Embodied Nature
Movement • Dance • Mindfulness • Community
Classes, Workshops, Programmes, Retreats
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Ground Floor Lab
27 Aug – 01 Sept, London, UK
An intensive, experiential, 30 hour non-residential introduction to the Open Floor curriculum. Co-teaching with Deborah Lewin and Jane Belshaw.
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Verkörperte Gefühle
28–29 Sept, Erfurt, Germany
Eine Erkundung davon, wie Gefühle tief im Körper verwurzelt sind, und wie wir sie brauchen, um aus den körperlichen Zuständen Sinn zu machen.
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Verkörperte Seele
7–8 Dec, Erfurt, Germany
Wir tauchen in das Unbekannte ein und erforschen, wie jede:r:s von uns eine einzigartige Manifestation des allgegenwärtigen Mysteriums des Universums ist.
About Bence
Open Floor Teacher, Evolutionary Biologist (PhD)
Bence believes that through mindful movement, we can open space for the complex paradoxes inherent in human life. His teaching draws on a rich synthesis of three distinct yet interconnected domains: over 20 years of practice in dance, yoga, and meditation; a PhD in evolutionary ecology; and in-depth studies in critical social theory. This unique blend offers a holistic approach to movement, deepening the research and exploration of dancers through the understanding that all personal experiences are embedded in social structures and in the wide container of the natural world.
Having completed the Open Floor Teacher Training in 2019, Bence went on to serve as Assistant Faculty and Mentor on the following round of Teacher Training between 2022 and 2024. In 2024, he became the first of his generation to co-facilitate an Open Floor International (OFI) Core Program as Faculty, at the Ground Floor Lab in London. As a member of the OFI Board of Directors, Bence is also actively shaping the organization’s renewal as it moves into its second decade.
Known for curating captivating soundscapes, Bence invites participants to explore the intricate, multidimensional networks we navigate throughout life. His teaching style is described as fluid, organic, and deeply informed by his personal journey in embodied mindfulness practice.
Based in Berlin, Bence teaches internationally, both in person and online.
About Embodied Nature
I believe that at the root of our current societal challenges and global polycrisis lies an illusory separation between humanity and nature.
This separation also splits off mind from body, and that is where we can start healing this wound.
'Nature' (actually our idealised imagination of it) is so attractive to us, because the built environment we created for ourselves to keep out from our lives the unwanted parts of it, keeps out the desirable parts, too. Of course we want to enjoy the natural environment when we live in cities, sit eight hours in front of a computer for work, and then go home and are online again some more time. However, those of us who are more exposed to natural phenomena – farmers, sailors, citizens of less developed countries, our ancestors 200 years ago, healthcare workers in emergencies, homeless people – know from their lived experience why we tried to separate ourselves from nature (the unwanted aspects of it) in the first place.
We want to move towards nature if we have too little of it and we have the choice not to be exposed to all of it. We want to move away from it if we don’t have a shelter and our integrity is threatened by its forces. Whether any aspect of our world is good or bad for us, depends on the interaction between our outer circumstances and our own inner state. Fire – good if I want to cook something or I am cold, bad if it's already 50°C outside.
I am inviting you…
…to embark on a journey where we use movement and mindfulness to make peace with more and more parts of our external environment, as well as our internal world. To deeply understand through embodied experiences that the boundary between inside and outside, nature and human, body and mind, the social and the physical, is at least porous (mostly constructed through our history and culture of dualistic thinking). To find a middle ground between the good extreme we long so much for, and the bad on the opposite end that we are trying so hard to avoid. To take with us this knowledge from the dance floor and move through our everyday lives with a clearer perception of the complex reality we are embedded in.
Let's embody nature together –
we are already part of it, we are nature anyways!
Open Floor is:
A movement practice: we keep on moving however it feels right for us at the moment, and we focus our attention on whatever sensations, emotions, or thoughts are arising through this movement.
A brave space where we can experiment, try out new movements and choices that otherwise might be risky. We expand our movement vocabulary, gradually opening up new spaces in our bodies and everyday life, leading to greater freedom.
An international nonprofit organisation and a community of dancers and teachers who are on a mission to reconnect people to the body, thereby healing the wound that separates humans from themselves, each other, and the natural world.
