Physical Listening for Changemakers: A Movement-Based Workshop

What becomes possible when we lead and collaborate with our full bodies?

Physical Listening for Changemakers is an improvisational movement workshop where we learn to tune into what's happening beneath the surface, to better sense and respond to those around us. In a world longing for justice, care, and connection, this kind of embodied presence opens possibilities for how we move together.

Whether you’re an educator, organizer, maker, dancer, healer—or someone facilitating change in your family, workplace, or community—you'll leave with insight on how to listen beyond your ears and communicate beyond words.

What is Physical Listening?

Physical Listening is an improvisational movement practice that teaches us to listen and communicate with our whole bodies — tuning into subtle cues of body language, spatial relationships, and shifts of energy, and using them as sources of insight and direction.

It was developed by JoAnna Mendl Shaw and her dance company, The Equus Projects, through 25+ years of dance research—much of it in collaboration with horses. Horses are highly sensitive, non-verbal communicators who respond instantly to shifts in body language, energy, and intention. Working with them has taught JoAnna and her collaborators how to cultivate a precision of full-body awareness.

In this daylong workshop, you’ll be invited to sense more fully—through your body—what’s happening within and around you, especially in moments of tension, decision-making, or creative possibility. A glance, a shift in weight, crossed arms—these subtle signals shape how we relate and respond. What if we could listen to them more consciously, and move with them more skillfully?

Through solo, paired, and group movement exercises— alongside opportunities for reflection and dialogue — we’ll explore leadership and collaboration as embodied, relational acts: grounded in shared power, collective wisdom, and emergent process.

Together, we’ll explore:

• Non-verbal communication & multi-sensory awareness
Tuning into subtle, often-overlooked dimensions of connection—including breath, orientation, and spatial presence—to deepen self and group attunement.

• Relational dynamics
Holding power with care and adaptability (collaborative leadership) and responding with agency (active followership).

• Co-creative emergence
Sensing what’s arising in a group and supporting its unfolding through how we move.

• Strategic creative process
Translating embodied insights into meaningful action and clear direction.

What do you mean by movement-based?

This workshop playfully steers away from verbal problem-solving, and invites us to explore ideas through the body—using guided improvisational movement, spatial awareness, and sensory exploration as tools for insight and connection. That means noticing how we sense, respond, and relate—on our own and with others.

The workshop is accessible to all curious movers—no dance experience required. (If you are a dancer, this work deepens listening and expands creative and relational capacity well beyond the studio. Join us!)

Most of the workshop will involve moving without physical contact, with optional opportunities to engage in touch-based exercises. We'll approach touch gradually—starting with spatial sensing, exploring phases of proximity and depth, and, for those who choose, tactile contact with another person.

During movement breaks, there will be ample opportunity to reflect and discuss how these practices apply to our work and daily lives.

Facilitators

Together, JoAnna and Rebecca bridge the worlds of movement and social transformation. They bring over four decades of embodied teaching and facilitation for healthcare professionals, nonprofit leaders, educators, grassroots organizers, naval strategists, dancers, parents, corporate teams, and more.

JoAnna Mendl Shaw is an interdisciplinary choreographer and the Artistic Director of The Equus Projects, a company known for creating site-specific performances with dancers and horses. Since 1998, she has pioneered Physical Listening, a somatic approach to attending to other moving bodies through tactile, visual, auditory, and proprioceptive awareness.

JoAnna’s choreographic work has been presented across the U.S. and Europe and is recognized for its deep collaborative process and responsive engagement with diverse participants—human and equine alike. She has taught at institutions including Stanford, Juilliard and NYU, and brought the tools of Physical Listening to artists, educators, medical professionals, and the Naval War College. She is a certified Laban Movement Analyst and the author of Physical Listening: A Dancer’s Interspecies Journey.

https://www.equus-onsite.org/

Rebecca Strull is a consultant, designer, and improvisational dancer who guides change grounded in relational intelligence and collective imagination. She has spent nearly a decade partnering with public agencies and mission-driven organizations to transform systems—including healthcare, education, childcare, agriculture, and immigration—so they work better for everyone, especially those historically excluded. Her consulting draws from Emergent Strategy, Integrative Design, and Biomimicry, and she's certified in Permaculture Design.

Rebecca also teaches Contact Improvisation across the Bay Area and and co-organizes the Thursday Jam at Berkeley's Finnish Hall. Her teaching draws on decades of dance experience and study with respected CI teachers such as Nita Little, Jo Kreiter, and Scott Wells. Whether in dance spaces or community planning sessions, she invites groups to playfully and authentically move together.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccastrull/

📧 Questions? Email rebecca.strull@gmail.com