Client-facing Workshops
Workshops designed for people with bodies - giving clients another way to understand and participate in their own movement experience.
Workshop
Beyond Instructions
You know how to follow instructions.
But what if you understood what was happening in your own body while you followed them?
Whether you’ve been practicing for ten years or you’re walking into your first class, there is another layer of information available to you — your own experience.
Beyond Instructions is a two-hour education workshop about what happens beneath the exercise: how the body organises support, responds to effort, adapts to demand and finds its way into movement.
Because your instructor can guide you. They can observe you. They can offer expertise.
But they cannot feel your body for you.
This workshop gives you a framework for bringing your own body back into the conversation.
You’ll explore the principles that sit beneath movement — not by being given more exercises to perform, but by learning how to pay attention to what your body is already doing.
You don’t need to be a beginner.
You don’t need to be advanced.
You don’t need to be flexible, strong or experienced.
You just need a body.
What We’ll Explore
How your body organises support before movement
What happens when effort enters the system
How the body responds and adapts to demand
Why the place you feel something isn’t always where movement begins
How to develop your own internal reference point
What changes when you become an active participant in your movement rather than simply following instructions
This is not a movement class.
You won’t be asked to perform a sequence or prove that you can do an exercise correctly.
It’s an opportunity to slow down, pay attention and discover another layer of information that has been available to you all along.
Who It’s For
Everybody with a body.
You might be completely new to movement.
You might have been doing Yoga or Pilates for ten years.
You might lift weights, practise Yoga/Pilates, run, dance, walk, cycle or do absolutely none of those things.
You might even be an instructor yourself.
You don’t stop listening to your instructor. You just don’t have to stop listening to yourself.
Your Facilitator
Madonna Gott is the founder of the SomaFlow Method™, a movement education methodology exploring how the body organises, supports and adapts through movement.
Her work is grounded in observation, curiosity and the development of an individual’s own relationship with their body.
Why it matters
We spend a lot of time being told what to do with our bodies.
Lift your leg.
Engage your core.
Pull your shoulders back.
Keep your pelvis still.
Do it this way.
Instructions can be useful. But they can also leave us looking outside ourselves for the answer.
When you understand more about what is happening in your own body, you have another source of information available to you.
You can begin to notice what supports you, where effort is coming from, how your body responds to demand and when something changes.
That doesn’t mean you stop listening to your instructor.
It means you become part of the conversation.
And once you have that relationship with your own body, you can take it with you — into Pilates, yoga, the gym, running, walking, sport, or simply everyday life.
Workshop details
Duration: 2 hours
Pricing: Hosting options are tailored to the studio and format
Format: In person
Location: Australia wide
Bring Beyond Instructions to your studio
For studio hosting, professional-development events and community workshops, please get in touch below.
Location
Australia Wide
Practitioner Workshops
Experiential workshops for movement professionals exploring the relationship between support, autonomy and movement.
Workshop
Support Before Effort
Location
Australia Wide
An experiential SomaFlow™ workshop for movement professionals
You are not inside your client’s body.
It is a simple statement, but it changes the role of the movement professional.
We can observe another person’s movement. We can bring training, anatomical knowledge and professional experience to what we see. But we cannot directly experience another person’s body from the inside.
We cannot know exactly what they feel.
We cannot know what support they perceive.
We cannot know why their body has chosen a particular movement strategy.
So before we ask a body for more effort, more control or a different movement strategy, SomaFlow asks another question:
What support is available?
Support Before Effort is a two-hour experiential workshop exploring one of the foundational principles of SomaFlow: that support creates the conditions from which movement can organise.
Through movement, observation and shared inquiry, participants will explore support through the body, through the ground and through relationship—and experience what changes when support precedes effort.
What we’ll explore
You are not inside your client’s body
Explore the distinction between what we can observe and what we interpret, and what changes when curiosity comes before correction.
The SomaFlow Pelvic Triangle
Experience the foundational organising relationship through which SomaFlow explores both support and propulsion.
Support through the ground
Explore how connection through the feet, hands, floor and other points of contact changes organisation throughout the body.
Support through relationship
Experience open- and closed-loop support and investigate how contact, connection and orientation can change the effort required for movement.
From support to propulsion
Explore what happens when support isn’t treated simply as stability, but as the foundation from which movement emerges.
Why it matters
Support Before Effort is ultimately a workshop about autonomy.
Rather than positioning the practitioner as the source of another person’s organisation, we explore how to create conditions in which the mover can experience support, capacity and trust for themselves.
The practitioner still brings knowledge.
The practitioner still observes.
The practitioner still teaches.
But the practitioner’s expertise does not replace the intelligence of the person moving.
Support is experienced. Organisation emerges. Effort responds. Trust belongs to the mover.
Who it’s for
Designed for movement professionals who are curious about a more observational, responsive and individualised approach to movement.
SomaFlow is an independent movement methodology. This workshop does not replace modality-specific training; it offers another lens through which participants can explore the movement they already practise and teach.
Workshop details
Duration: 2 hours
Pricing: Hosting options are tailored to the studio and format
Format: In person
Location: Australia wide
Support Before Effort can be hosted privately for a studio teaching team or opened to movement professionals from the wider community.
Bring Support Before Effort to your studio
For studio hosting, professional-development events and community workshops, please get in touch below.
Workshop
Who Knows Your Body?
Location
Australia Wide
An Experiential SomaFlow™ Workshop For Movement Professionals
What happens when a client believes that only their instructor understands their body?
It sounds like a compliment.
A client who says, “Sam knows my body” is expressing trust. They feel understood. They feel safe. They feel that their instructor knows how to help them.
But what happens when that relationship becomes necessary?
When a client will only book with Sam?
When they become anxious about seeing someone else?
When an instructor leaves and the client feels they have lost access to the person who understands their body?
The relationship that helped create safety can unintentionally become part of what the client believes they need in order to feel safe.
So rather than asking:
How do I become the instructor my clients can’t do without?
SomaFlow asks a different question: How can we create relationships that help clients develop their own capacity to move, observe and trust themselves?
What We’ll Explore
When trust becomes dependence
Explore the distinction between a client feeling supported by a practitioner and believing that the practitioner is necessary for their movement, safety or progress.
The practitioner as support, not source
Investigate what changes when the practitioner stops positioning themselves as the person who knows what the client needs and instead creates conditions for the client to recognise their own experience.
Transferring ownership
Explore how observation, choice and participation can shift the locus of authority from the practitioner back toward the person moving.
From “my instructor knows my body” to “I know my body”
Experience how support can be used to develop autonomy rather than reinforce dependence.
What happens when the instructor isn’t there?
Explore whether the capacity created in a session belongs to the relationship—or whether the client can carry it with them.
Why It Matters
This workshop is ultimately about autonomy, agency and sustainable relationships.
A practitioner can create an extraordinary experience for a client and still accidentally become the centre of that client’s sense of safety.
The goal isn’t to make the practitioner less important.
It is to ensure that the value of the relationship ultimately belongs to the client.
The practitioner still brings knowledge.
The practitioner still observes.
The practitioner still teaches.
The practitioner still creates relationship.
But the client’s capacity does not belong to the practitioner.
Support is offered. Trust is developed. Capacity is transferred. Agency belongs to the mover.
Who It’s For
Designed for movement professionals who are interested in developing client relationships that support autonomy rather than dependence.
Particularly relevant for Pilates, yoga, somatic movement and other movement professionals working closely with clients over time.
SomaFlow is an independent movement methodology. This workshop does not replace modality-specific training; it offers another lens through which participants can explore the relationships they already create and teach within.
Workshop Details
Duration: 2 hours
Pricing: Hosting options are tailored to the studio and format
Format: In person
Location: Australia wide
Who Knows Your Body? can be hosted privately for a studio teaching team or opened to movement professionals from the wider community.
Bring Who Knows Your Body? To Your Studio
For studio hosting, professional-development events and community workshops, please get in touch below.