Nära Summer Festival 2026: Programme

Meeting non-duality in relationship, meeting

relationship in non-duality.

Humans are social animals with bodies shaped by millions of years of movement-based problem-solving. Already Animals revisits this ancient dynamic through solo body integration, playful partner exercises,

and the practice of consensual resistance.

Drawing from Agile Beast, this workshop explores how strength, sensitivity, and connection can work together. Expect a lively mix of movement and play.

There's a current animating everything. Underneath your mood, your plans, your identity, your problems — a flavor of being-you that is simply itself.

That depth of a feeling self is what I mean with Soul - you don't have to believe anything in particular to be able to experience it. It's more the irreducible

texture of being here before you do anything about it than it is a concept, or a feeling. Something there before you learned who to be, and there after you've forgotten.

In this session we'll be dropping beneath the surface-self into this quieter, more alive layer of being, and meet each other from there.

This is a gentle somatic journey into your body, where we make space for your nervous systems own ability to regulate and stabilize through slow movement and sensory awareness. We will start with a guided landing together to ground and awaken our senses. Then we will go on a journey in pairs,

where one person holds space for the other, while they explore the meeting of their body and our bigger body the Earth blindfolded (optional). Bring clothes that you can move freely in, fitting the weather of the day, a water bottle and a blindfold / eye mask / scarf if you wish to use one.

An invitation to explore dance, free movement, and playful exploration through the qualities of earth, water, fire, and wind.

The elements are not only qualities of movement—they also reflect different ways of relating, responding, and being in the world. Some may feel like home, while others invite us beyond familiar patterns.

Through guided improvisation, playful exploration, and dance, we'll embody each element, expanding our movement

vocabulary and discovering new possibilities for expression, presence, and connection. Together we'll explore how shifting qualities in the body can transform the way we meet ourselves, each other, and the space around us.

The workshop includes moments of reflection, allowing embodied experience to meet conscious awareness. Please bring a pen and notebook.

No dance experience is needed—only curiosity and a willingness to explore.

This movement-based integration workshop invites you to explore the space between who you are today and who you are becoming.

Through guided movement, somatic exploration and witnessing practices, we will explore what is present in the now, connect with the intentions you wish to embody after the festival, and create a bridge

between the two. Each participant will be invited to express their journey through movement while being witnessed and gently mirrored by another participant—offering a powerful experience of being seen, acknowledged, and supported in your process.

No dance experience is needed—only curiosity and a willingness to explore.

When the body feels unsafe, it tightens, contracts, and says: danger. In this workshop, we listen to that signal with care and explore practical ways of returning to safety through breath, sound, movement, touch, truth-speaking, and connection.

Emotional Co-Regulation is a somatic workshop in how nervous

systems affect each other — and how we can learn to regulate both on our own and with the support of others. Through guided individual, pair, and group exercises, we practice presence, grounded support, embodied boundaries, and the quiet power of being witnessed without losing ourselves in another.

This morning grounding workshop uses somatic meditation to bring us into deeper relationship with the planet, our bodies, and the “central non-me” accompanying every moment. We begin sitting, then move to standing, varied pos

tures, and intuitive movement that expresses where we are in our lives and on this particular day.

Expect a gentle, guided, and at times silent practice to reactivate your sense of connectedness through stillness and movement.

Welcome to Nära! Before you choose your way through five days, let's taste what's on the menu together. We'll start by landing, settling our travel brain and honoring shyness and get into the body and the ground beneath us. Then we'll make first contact, those small, low-stakes meetings that make a hall of strangers into a field. And then a sampler. A few minutes each of

the practices you'll meet over the week: a breath of embodiment, a taste of relational presencing, a small circle of authentic relating, a burst of movement, a moment of sound. Just to dip your tippy-toes into the pool. Enough to feel what each one does in you, so you know what's calling you tomorrow. Come as no other than who is arriving. We'll do the rest together.

Imagine a practice that •Awakens you to the core — your deep truth, the real you — and gently untangles what seems to obscure your full expression. •Helps you become more skillful in relationships — able to stay present with tension, resolve conflicts more gracefully, and be a better friend. •Heals old wounds not by effort, but by presence — naturally shifting how you show up in the world, from a place of wholeness. •Deepens your capacity to stay grounded and embodied in intensity — so you can meet any moment with clarity, presence, and quiet authority. •Reveals new dimensions of yourself — surprising, alive, previously hidden. •Teaches you

how to create profound, authentic, lasting connections. •Lets you see and be seen — in ways that move you deeply and stay with you. •Opens your heart — and shows you how to give and receive love more freely. And does all of this not from striving, or fixing — but as the effortless fruit of deep presence and connection?

That’s what the practice of Circling is.

This workshop will give you the most important tools for and an experience of Circling - a way in for anyone new, and a way back to basics for anyone already deep in. Useful whether you're interested in Circling or to give you an expanded set of skills to navigate the festival with!

FIRST PART: Guided excercises and warm up. Release your creativity, let go of control of the face, find your true touch.

SECOND PART: LALL Playroom - A field of healing, liberating and releasing synergy. Just play. Just

rest. Cuddle. Sit. Dance your devine crazy bitch cucumber no logic singaloooooOOOng Flow-rant RAAAW ROAR- stillness. You'll just float. And good music!

THIRD PART: Short landing and sharing together in circle.

For some people, words are the main way into connection with others. For others, meeting through the body is what creates a sense of togetherness. What becomes possible in our relating when we bring the two together? In this workshop, we combine authentic relating and embodiment practices to explore new pathways into presence,

connection and aliveness. We invite words to become a way for the body to be noticed, and the body to help us find more authentic words for our experience - words that can truly land between us. The present moment is our main ally, and our relationship with one another becomes the ground for curious exploration.

So you did the work. You practiced, you broke open, you learned what that felt like. Then you sit down with someone you love and reach for the tools. And disappointment follows. The language that opens everything in the circle somehow lands as "robot land" out in The Wild. That gap is our practice in this workshop. I'll be drawing on Lisa Feldman Barrett's science of how emotion is built, and we'll look at why the flatness you feel

in someone is often a prediction firing in you, not a fact about them. We'll slow down and take apart the imagined "ideal conversation," and hone in on what you would value from the exact words you're demanding it arrive in. Then we practice live, listening for the bid for connection underneath an unfamiliar way of speaking, and answering it without falling back on your 'formulas'. You leave able to listen so that you get it.

We all contain different parts of ourselves — parts that want to be seen, that want to hide, that judge ourselves and others, that please and that rebel. Some parts help us navigate life, while others become activated when we feel challenged, overwhelmed, or disconnected.

Through guided meditation, somatic exploration, group exercises, and experiential role-play, participants

will be invited to identify an active inner part, explore its expression in the body, understand its deeper needs and discover the gifts it carries beneath its protective strategies.

This workshop offers a playful and relational approach to self-inquiry, helping participants cultivate a more conscious and compassionate relationship with themselves and others.

Secret Touch is a workshop that resonates with the element of Earth. It is a blindfolded, non-verbal exploration and self-discovery of boundaries, strengths and sensuality,through consent led touch by others. The workshop will be held outdoors (weather permitting) on the grass lawn where the first touch is that of our body with mother Earth. Once all participants have grounded themselves I will inform you of the consent boundaries in place during the workshop and methods of communicating non-verbally. You will be encouraged to relinquish your trust to the unknown under my guidance so that you can explore your boundaries of comfort, sensuality and community. Despite this being a sensual workshop, it will invoke your sexual energy through sensuality, where the focus will be on yourself and the feelings and sensations evoked. The blindfold eliminates the others

so that there is only the external sensation of touch and what you will free yourself or choose to explore within you. To understand practically what the workshop entails please note that you will be blindfolded and touched by 2 other strangers. Boundaries will be put in place so that no one will be touched on any sexual areas of the body. You will not know who will have touched you. I will be overseeing the touch experience so that the consent guidelines are adhered to. Different tools and textures will be employed during the workshop. The workshop will be closed with an open discussion about the experience. If anyone has had any negative experience you can address it with me privately after the workshop. If any consent issues arise consent guidelines will be followed to mediate the incident. I am a trained and professional consent work and facilitator.

I want to invite you to a space where your projections become the guide for deeper connection - to yourself and others. Through gentle inquiery, slow embodiment and mindful meetings we explore the

wisdom that hides between us. We will start with a gentle landing in our bodies and keep anchoring every exercise somatically, so that we can stay present and integrate what we are experiencing.

A core practice at Nära that will be offered multiple times during the festival. It's about exploring what it's like right now and tuning in to what is emerging as we deepen in on our present moment experiences together. A field can emerge, where we can bathe together. It's organic, quite unpredictable, it's immediate

and offers a lot of possibilities of experience yourself in rich and deep ways in connection with others and yourself, as well as exploring your style of relating real time as it unfolds. It's an open ended collaborative group process, shaped by everyone bringing themselves right now in a continuous flow.

Much of the things we do here, we do to become more of ourselves, more of what we deeply long to be. Here is your moment to put that into words, pointing to actions. What do you want your life to be about? What gives your life meaning?

In this workshop, you are invited to an inner journey,

as well as a walk and talk through the menageries of roles, needs and virtues – all of which can provide you with ideas to express your values in clear terms.. Expect deep, heartfelt sharing, moments of calm reflection, and the chance to find your North star – your words to live by.

Our hands create change where change is needed and speak in the language of action in our worlds. We use them in our labors of love, to fight for causes bigger than ourselves and to defend against what is not in our hearts' interest. They also hold an intelligence accessible through their sensing capacities, an awareness of the physicalites of our environment and the energetics

of our being. Might we wake up to the perception of our hands to become aware of subtleties and a listening beyond words?

Warm welcome to a slow exploration through your hands' felt sense. We'll gift each other presencing in a gentle dyadic hand meditation and lean into more stillness together. A space for those of us who need rest, centering and access to self.