SOMATIC BODY WORK
The direct path to skillful, body-centered transformation
5 immersive days to develop deeper somatic awareness, precise touch, embodied presence, and transformational practice through direct experience working with the body.
2 to 6 of June 2026
Château de Bossey, Bogis Bossey, Switzerland
PROUDLY SPONSORED BY THE MIND BLISS COACHING.
WE BRING YOU STROZZI INSTITUTE FOR SOMATICS: SOMATIC BODY WORK LEVEL 1
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH BY STROZZI TRAINED TEACHERS.
Completion of Embodied Transformation is the required first step of the journey.
Why Somatic Bodywork?
Embodied Transformation is a transformative change theory rooted in somatics that allows us to align our actions and behaviors with our values and visions for our life, to embody what we care about.
Strozzi Somatics places a focus on Somatic Awareness, Somatic Opening, and Somatic Practices, along with awareness & understanding of Social Context.
It also includes an acknowledgment of and respect for our place within the still-broader context of Landscape and Spirit.
The self and body are intimately linked together. By working with and through the body, you’ll create change where conversation or thought alone can’t reach.
Through direct touch work, you’ll:
*Bridge theory and hands-on practice confidently
*Experience both roles – giving and receiving skilled bodywork
*Learn to read subtle body signals with precision
*Develop practical techniques for releasing held patterns in the body, redirecting energy, and reinforcing new shapes
*Cultivate your unique embodied presence
Our methodology integrates:
*Seeing and working with armoring bands–patterns of contraction that lessen or prevent body sensation, movement, emotion, and aliveness
*Precise touch distinctions
*Skillful use of breath and movement
*Supportive expert supervision
*A contained, safe learning environment
*Direct somatic opening and change
Why Somatic Opening?
We view Somatic Opening as an integral and necessary part of the transformative path. Our reactions and embodied ways of being live deep in our somatic structures, and most often cannot be changed through conversation or thought alone.
Somatic Opening works through the body to access and transform conditioned tendencies, the experiences that have shaped us, and emotions or numbing that have become automatic. Our bodies tell stories. Our muscles hold memories.
Somatic Opening allows us to listen to and transform this shaping that no longer serves us, opening up more choice and possibility. This opening allows our new practices to take root more deeply within us, making them more sustainable, and more reliable under pressure.
We recommend that you receive somatic bodywork as a part of your learning journey.
This can support you to:
Increase your Somatic Awareness - develop your capacity to access and feel the language and intelligence of the senses. This is very different than “thinking about” or “understanding” sensing. Becoming “somatized” allows you to live within your own body and, in a grounded and reliable way, access your own wisdom, competence, and intuition.
Go through your own Somatic Opening - feeling & transforming aspects of your shaping, which have become limiting, or which get in the way of your declarations and relationships.
Embody new Somatic Practices - more deeply, creating new possibilities for you to take skillful action towards the things you most care about.
Develop your understanding of how it feels - to be a client in the Somatic Coaching relationship (from the inside out), increasing your ability to build trust and intimacy with your coaching clients.
Course Promises.
We promise that you will be able to:
Understand the relevance of Somatic Bodywork in Strozzi Somatics / Somatic Coaching
Deepen your understanding of Somatic Opening and the role it plays in embodied transformation
Cultivate the embodied presence necessary to support somatic bodywork clients
Learn distinctions of touch
Develop your ability to see and work with armouring bands
Learn core somatic bodywork methodology including the use of touch, breath, gestures, and somatic conversations.
WHEN?
2 to 6 June 2026
from 9.00 a.m. to 5.30/6 p.m. - Tuesday to Friday
9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday
*daily schedule might change anytime
WHERE?
Château de Bossey, Bogis Bossey, Switrzeland
Non-residential.
Few bedrooms available at Château de Bossey, in very simple and basic rooms.
You can book your room here.
THE PROGRAM IS TAUGHT IN ENGLISH BY EXPERIENCED STROZZI TRAINED TEACHERS.
Regular fee: 3'300 CHF
The registration fee includes:
✔️course material;
✔️participation in all activities;
✔️tea breaks and snacks;
✔️ lunch during the 5 training days (5).
Payment plans available upon request. Contact us.
Cancellation policy
If you cancel before the 2nd April 2026: 90% of the fee will be refunded.
If you cancel between the 3rd of April and the 30th of April 2026: 50% of the fee will be refunded.
No refund is possible if you cancel after the 1st of May 2026.
Strozzi Institute for Somatics has several international accreditations that support the quality and effectiveness of its training programs.
Your instructors for this program
*please note that the teaching team might change anytime and without notice.
Richard Strozzi Heckler, PhD, is the original creator of the Strozzi Somatics methodology. He has spent over five decades researching, developing and teaching Somatics to business leaders, executive managers, teams from Fortune 500 companies, NGOs, technology start-ups, non-profits, the U.S. government and military.
He was named one of the Top 50 Executive Coaches in The Art and Practice of Leadership Coaching, and in Profiles in Coaching. He is the co-founder of the Mideast Aikido Project (MAP), which brings together Palestinians and Israelis through the practice of Aikido. He is the Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Social Advancement (ISA) that is based in Ethiopia which brings Aikido and Embodied Leadership to East Africa.
Richard is the author of nine books, including The Leadership Dojo, In Search of the Warrior Spirit, The Anatomy of Change, Holding the Center and The Art of Somatic Coaching: Embodying Skillful Action, Wisdom, and Compassion, and Embodying the Mystery: Somatic Wisdom for Emotional, Energetic, and Spiritual Awakening. From 2002 to 2007 he was an advisor to NATO and the Supreme Allied Commander of Europe (SACEUR) General Jim Jones, who was also the National Security Advisor.
Richard has a PhD in Psychology and is a seventh degree black belt Shihan in the martial art of Aikido.
Stephanie Meux (Soquel, CA) is a certified Somatic Coach, Educator and Somatic Bodyworker. She is also certified at the Professional Coach Certification (PCC) level with the International Coach Federation (ICF).
She is a teacher for the Strozzi Institute as well as produces her own programs in the domains of Somatics and Equine Guided Education all of which are the integration of her personal passions and professional course of study in the fields of psychology, bodywork, Strozzi Somatics, Somatic Experiencing and experiential learning.
Her somatic coaching is designed to support individuals, couples, leaders and teams to connect through the felt senses to a vision aligned with what they care about and practices that allow for the emergence of a new shape, a new more expansive embodiment that enables and inspires consistent action towards that future.
Tyler Grillo is a somatic coach, bodyworker, and teacher in training at Strozzi Institute. He started practicing somatics in 2015 when he began working at Strozzi Institute (first as Course Manager, then Program Manager, and currently as Executive Coordinator), completing his somatic coach certification in 2018. Tyler also served as Director of Programs and Operations for Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness, and he continues to leverage his organizational skills to create strong operational foundations and cohesive teams to support skilled teachers and content creators. He is the founder of Whole Heartwood, where his coaching and healing practice focuses on weaving individual and collective transformation.
Tyler is an organizer with STAND Bay Area, a collective that leverages folks with white and male privilege to support social justice initiatives led by those most marginalized by systems of oppression. He also stewards a small urban farm and The Little Free Farmstand, offering free produce and encouraging home growing as a part of the movement for sustainable food systems and rematriating the Ohlone land (Oakland, CA) where he lives with his partner and cat community.
Lise Melvin (London, UK / Costa Rica) is committed to nurturing the creative and self-generative life force that lives inside each one of us. She is a Strozzi Institute certified somatic leadership coach, working with our thinking, feeling and energetic selves, bringing our attention, habits, practices, and imagination together, to align with what deeply matters to us. Lise is part of the Strozzi Institute teaching team and is on a lifelong path of mastery with somatics.
Lise coaches alongside guiding retreats and continued consultancy work. She consults for the United Nations Development Programme, volunteers on the Board of the Responsible Mining Foundation, and was the founding Chief Executive of the Better Cotton Initiative. She has an MSc in Responsibility in Business Practice, a BSc in Environmental Life Science and many years of international leadership experience for the sake of social justice, environmental protection and sustainable development.
Lise has over 13 years of experience as a facilitator and enabler for cross-sector and cross-cultural dialogue and strategy. She works with private sector, government and not for profits. She is skilled at moving and integrating into new places and cultures, living with a deep respect for diversity and difference.
What participants say about the program
“It’s really the course that had me understand the essence of embodiment.”
Hard to put into words but truly a felt sense of what rests in our soma. I feel deeply humbled by the body. The teachers were so incredible, inspiring, and so attuned. I’m in awe.”
— Zeena I, SBW 2023
An amazing, awakening, and aliving experience. I feel whole again. I didn’t know I could feel like this.
—Maryam H, SBW, 2023