Presentations & Workshops by Paul Linden, Ph.D.

I have developed and taught a variety of presentations focusing on different applications of body and self awareness training.

In addition to the presentations listed below, workshops, talks and in-service trainings can be custom designed for businesses, civic organizations, sports or arts groups, medical and mental health professionals, and other groups.

If you are interested in setting up a presentation for your group, please contact me.

Columbus Center for Movement Studies

221 Piedmont Rd
Columbus, OH 43214
614-262-3355
paullinden@aol.com
www.being-in-movement.com

EMBODYING POWER AND LOVE

Power that is not balanced by love is harsh and insensitive. Love that is not balanced by power is weak and ineffective. This workshop will help you explore power and love as body processes. By learning to live more fully in your body, you will gain insights about the ways you have chosen to live and function in the world. You will discover how balancing and integrating power and love improves learning and functioning in the physical, emotional and spiritual areas of life.

SOMATIC METHODS OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND PEACEMAKING

When people feel powerless, they frequently become numb to cope with feelings of fear and vulnerability or aggressive to create a feeling of power and safety. Not only will feelings of insensitivity and aggression lead to violent behavior, but the non-verbal signals of fear, anger, and fight-or-flight arousal will undermine efforts toward effective communication and conflict resolution. This workshop will teach body awareness exercises that will enable people replace powerlessness, fear and anger with an internal state of self-awareness, empowerment, calmness, compassion, and empathy and use that as a foundation for effective communication and peacemaking.

ASSERTIVENESS THROUGH BODY AWARENESS

Assertiveness is the ability to take strong, effective, empathetic, respectful and ethical action to achieve goals. The victim mentality of fear, anger, blame and self-doubt is the opposite of assertiveness. Through body and movement awareness training, people can become aware of their feelings and beliefs about themselves, others, and their world. By learning to be more alive in their bodies, people can discover an inner source of power, compassion, and integrity and find ways of acting that are strong and effective as well as compassionate, life-affirming and constructive.

INTUITION IS A BODY PROCESS

Intuition is a delicate voice from deep within the self guiding us in the directions we need to go. Intuition is a kind of intelligence which examines and evaluates things in a broader, more rapid way than the conscious mind does. In this workshop, you will experience how intuition speaks through delicate feelings in the body and how learning to get more in touch with your body is a powerful way of getting more in touch with your intuitive abilities. You will learn to use the deep intelligence of intuition to help you focus your attention and make wiser decisions.

HOW TO ENJOY EXERCISE

Exercise is good for you, but if you don't enjoy it you won't do it. The secret to enjoying exercise is the feeling of grace, elegance and power in movement, and even if that feeling does not come naturally, you can learn how to create it. Exercise can be enjoyable rather than a source of strain and discomfort. This workshop will use simple, easy techniques focusing on breathing, muscle tone, posture, energy flow and movement to help you learn to move with more physical ease, power, efficiency, comfort and grace. You will feel how moving this way will transform exercise from something you dread to something you look forward to.

THE EXHILARATION OF WALKING

Walking is great exercise, an excellent way to relax, and a wonderful way to commune with nature. However, if you do not understand the biomechanics of efficient walking, you will experience strain and discomfort instead of enjoyment. This workshop will use simple, easy techniques focusing on bre athing, muscle tone, posture, energy flow and movement to help you notice how you walk and learn how to walk with more physical ease, power, efficiency and comfort. You will feel how cultivating this balanced physical state will allow you to walk with comfort and joy.

MOVING COMFORTABLY THROUGH PREGNANCY

You can learn to sit, lie, walk, drive, work, and sleep in comfort even as your body changes during pregnancy and after childbirth. Learning to maintain a balanced, efficient posture will help you avoid the backaches and awkwardness common during pregnancy. Learning to live more fully in your body and your breathing will help you relax, reduce physical and emotional stress, and manage pain during pregnancy and labor. (Note: This body awareness training is not at all strenuous. It is an important complement to childbirth classes not a substitute.)

THE ART OF SITTING: THE ERGONOMICS OF MEDITATION

Do you spend long periods of time sitting in meditation? Sitting wrong is fatiguing and can lead to pain in the neck, arms, back or legs. Sitting wrong interferes with concentration and the flow of energy in the body. However, sitting well goes beyond simple body mechanics. The act of sitting represents the act of being in the world, and physical strain in sitting points toward areas of psychological and spiritual strain. Working on refining your sitting posture is a way of increasing your awareness of yourself and moving toward an integrated state of body, mind, energy and spirit. In this workshop, you will develop a conscious awareness of what you normally do to maintain a sitting posture, and you will learn specific methods for developing and maintaining a relaxed, balanced, sensitive, powerful and comfortable way of sitting.

COMFORT AT YOUR COMPUTER: BODY AWARENESS TRAINING FOR PAIN-FREE COMPUTER
USE

Sitting and working at a computer in a biomechanically imbalanced posture causes physical and mental strain and fatigue. Many people experience discomfort or pain in the eyes, neck, arms, hands and back. However, through training in body awareness and body mechanics, this workshop will teach you how to achieve a relaxed, alert, comfortable and safe way of sitting and working. In addition to focusing on correct body use, this workshop will also show you how to set up your workstation to enhance your comfort, safety, and productivity.

BODY AWARENESS FOR MUSICIANS:

Physical strain or pain, movement limitations, performance anxiety and other such problems prevent you from making the leap to the next stage in your musical growth. This workshop uses body awareness exercises to help you examine relaxation, breathing, body alignment, energy flow, concentration, use of space and movement flow. By learning to live more fully in your body, you will develop a more conscious awareness of what you do when you play an instrument or sing. You will get in touch with your power and sensitivity, reduce physical strain and performance anxiety, and discover more relaxed, balanced, effective and joyful ways of performing.

EFFECTIVE BODY MECHANICS FOR MASSAGE AND BODY WORK: A Workshop for Body
Practitioners.

Giving a massage with improper body mechanics can lead to physical strain and injury, and it also diminishes the effectiveness of your massage technique. This workshop will use body and movement awareness exercises to help you understand muscle use, breathing, body alignment, energy flow and movement. You will start by developing a conscious awareness of what you do as you give a massage, and you will continue by developing a more relaxed, balanced, sensitive, powerful and comfortable way of touching and massaging. This way of doing massage will improve your use of massage techniques and will result in a much deeper and more enjoyable experience for your clients.

THE ART OF TOUCH: A Workshop for Helping Professionals.

Touch is a physical manifestation of your philosophy of helping and communication, and whether you use touch in your work or not, exploring how you touch can be instructive. This workshop will use body, movement and energy awareness exercises to help you live more fully in your body and understand the choices you have made around the issue of touch. In this workshop, you will investigate the interaction and balance of the cognitive/rational and experiential/intuitive modes of perception and action. You will discover a way of touching that is perceptive as well as respectful and non-intrusive; gentle, caring and comforting; directive, firm and effective; and open to the person you are touching while also maintaining clear and appropriate boundaries.

THE INTENTIONAL BODY: A Workshop for Helping Professionals.

This workshop will examine how thoughts, feelings and beliefs shape and are shaped by muscle tone, breathing, body alignment, energy flow and movement. By learning to feel the body as a tangible, ongoing process of choice and intention, you will discover how to observe more clearly people's postural patterns and movements and through this trace back to the hidden assumptions and strategies that rule and restrict their movements, actions and lives. By working with body/energy/ movement methods for cultivating a balance of power and sensitivity, you will be able to help clients achieve a state of integration and wholeness, which will allow comfortable, effective functioning whatever task or area of life may be of concern to them.

WINNING IS HEALING -- BODY AWARENESS AND COMPASSIONATE POWER FOR ABUSE SURVIVORS:
A Workshop for Helping Professionals.

Children who are sexually abused experience that they are powerless to prevent being violated. To cope with their abuse, they generally reduce their awareness of their bodies and thereby their awareness of their feelings and of the abuse itself. As adults, survivors most often continue to feel powerless, and they maintain a state of body numbness through various somatic coping strategies. In this experiential workshop, participants will learn basic breathing, posture and movement exercises through which survivors can reclaim their power, their awareness and their bodies. Once survivors experience that they can be powerful and protect their own boundaries, they can allow previously banished thoughts, feelings, and memories to surface, and they can find safe, effective and loving ways of living and acting in the world.

HEALTHY BOUNDARIES, HEALTHY HEALERS: A Workshop for Helping Professionals.

Clear boundaries are important for healers. When helping professionals work with clients, they can "absorb" from them the stresses that they carry in their bodies. In this process of subconscious modeling, the practitioner mimics the client's body elements that are the focus of the growth and healing work. In this workshop you will use movement and body awareness exercises to become aware of how your boundaries are affected by various kinds of interactions and how you can create healthy boundaries. You will have the opportunity to learn how to observe what clients are doing without starting to do it yourself. You will use breathing and body awareness exercise to develop mindbody integrity -- a state in which your power and compassion are unified and from which you can make deep contact with clients without getting drained or needing to erect rigid "protective" barriers.