EKW 2026, Helsinki

This intensive workshop has been designed as a space of open-ended exploration of bodily experience. It offers participants embodied practices and exercises to investigate the relationship with our body personally and collectively. The practices proposed explore the senses, gestures, bodily movement as well as cultural and ecological dimensions. Participants engage during 9 sessions (36 hours) of embodied explorations and expression, movement, and conversations. Alongside somatic and kinetic experimentation, we do visual maps and creative writing.

The workshop asks how different bodies experience sensorially and negotiate interaction with others, based on their diverse ability and social norms. We investigate together on our relationship with cultural backgrounds, habits, personal boundaries, particular stages in life and ecological mindsets. Short readings are offered to reflect how we are affected and affect other beings, and how our bodies are in process.

I designed and have run four editions of the Embodied Knowledge Workshop in Finland (Helsinki 2019, 2021, 2023, Turku 2024) in the context of MA art studies or art organizations. However, the workshop is not meant as an artistic or dance training process. Instead, it proposes a safe space for exploration of thought and emotions around the body, that anyone can join for their own purposes — artistic, humanistic, scientific or just personal. We foster individual and group reflections, to kindly acknowledge the bodies that we have, their histories and how they wish to move.

In 2026, the workshop is offered as part of my PhD research on transformative adult education conducted at Tampere University. The EKW has been designed as a platform where adults can explore and open new perspectives on identity, ecology, and affect. The research follows the process and will reflect on the meaning of embodied knowledge for different adults based on their life experiences and interests, and in relation to ethical coexistence. Your personal reflections may be kept entirely private, but the instructor might ask to share them for research purposes (you can do that either anonymously or be openly credited for them in later research publications).

How do we work? What do we aim for?

In the process of nine sessions, the workshop opens up the question (personal and collectively) of what the body knows and how embodied experience shapes life.

Participants familiarize themselves with varied approaches to embodiment. We will look critically at the relationship many of us have in the contemporary world with our very diverse bodies, and the histories they carry. We will reflect on the role of the body in our interaction with others, human and other living beings, and the way knowledge emerges from experience and dialogue. Rather than presenting a given technique for movement or relaxation, this is a space proposed for gentle exploration, for asking questions and addressing tensions that shape our embodied existence.

The workshop is done entirely offline and creates sustained space for a kind of bodily attention that is rarely available in daily life. It is also supported in short readings that help unlock and bring awareness on the conceptions on the body, knowledge, and practice many people have grown up with, and present alternatives to redefine or rethink them today.

What do you get from it?

We investigate through the body. We don’t offer predefined answers according to a single body practice tradition, or propose an approach to body and mind based on traditional techniques from arts, yoga or somatics. The instructor proposes to investigate some questions together: What do bodies know? How does our body affect how we move in the world? Does it shape our politics? And what can we learn from a guided exploration of our bodily existence? To answer them, the sessions typically move between individual quiet practice, small group interactions, and some group sharing.

The Embodied Knowledge Workshop shares different practices and serves as a space to reconnect with your body and to illuminate the relation between your body and creative work, professional interests, and everyday life. In the sessions, you work at your own pace and based on your own sensitivity.

Commitment

The workshop is about doing a process — entering a journey of discovery during 35 contact hours. It requires taking part in sessions that build one upon the other. We have a personal meeting or interview before, and another after the workshop, to follow your unique process.
There are no expected outcomes or final artistic presentation — only a closing (session 9) with an informal group reflection.
Small experiential or reflective tasks will be proposed to nurture the process.
All exercises and dynamics are flexible; you can participate based on your own bodily ability and comfort, and you may abstain from any exercise when necessary.

What you need

The practice happens in person in a dance studio at ESKUS. Come with comfortable clothes to move. All materials for activities are provided. Short supporting readings in English will be given, along with prompts for reflection. Personal notebooks are provided at the beginning and used as active tools throughout the sessions. Tea will be offered.

If you have any specific needs, please communicate them to the instructor in your letter.

Who can join?

The workshop is offered this time for adults 30 years old and above. We work in English.
Commitment is essential. 12 people will be selected based on motivation letters and ability to commit to the process.
No experience in movement, art, yoga, meditation or performance practices is required. The workshop does not aim to teach dance techniques or to push bodily boundaries in any way.
People with very varied professional backgrounds are welcome.
We operate with safer spaces guidelines and run the sessions only in person.
Important: this is not a therapeutic space, but a practice that engages gently and playfully with personal emotions, sensorial exploration, and ideas about bodies. People with ongoing mental health challenges or any other concerning issues should communicate their situation to the instructor. They may join at their own discretion.
The building of ESKUS and the dance studio where we do the practice are wheelchair accessible.

Registration

Participation is free of cost. Registration is done via a simple form telling the instructor about your background and personal motivation to join.

Apply to join EKW 2026 →

You will be invited to a short interview in August to get to know each other before the workshop starts and explain about the research project. A second conversation will take place at the end of the process to reflect together about your personal journey. All personal information will be made anonymous in the research.

Safer and braver spaces guidelines

All participants share responsibility for these guidelines.

This is a shared space for a learning, exploratory process. Be compassionate to yourself and others.
Acknowledge our bodies: enter the practice being mindful of your body disposition and energy, and kind to those of others. Interaction and movement should always be consensual. Be creative, but always look for each other’s eyes or gestures to check consent.
Anyone might stop the flow at any given time for personal reasons, or if you sense someone else might not be doing well. Express your needs. It is okay to remove yourself, take a break when necessary, or stop a process altogether.
People have very diverse identities, gender, sexual orientation, background, body experiences. We all come from varied places and histories, so let’s appreciate that while staying curious and sensitive to each other. Listen to others’ ideas, even when they differ from your own. Make space for others in conversation. It’s okay to ask questions and it’s okay to disagree.
Respect each other’s time, space and effort. Show up for others, engage and participate in the way that feels right for you.
Nobody is perfect and we are bound to fail occasionally. Let’s encourage each other to take responsibility for our words, actions, and missteps.

From participants of previous editions

“It brought the subterranean, or that which is under the ground and invisible, to a kind of social reality, or it gave the imaginative a grounding in reality. And I think the combination of the text and the embodied action, being witnessed by others, was very key.” — Mika, social scientist, 2024

“The exercises have gently guided me towards releasing some stiffness and boundaries that I’ve carried within me for a long time, and I have slowly started to open myself up to being where I am — more intensely.” — Johana, architect, 2021

“Maria approaches the idea of knowledge as a gift, a discovery process and food for thought. In other words, she invited me to be bodily, mindfully, and coherently conscious, both playful and articulate. It is all about the process of self-cultivating and also sharing.” — Fond, K12 educator, 2020

“The experience of the workshop was intense and challenging but rewarding. Overall, I think the course served as a tool for questioning, learning and reconnecting. Not everything was clear and easy, but then, what in the arts or world would be.” — Silja, cultural organizer, 2023

“The discussions and exercises in class have offered me so much valuable knowledge and ideas that I will continue to explore afterwards. Some experiences completely changed my thinking from before the workshop.” — Anastasia, visual artist, 2023

“It was definitely very intense and at times emotionally taxing due to the trigger points and vulnerabilities it brought to the surface. But still, important realisation of oneself, body(ies), sensuous and embodied knowledge became clearer, and it gave so much inspiration and confirmation for the work that feels right and inviting for me.” — Tuija, curator, 2023

About the instructor

The workshop is run by María Villa Largacha, a philosopher, curator and educator currently completing doctoral research at Tampere University.