Katrin Neue

My passion is teaching movement and helping my clients to understand how they move. How can you make it more efficient, pleasurable and stay curious? We’re moving from theoretical knowledge to embodied knowledge – making sense in your body.

My name is Katrin Neue and I am an Essential Somatics certified Clinical Somatic Educator, an interdisciplinary movement teacher, Adjunct Teacher for Essential Somatic’s Movement Teacher training and mother, crafter, gardener.

I enrolled in a first formal training to teach dance just before I graduated from secondary school, and after knee surgeries squashed my dream of studying dance, had a 2 year stint at Frankfurt University to study political science, sociology and African language studies (all that I love digging into apart from movement!). I continued my studies at Erika Kluetz-School for dance and dance education in Hamburg, graduating in 2007. Following years of teaching dance to amateurs and pre-professional dancers in Germany, I moved to Ireland, where I took up an MA with focus on contemporary solo performance and graduated in 2010 with a First class honours under Dr. Mary Nunan at University of Limerick. My movement research during this intensive year of studies revolved around recovery, the split between dancing and personal body, and agency.

After the MA, I took up teaching Pilates, having trained with different providers. In 2014, shortly after the birth of my son, I also took the opportunity to start my education under Essential Somatics founder Martha Peterson, certifying as a Hanna Somatics Exercise Coach (now Essential Somatics Movement Teacher training). While my idea of the training was to get ‘just another tool in my toolbox’, receiving an astonishingly simple and profound hands on assisted pandiculation for my at that time numb and painful back taught me otherwise. I tentatively started teaching 1 client everything I learned and it became clear that I wanted to learn more. In 2015, I was accepted into the professional training and certified in 2017 as a Clinical Somatic Educator. More about the Essential Somatics training below…

I started SOMAdublin in 2014 to offer private lessons as well as small group workshops.

My continued education includes Explain Pain and Mobilisation of the Neuro-Immune System with the NOIgroup (Neuro Orthopedic Institute) to stay up to date with research about pain, as well as Bessel van der Kolk’s seminar The body keeps the score, which presented vast research into trauma processing and embodiment. My work is influenced by Richard Strozzi-Heckler’s Embodied Leadership/ Somatic Coaching ideas and Life Coaching. I also have a special interest working with women after breast cancer (I have a certification in Post Cancer exercise)and throughout peri-and postmenopause.

I regularly am invited as a guest teacher at Dance Ireland, both in the professional dancer’s morning classes as well as the Healthier dancer weekly wellness program. I also lectured at UL, teaching students from all dance programs (MA Contemporary and Traditional Dance Performance, BA Voice and Dance, BA Traditional Dance) for 2 years.

I have assisted on a number of Fundamental immersion weekends taught by Martha Peterson throughout my training, as well as at the 200h Essential Somatics Movement Teacher Training since 2017 and am now faculty member and Adjunct Teacher for the European and North American students of the training, supervising and assisting them on their progress until certification from the 200h training. My role as a group teacher includes reviewing movements, discussing and clarifying how to teach them, being in charge of reviewing written assignments and practice teaching of students.
As of 2020, I am also a professional member of ISMETA and a Registered Somatic Movement Educator, and a Buteyko Method of breathing re-education student in training.

My current exploration of habitual self-image and action has brought me to dip my toes into Hakomi Method training, a coaching/self-discovery modality based on Feldenkrais, very closely related to my movement based self-discovery work. The training is challenging me to refine my language and apply my movement knowledge and interpersonal skills to more situations than I have learned in my Somatic Education training.

About my training with Essential Somatics | Martha Peterson

I have studied under Martha Peterson and her associated teacher Laura M Gates (with the help of my mentoring colleagues) since beginning of 2014, when I completed my training as a Somatic Excercise Coach.

In 2017, I graduated from our 600h Clinical Somatic Education professional training, which is spread out over 3 years. The long time-frame is needed to practice sufficiently, be mentored by certified practitioners, assist in Fundamental weekends and write case studies and papers. There are a lot of lectures, out of class reading (neurophysiology, somatic philosophy, anatomy, trauma research, stress research..) conference meetings, study groups etc to work with, as well as teaching Somatics classes and work clinically with clients as a student practitioner.

When I started my studies, I didn’t expect the work load, but I’m glad we had to put the work and time into our training the way we did, as it set solid foundations for my work as a Clinical Somatic Educator. From learning the original protocols the way Thomas Hanna taught it to his students to additional protocols like extremity work and the influence of trauma research and pain science, the training included updated science without loosing the philosophical heart of the work. The Clinical Somatic Education training is approved by ISMETA.
I’m delighted to feed back my experience to new generations of Essential Somatics Movement Teacher training since 2018.