EMERGING FROM FREEZE: COMING TO OUR SENSES
A cranial self-touch and awareness practice informed by the Feldenkrais Method®, Cranial Osteopathy and Body-Mind Centering with Maria Bacha
The Freeze Response—going still under stress—can be an automatic pattern connected to chronic tension and holding, migraines, procrastination, and feeling stuck in projects, relationships, or your body. Sometimes we freeze in a moment of challenge, or freeze can be like the weather we live in, like an extended winter.
Bringing attention to our senses is a way to emerge from freeze. Like the sun on an iced lake, we can start to thaw out and come into contact with our deeper fluid nature.
We touch into the cranial bones as a portal to a unique kind of stillness available—alive, safe, full of small movements and breath. Even what feels fixed is in motion. Like the tectonic plates of the earth, the bones of your head are a living example of animated stillness. Stillness with ease.
To come to our senses is to reclaim sanity – not as the reduction of aliveness to protocols of logic, but as wild connection, as participation in a wider field of play."
— Bayo Akomolafe
Free Introductory Practice
Thursday, June 11, 1:00 PM ET
A guided experience of self-touch and awareness of the face you can carry into your daily life. This practice previews the work of the series outlined below. Open to all.
What you’ll explore:
Recognizing and repatterning freeze: Learn to identify your automatic holding patterns and gently transition out of them.
The bones of the face as sense portals: Use direct touch and subtle movement to shift your internal state.
Perception of internal space: Explore the space of the skull and pituitary gland for a deep restoration of vitality.
Developmental patterns and reflexes: Connect to the foundational internal movements that cultivate native ease
Practice for Daily Life:
The practices of cranial self-touch and awareness are designed to travel. Each is a standalone resource you can carry beyond the sessions—for when you notice yourself in a freeze response, when you need help transitioning to rest, or when you want to come awake in your senses and stimulate creativity. Some practices downshift toward rest. Others stimulate aliveness. Using them before or after something potentially challenging can help build your capacity to do hard things with ease and creativity.
Who is this for?
Anyone who recognizes themselves in freeze patterns, or holds tension in their face, neck, or jaw.
People with an existing practice in movement, meditation, art, or somatics.
Rich enough for somatic professionals, and accessible for those new to this kind of practice.
Dates & Schedule:
Thursdays, 1 – 2PM ET
June 11 — Free Introductory Practice (open to all) July 2 — The Ears
June 18 — The Nose July 9 — The Eyes
June 25 — The Mouth August 13 — Integration Session
What’s Included?
Four Core Lessons: Exploring all the major sense portals of your face.
Group Integration Session: Integrating all the sense portals of the face into resourcing for nervous system regulation and creativity.
BONUS: 1:1 Integration with Maria: A personal time to connect and customize the practices to your life and your specific situations.
Flexible Learning: Video and audio replays of all sessions.
Questions?
Ways to Join
Single Course
5 WEEK ZOOM SERIES + RECORDINGS
Library Membership
SERIES RECORDINGS + ACCESS TO 1000+ LESSONS
Live Membership
5 WEEK ZOOM SERIES + RECORDINGS + ALL M & C Live online classes & recordings
About Maria Bacha
Maria Bacha, D.O., is a French-Canadian–trained Osteopath and Somatic Therapist certified in The Feldenkrais Method® and Body-Mind Centering. Maria is known for her nurturing presence and ability to meet complexity—listening carefully to the body and lived experience to help identify inner conflicts that have not yet fully resolved.
Her work with adults is deeply informed by working directly with families and children; she understands how early patterns of stress, bonding, and adaptation shape pain, regulation, and relationship later in life—and how meeting these patterns with attuned care can support change at any age. Her cranial work is at the heart of what she brings to this series.
Maria lives in the Delaware River Valley of New York and offers healing immersions around the NYC region and globally (including the Lagoon of Seven Colors in Bacalar, Mexico). Learn more at AquaJourney.org.
Credentials & Training
Diploma of Osteopathy (D.O.), Collège d'Études Ostéopathiques — 7 years of structural, myofascial, visceral, and cranial osteopathy
Trained in Rolf Method of Structural Integration
Certified in The Feldenkrais Method® of Somatic Education
Certified in Body-Mind Centering — Somatic Movement Education & Infant Developmental Movement Education (IDME) with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
Pre- & Perinatal Somatic Psychology, 3-year Castellino Foundation Training
Co-Regulating Touch for Developmental Trauma with Kathy Kain and Stephen Terrell, PsyD
Internal Family Systems (IFS) & Parts Work leadership with Richard Schwartz and Bruce Anspach (3 years and ongoing)