Bowspring weekend workshop in Austin, TX — Somatics: Mind-Body Practice

November 7-9, 2025 with John Friend & Desi Springer

In-person and online (Zoom)

The Dance Spot, 4400 Sam Bass Rd, Round Rock, TX 78681

This is a beautiful new dance studio just north of Austin.

For more information about lodging, food, etc in Round Rock, please click this link.

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Somatics:  The Mind-Body Practice of the Bowspring 

This is an all-levels 10-hour Bowspring workshop which will teach how to practice Bowspring in your daily life as a flowing artistic expression of harmonic dynamic alignment.

The word soma refers to the body not as seen from the outside, but as lived from within — as an intimate, felt spiritual experience.

Postural alignment affects how we feel and think. With a balanced dynamic alignment, psycho-emotional energy within the body can flow more freely, releasing of old traumas and mind-body habituated patterns of psychic closure.

This Bowspring workshop will use specific techniques of alignment, breath, and mindset to powerfully transform our somatic patterns toward a higher state of embodiment.

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Friday night class is great to first time students. The weekend will be progressive so there will be no drop-ins permitted for Sunday classes.

Nov. 7 — Friday Evening — 6:00- 8:00 pm CT: Somatic Awakening & Breath — Radiant Heart

• Connect breath and posture to awaken your Radiant Heart. Learn how to expand and brighten the central energy hub of the Bowspring system — opening the ribcage, lengthening the spine, and cultivating a soft, buoyant strength in the heart.

Nov. 8 — Saturday Morning — 10:00 am-12 Noon CT:  The Wings – Protector and Liberator of the Heart

• Focus on the Wings subsystem: hands, arms, and shoulders. Engage the coiling, spiraling motion of the arms and shoulders to expand the wingspan and create an uplifting, dynamic posture.

Nov. 8 — Saturday Afternoon — 2:00 – 4:00 pm CT: Fascia & Feelings — Roots

• Explore the grounding power of the Roots subsystem: feet, legs, and hips. Activate the coiling, elastic power of the lower body for stability and graceful movement, liberating your fascia’s flow and emotional intelligence.

Nov. 9 — Sunday Morning — 10:00 am – 12 Noon CT: Emotional Resonance & Release — Apple-Cores

• Dive into the Apple-Cores: the waist area (belly / lower back) and neck / throat. Release psycho-emotional tension held in these key areas to allow the breath and subtle energy to circulate freely in an open, artistically expressive way.

Nov. 9 — Sunday Afternoon — 2:00 – 4:00 pm CT: Integration & Joyful Expansion — Crown

• Synthesize all subsystems — Radiant Heart, Wings, Roots, Apple-Cores — and invite the Crown (head and eyes) into alignment. Cultivate an expansive presence, balancing the whole body’s wave-like geometry for joyful, liberated movement.

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Somatics is the field of study and practice that focuses on felt experience within the body — how we sense, move, and become aware of our living intelligence from the inside out.
In contrast to traditional anatomy and biomechanics, which view the body as a machine to be measured and fixed, somatics treats the body as a subject: aware, emotionally perceptive, and expressive from the heart.

Somatics is both a practice and a philosophy. It restores the lost connection between body, mind, and soul — revealing that posture is not just a structural event, but a psychosomatic expression of our deepest states. Every thought, emotion, memory, or belief imprints itself into the body as tension, gesture, or shape. Our internal life speaks through the posture we unconsciously adopt: slumped shoulders, a clenched jaw, or a contracted belly all whisper the stories we’ve lived and the states we inhabit.

In the modern world, this inner dialogue is easily drowned out. We are taught to ignore the body’s subtle language — to override fatigue, suppress emotion, and disassociate from discomfort. Technology accelerates this disconnect. Sitting for hours in rigid chairs, gazing at screens, and numbing sensation through distraction — all reinforce the mechanized, objectified view of the body. Over time, we lose our somatic literacy. We forget how to feel ourselves from the inside.

This forgetting has consequences. Without the ability to feel, we lose the ability to self-regulate. Without the ability to self-regulate, we fall into patterns of chronic stress, collapse, and illness. The body may be alive, but the soma — the felt sense of inner presence — remains dormant.

To reclaim this inner presence is the aim of somatics. It is a path of reconnection, reawakening, and re-inhabiting. Somatics teaches us to listen inwardly — to attune to the breath, to notice patterns of holding and closure, and to sense the vibratory emotional field beneath muscular tension. It returns us to a direct relationship with our lived form — not just what we look like, but what we feel like.

Without inner awareness to our feelings, posture becomes mechanical — a performance of shapes without consciousness. But when alignment is rooted in somatic presence, it becomes a living expression of integrity, a geometry of coherence between form, breath, emotion, and soul.

The Bowspring system emerges from this somatic foundation. It does not impose positions from the outside, but awakens patterns from within — patterns that are curvilinear, spiraling, pulsing, and alive. Through dynamic tonus, open posture, and radiant breath, Bowspring invites the practitioner into a new relationship with their soma: one that honors the body’s innate intelligence and restores its freedom to feel, express, and evolve.