Mindful Being
​
Mindfulness in Somatic Education for Organisations
Path 1 - Mindful Being
Mindful Being sessions are designed to provide a weekly, regular time to unwind, regulate and widen our relatedness to breath and reflective self-observation. Every session will offer different entry points into embodied contemplation and mindful attention to what is being experienced in the moment while acknowledging the shaping of thoughts and respecting all the arising bodily cues. We will practice non-judgmental attitude towards ourselves and the world around, widen our attention to what is being transmitted through the senses and broaden our inborn capacities for attentive listening, acceptance and supportive responding.
Learning how to observe and connect with movement, both within ourselves and in our living environments through breath, inner sensing, active stillness, and free expression opens new ways of relating and creates a whole new sense of belonging. It reshapes our life in new, more responsible ways and speaks for our all-inclusive unconscious.
What can ‘Mindful Being’ sessions offer:
​
-
increased vitality, resilience and sense of wellbeing
-
improved ability to ease into inner peacefulness
-
improved ability to cope with and release stress
-
improved ability to focus and relate
-
expanded breathing capacities and proper diaphragmic engagement
-
softened impulsiveness or temper
-
emphatic connectivity with others
-
increased kinaesthetic engagement
-
improved emotional wellbeing
-
improved levels of self-resilience and calm confidence
-
greater body awareness and trust in the living body’s inner wisdom
Path 2 - Connect With Yourself
​
(Block of 12 educational sessions planned weekly or monthly)
​
Connect with Yourself sessions will be delivered as an extended, somatic education time following the Mindful Being Session on weekly or monthly basis.
​
The sessions will be focused more on self-care and personal growth development through contemplative and slow movement experience. The sessions will be approached thematically with different emphasis on various aspects of somatic wellbeing and on how our attention to creative movement within our creative self-expression can direct us toward better self-understanding and self-remedy.
Contemplating movement is a very intuitive, imaginal, spontaneous and improvisational activity that involves all the sensual acuteness, kinaesthetic and proprioceptive awareness, embodied presence and a very open attitude toward listening, receiving, and being with whatever is, internally, externally, always transitioning. It is based on practicing one’s ability to move that emerges from our inner sensing and the visceral phenomena, as well as staying responsive to the external stimuli of the space or landscape, where movement shapes itself as a living conversation, a meeting ground between what is or what comes into being, at any given moment.
Concepts and practices covered in the sessions will include:
​
- Proprioceptive and interoceptive sensitivity and conscious movement
- Dialogical processes in relation to feeling, sensation, imagination, and functional movement
- Explorations into the inner landscape of the body through sensory awareness, experiential anatomy and meditative movement practice
- Skills of interoceptive and exteroceptive listening that support sensory homeostasis
- Being in the moment with reflexive voicing of the experience as a form of self-therapy
​
What can ‘Connect with Yourself’ sessions offer:
-
increased vitality, health and sense of wellbeing
-
psycho-physical integration
-
revitalization and emotional resilience
-
release, relaxation and realignment
-
heightened sensuality and increased receptivity
-
awakening self-recovery processes
-
greater body awareness and trust in your body’s wisdom
-
developed self-help strategies
Path 3 - One-to-One Somatic Therapy Sessions (online) with personalized, focused guidance
These are additional, private sessions offered by Anna Dako on appointment basis.
​
Possible Problems and Needs to Address:
-
stress and/or mental strain
-
breathing disorders
-
emotional overload
-
fatigue or burn-out syndrome
-
post-covid19 syndrome
-
states of depression
-
sleeping disorders
-
work/life disbalances
-
hormonal disbalances
-
challenges of aging
-
eating disorders
-
periods of convalescence
-
chronic conditions
Working with Online Tools (Zoom)
Experiencing Somatic Mindfulness and Mindful Movement Sessions via online tools can create a greater opportunity for people who are new to the practice to secure more comfort within the safety of their own homes. After joining a session, all the participants may opt for video connection to be turned on or off. There are benefits to both. Experiencing the guided sessions with cameras on helps the group to build a sense of shared community and encourages full involvement. Joining the session with a camera off can also benefit on days when individual participants would like to secure some privacy and/or allow time for slower getting to know the practice, or if they just want to watch and listen at first.
Also, the use of online connection to guided sessions enables participants to take their practice to their outdoor spaces, within their household compounds, assuming their internet connection covers the area. Following a session in the open air, a garden or on a balcony has most enriching benefits not only for the overall oxygenation improvement but also for building a deeper connection to the living processes in the natural world around that can support our mainly indoor work throughout. It can inspire more activity during the day and provide more support for mental wellbeing.
In the offered sessions I would love to encourage everybody to take the practice outdoors, or at least to follow the session in a well-aired room and/or with windows open.
Professional Support Outlook
As a Counselling and Somatic Education Practitioner, Anna can offer an open support scenario with regular reviewing and request for confidential feedback opportunities included. The open feedback from the participants enables the focus of the sessions to be further shaped and fine-tuned, thus optimizing its benefits to the organisation. The means to collect the regular feedback could be discussed in more detail and made as easy and as accessible as possible, most commonly in the form of a quick questionnaire available online. The form of reviewing can be set as ongoing, or as organised within a time frame after the initial block of 12 sessions has been delivered.
Personal Introduction​
Anna Dako PhD, RSME/T
PhD Counselling in Education
MA Dance and Somatic Wellbeing
MA Theatre Studies
Anna is a Registered Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist with over 15 years of experience of working with movement and creative arts. Anna’s earlier experience stretches from dance research, dramaturgy and on-screen productions. She collaborates internationally and has lived and worked in the Netherlands, Poland, and now in Scotland, UK.
Anna is the founder of Dunami – Movement, Arts, Wellbeing, a platform for ecologically mindful growth, psycho-somatic health, outdoor arts and personal development. She has delivered many workshops on Mindfulness in Somatic Education and Self-Care at Universities throughout UK, including University of Aberdeen, Oxford, Dundee, Edinburgh and Edge Hill.
Academically, she specializes in practice-based research, ecopsychology and environmental philosophy perspectives. In her PhD research she has been developing movement-based approaches toward more embodied ways for ‘being well’ with the natural environment guided by processes of creative Felt Thinking. As a grounding methodology of reflexive and expressive self-inquiry, Felt Thinking opens up a whole new realm of philosophical contemplation on what it means to be human and on experiential movement as the basic ontology of relating to the living world within and around ourselves.
In her private practice Anna specializes in supporting and working through stress and emotional overload problems, eating and weight disorders, fatigue and burn-out, states of depression, challenges of ageing, periods of convalescence, chronic disorders, and versatile psycho-somatic imbalances.
With Dunami offering a thorough context to self-care options including workshops, events, one-to-one sessions, Mindful Living blog and ongoing research resources available, it is a lively platform for re-connecting with the bigger sense of self, and an open invitation to staying connected and supported in individual processes of self-discovery and ecologically minded growth.
Research Film: On Felt Thinking in Movement
More info at: dunami-somatics.com
Online Press: The Barn Arts – Interview with Anna Dako
​
​
Supporting Teacher:
Martina Polleros, RSME/T
MA Dance and Somatic Wellbeing
Martina is an Austrian dance artist, Bodybliss Masterteacher and ISMETA certified Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist. She is one of the co-founders of Somatic Austria, a platform that offers a variety of somatic movement workshops and more in depth retreats, and she has been collaborating within Dunami since 2013. Besides teaching ongoing and seasonal workshops, retreats, she is a visiting lecturer at the somatic education program at the Somatic Academy in Munich.
Martina works part-time for a private insurance company, where she is coaching people in the awareness of maintaining their own health & wellbeing. Martina teaches sensory integration on the one year program Creative Pedagogy in Vienna as well as on the one year program called „Heartlistening“, a training course for people who want to live in greater synchronicity with their inner impulses and their own body knowledge.
More Info at: ISMETA.org/MartinaPolleros
Pricing
For pricing details, to get a quote or to book a session, please email: anna.a.dako@gmail.com
​
​