each week with your familiar small group.

Partner Workshops

One 3-hour partner workshops with healing touch and somatic games. Enrolled students bring a partner to participate with them live.

Individual Somatic Coaching

Two 1:1 coaching sessions are included for your to book throughout your enrollment.

Homework

Weekly homework assignments that apply newly learned theory into an embodied somatic practice. Your coach gives feedback on each assignment.

Reading Assignments

Readings on the human body and Buddhist psychology to supplement your training and studies.

Access to Materials

All classes and class material is recorded and given to students to keep forever.

Collaborative Learning

The pedagogy mirrors the practice. Our learning methods incorporate in-the-moment information from the insights and experiences of each student.

Somatic School is an 8-week online small-group training program where students experience and establish new ways of organizing their bodies (movements and postures) and their minds (thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions). They learn how to trigger and support the process of physical and mental self-organization and self-development through mindful and compassionate sensing.

What's Required

Somatic School students are required to

• Attend all live weekly lessons. If this is not possible, students may miss up to two lessons as long as they complete it by watching and doing the somatic practices via the lesson recording.

• Attend lessons from a space with minimal distractions so that the student can focus attention on inward sensation.

• Complete homework assignments before the next lesson.

• Have their computer or tablet with webcam and microphone.

• Schedule individual somatic coaching sessions with the coach.

• Complete the reading assignments.

• Bring their own partner to the partner workshops.

• Express relevant wants, needs, and questions to the coach.

Application

Curriculum

Lesson 1
Breathing Muscles and Dialoguing with Sensation

Lesson 2
Skull and Qualities of Perception

Lesson 3
Evolution of Your Heart and Somatic Touch Training

Lesson 4
Sacrum and Models or Perception

Somatic School's curriculum is always evolving to incorporate student feedback and new research. This is an approximate outline of the lessons offered in the upcoming programs.

Lesson 5
Neck, Vision, and Expression

Lesson 6 - Workshop
Partner Touch and Movement

Lesson 7
Pelvic Floor, Jaw, and the Autonomic Nervous system

Lesson 8
Open lesson plan based on group development.

Every lesson has 45-60 minutes of somatic movement and perception training.

Who Teaches It

Kelly Lazzara ASMP teaches the Somatic School lessons and workshops. He began his practice via the Feldenkrais Method® in 2019. In 2022, he received his Somatic Trainer certification in Physio-Mentale Entwicklung (PME), an ISMETA affiliated program and a USABP official educator. He's worked with nearly two hundred clients exploring chronic pain, limiting perspectives of the body, anxiety, fear of death, athletic skill development, as well as working with couples and groups to promote healthy and healing touch and interaction.

Kelly has also incorporated somatic movement principles and practices with hundreds of clients while working as a personal trainer, group fitness instructor, and soccer coach.

Program Design

Because the human body is a living collection of multiple systems and processes (e.g. the nervous system, the limbic system, the endocrine system, the executive control system, etc.) our education is designed to develop a student's understanding of these distinct and cooperative systems through first-hand observation, reflection, and theoretical education. All theory is relevant to our practices and vice-versa.

The Somatic School is for people who want to transform their relationship with their body into one of love, curiosity, mutual respect, collaboration, and infinite wonder.

The key components are somatic practice, perception training, theory, group education, reading, individual somatic homework, partner homework, and in-person partner practice (see details).