The Moving Stillness: A Workshop in Meditation and Contact Improvisation

Name: The Moving Stillness: A Workshop in Meditation and Contact Improvisation
Start: 2025-12-06T11:30:00-08:00
End: 2025-12-06T16:30:00-08:00
Location: The Alembic

Schedule

Sat Dec 06 2025 at 11:30 am to 04:30 pm

UTC-08:00

Location

The Alembic | Berkeley, CA

What happens when meditation meets movement — when stillness learns to dance?
Through mindfulness, loving-kindness, and focused attention, meditation teaches us to see clearly what is, as it is. Through movement, touch, and listening, Contact Improvisation reveals how structure can arise naturally from presence.
In this workshop, co-facilitators Amma Thanasanti and Nick Smith invite participants into an embodied exploration of what unfolds when these two practices meet. Bring your curiosity, your breath, and your presence — let’s discover how meditation begins to dance.
About the Facilitators
Amma Thanasanti
Amma Thanasanti has been practicing meditation for over 45 years. Her early teachers include Ajahn Chah, Dipa Ma, and the Dalai Lama. She spent 26 years as a Buddhist nun, including two decades in Ajahn Chah monasteries, and has been teaching since 1989.
As the Spiritual Director of Awakening Truth, a 501(c)(3) founded in 2009, she integrates traditional Buddhist teachings with trauma-informed and nature-based approaches. Her Integrated Meditation Program addresses core patterns that meditation practice alone may not shift.
A Contact Improvisation dancer since 1976, Amma finds in the form an expression of presence, attunement, joy, and collaborative flow. Her teaching weaves together Buddhist insight, wilderness wisdom, and embodied awareness—all pointing toward the same inquiry: what is happening now, and how does the space between us shape experience?
awakeningtruth.org
Nick Smith
Nick Smith is a facilitator, organizer, and bodyworker whose work centers on improvisation, somatics, communication, touch, and relational practice. A long-time meditator and dancer, Nick offers bodywork sessions throughout the Bay Area and teaches regularly at The Alembic, The Finnish Hall, The Athletic Playground, and Breathing Room Alameda.
https://www.grapes.dance/