SomaticPerformer:

Projects & Workshops with Erika Berland

SomaticPerformer is the name of the company I share with Erika Berland. We have been doing SomaticPerformer joint projects, specifically annual intensives and other workshops, since 2013. At this point the company umbrellas all of our projects—both solo and together-- including writing, individual and group mentoring projects, teaching and performance work. We are currently maintaining a separate website: beaversberlandworkshops.com for these joint endeavors. Please go to this website to read about upcoming workshops, more about the practices we teach, and to register for upcoming work.  Here are some details about SomaticPerformer’s projects:

Erika’s book, Sitting: The Physical Art of Meditation  was published by SomaticPerformer Press in 2017 and has been the basis of many meditation seminars and practicums she has taught since its publication. 

We have hosted 10 professional development residential intensives since 2014, first in Naropa University’s spaces in Boulder CO, and since the summer of 2022, in our work space in the Eclipse Mill in North Adams MA. 

We are beginning to be able to offer 30 Day Residencies (with various levels of mentorship) in our work space in the Eclipse Mill in North Adams MA through our non-profit fiscal sponsorship by Fractured Atlas which is just beginning this year (2024-2025). This is dependent on our fundraising prowess but we have been encouraged by many people, potential donors, to give this a try. We are extremely excited about this possibility. 

We are currently working with long time students who are now collaborators in Montreal and in Athens, Greece on building creative communities around the nexus of dharma, performing arts, political and social activism, and wellness. We hope to expand support for these projects. 

Through our individual websites we are planning to share much of our research as Open Educational Resources. We anticipate sharing coursework, syllabi, lectures and practicums, articles, and book chapters.

We are aspiring to find at least partial underwriting for all of these and future projects. We are seeking this support to provide equitable access for all to our workshops and all of our resources. If you are in a position to support this work, and would like to support others with less resources, please have a look at our fiscal sponsorship page at Fractured Atlas and contact us for more details on how to contribute. We are very excited about this new initiative and have a lot of confidence that we can serve our community much more fully in this way. Here is a link: 

A further note: SomaticPerformer is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of SomaticPerformer must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.