The Trager® Professional Training: Mentastics

Somatic Foundations of the Trager Approach

This four-day workshop delves into the somatic movement foundations of the Trager Approach, inviting participants to experience the work’s guiding principles in presence, touch, and movement. Starting with a focus on softness in attention, intention, and touch, we explore a dynamic balance of lightness and groundedness, fluidity in tissues and patterns, and an ever-deepening sense of connection within ourselves and apply these in working with partners.

Both an introduction to the Trager Approach Professional Training Certification Program and as stand-alone workshop experience, this workshop is for anyone interested in deepening their relationship with touch and movement, in personal or professional settings.

UPCOMING
WORKSHOP WEEKENDS 

January 9-12, 2025 — Ashton, Maryland*
March 6-9, 2025 — Charlottesville, Virginia

REGISTER NOW

*The Potomac Massage Training Institute is hosting the January 6-9 workshop at Blueberry Gardens in Ashton, Maryland. To register please visit their website here.

Prerequisites: None. Though at least one Trager session strongly encouraged. Designed to enhance personal relationships, both platonic, familial and intimate, and also valuable for anyone who touches as part of a health supportive professional practice.

Cost: $450-$600-$750 (See more about our sliding scale below)

24 NCBTMB CE hours credit for professional bodyworkers. 

This class focuses on the somatic movement foundations of Trager’s touch, through integrated practice of the essential principles, including:

• Fully embodied presence

• Softness in attention, intention, contact and movement

• Weight - sensing lightness and groundedness

• Fluidity in tissue and movement patterning

• Balancing floating in the sweet center with playing at the edges

• Artful transitions in speed, size, density, intensity

• Taking out the slack in the three-dimensional biotensegral web

• Integrating meaningful movement into both professional and personal life activities

• Connecting to ourselves, our partners, the earth, and to the life forces of the universe

The class also introduces the benefits of studying the Trager Approach for:

• Replacing restrictive movement habits with natural, graceful movement patterns.

• Reframing daily self-care exercises as opportunities for mindful embodiment and self-development.

• Equipping participants with practices to better navigate stress and cultivate resilience.

• Integrating somatic practices into spiritual exploration and creative expression.

• Addressing the somatic dimensions of trauma, depression, and anxiety, offering pathways to healing and transformation.

• Enriching both professional and personal relationships (platonic and intimate) through embodied presence and attuned connection.

Somatic movement experience is at the heart of Dr. Milton Trager’s remarkable life work, teaching new, positive body experiences through informed, intuitive touch and movement. The remarkable potency in his enveloping hands was often described as “light as a dancing cloud.” Those of us who studied with him and applied his Approach to working with a wide variety of clients in different settings discovered that behind the apparent simplicity was an integrated application of essential somatic movement principles.

He coined the term “Mentastics” (contraction of mental and gymnastics) to refer to a wide variety of movement and awareness processes, explorations, and movement experiments at the heart of his work. These have informed, structured and given meaning to the practices of thousands of students around the world since 1975.

Those who spent years studying with Dr. Trager, including Master Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist Roger Tolle, recognized a body of work in which every touch provides both safety and meaningful challenges to unconscious habits, where a wide variety of innovative movement coaching invites clients step by step into new, more playful and functional life patterns, and where movement discomfort dissolves as the body’s simple, natural, graceful design takes over. At the heart of this work is the joy of coming from a deeply peaceful inner state while leaning into aliveness and connection in all interactions. Roger brings an enthusiasm and passion from 40 years in private practice and teaching the Trager Certification Training Program in 16 countries on 5 continents.