HOLDING YOURSELF: A Somatic Workshop on Body Ownership, Spatial Awareness & Boundaries

We all have a body, and that body has boundaries—it occupies space. Yet in everyday life, through social roles, responsibilities, and the constant flow of external events, we often become overwhelmed. The mind can slip into cycles of stress, tension, and internal narrative, and we gradually lose contact with our immediate embodied presence. In this workshop, we will explore practices that support a return to the body. Drawing from Can Bora’s HEALIVE. technique (a 20-year research-based methodology that has previously been developed in collaboration with institutions such as SportCity, Hapaka, and Nike, and recognized through grant support from Radboud University and ArtEZ University for its contributions to burnout and stress management), we will work alongside yin yoga, embodiment practices, somatic psychology, Bodynamic-informed approaches, and a polyvagal-informed framework. Together, we will investigate how to cultivate a sustained sense of bodily presence. We will focus on sensing and embodying physical boundaries not as abstract concepts, but as lived experience. This involves learning to stay within one’s own space, to offer internal support, to access self-generated care, and to strengthen a felt sense of ownership over the space the body occupies. The aim is to support regulation, presence, and a clearer embodied relationship to oneself and the surrounding world.