
Meet Ellen
Your body is your home. In order to sustain a healthy life you need a home that provides safety and is nourishing, supportive, loving and empowering. A home that lifts you up. Your own body. Your own home. Through a heathy life-style and cultivating self-awareness, Somatic Movement Education provides a pathway to ownership. The greatest down payment is YOU.
Ellen Bartel MFA, CMA, RSME, Moving For Life™ cancer exercise specialist and hospice volunteer. She is an award winning independent choreographer and an established dancer in Austin, TX. She recently served as the Interim Education Coordinator and was an Assistant Instructor at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies in NYC. She served as a facilitator of creative and somatic approaches to grief in NYC and Austin. Previously, Ellen has been a peer review dance panelist and also a Creative Ambassador for the City of Austin. She has been a dance educator for over three decades teaching in Central Texas and New York and continues to choreograph original work for site, stage and video.
What is Somatic Movement?
Conscious action, movement re-patterning and nervous system regulation
Somatic or soma refers to knowing one’s body as it’s being lived. In other words, consciousness. Include the body’s movement, and there is action; conscious action. In Somatic Movement Education (SME) movement initiates an internal awareness that can educate a person into becoming a mindful being.
Neuroplasticity describes the brain’s ability to adapt and change by creating new pathways for information to be received and delivered throughout the body. Somatic movement educators guide the development of new neuro pathways by re-patterning old habitual movements, that may have become unsustainable, harmful or limiting, with new options. Waking up the body to reach its potential.
WHAT AUSTIN SOMATIC MOVEMENT EDUCATION OFFERS
Postural Alignment Somatic Integration
Bartenieff Fundamentals is an integrative movement practices that enlists Body Organizations, heel rocks, the Basic 6, Breath Support and Diaphragm/Pelvic rhythm and more. In 50 minutes the session includes a warm-up, full body integration for strength, ease and healthy posture.
Private in person or on-line - $70
Group @ Myo Austin $25 Tuesdays 6:00-6:45
Reiki Reflexology
Reiki is a energy healing technique the promotes relaxation, reduces stress and anxiety through gentle touch improving flow and balance in the body. No belief system is required or taught
Reflexology is a type of holistic massage practice performed on our feet. This is achieved by applying pressure onto meridian lines on our feet.
Private - $45-$70
Grief Processing
Grief does not have to be from the death of a person it can be a loss of job, pet, fire, self, community, home etc. This work is for people who are seeking gently guided movements to access their body’s internal emotional space and someone who will listen with compassionate empathy.
Private - $70
Somatic Movement Education Training Program
This program is a one-year, 560 contact hour curriculum that includes experiential, practical, and theoretical pedagogical methods for promoting body and mind integration, movement re-education, observation and analysis of movement, embodied anatomy, hands-on physical cuing, and neuromuscular re-patterning in the Laban/Bartenieff tradition.


These sessions include touch and hands-on cueing with permission
No movement experience necessary
To get a group started reach out to Ellen via email ellen.bartel@ebdc.us
experienced dancers with difficulty moving onto the floor or use a wheelchair are welcome to attend group movement classes