Possible clientele

All public people – family, friends, couples, colleagues, hobby partners, business people, caregivers, gamers, people dealing with loneliness, fatigue, insomnia, burnout, depression, anxiety, pain or in a rehabilitation process, leaders of all kinds, active people (dancing, practicing sports…), hospitals or elderly homes staff or residents, persons with reduced mobility, school or movement teachers, artists and performers, etc.

Criteria required to teach

Current active Practitioner status

Format of classes

• A 1-day class or series of short classes of 1-2 hours each

• Taught in private or in group settings

• Presenting a specific theme or offered to a specific clientele

• In classroom, health fair, work place or congress environments, in a stand-alone context or during lectures or demonstrations

• “In-the-field” personal coaching (example: Practitioner going shopping with someone afraid of crowds and teaching them to breathe, stay focused, feel their weight…)

Documentation and administration

• No income percentage sent to Trager International or to the National Associations

• Participants receive a certificate of attendance

• Six hours of Trager for Daily Life class(es), along with a recommendation from the Practitioner teaching it may replace the Introductory Workshop or the six-hour Mentastics class(es) pre-requisite to enter the Trager certification program. Certificate of attendance including the class Leader’s recommendation is sent to the class organizer if a person wants to use this option.

Content and authorized framework

Trager for Daily Life classes are intended to both resonate with and be supportive of the current Standards of Instruction. We have written these guidelines in order to help provide clarity about Trager for Daily Life classes and to distinguish them from other existing workshops or certification trainings.

You may teach Mentastics movements and/or Trager touch in the standing, sitting or lying position, provided that you follow the following guidelines.

• The whole content of your class has to be presented from the angle of Trager principles* and not from the technical aspect of the tablework « moves » contained in the Certification program. As always in Trager, the focus is not on what technique or « which move on which body part » one is doing, but on how one is « being ». The teaching of how to seek a state of calmness and how to share it with others should constitute the core of your Trager for Daily Life classes.

• The point here is not to teach how to give a Trager session or a piece of a Trager session to your students. Your classes’ objective is to offer simple strategies to your students so that they are able to improve the quality of their life. They need to understand that your workshops fit in the category of personal enrichment courses and are not part of the Trager Approach Professional Training.

• Your classes are to share simple practical and useful ideas which will make life easier, both for the person taking the class and for his/her close ones. Examples: help child sleep (rocking), less back pain with daily activities (how to shift the manner of doing physical work by sensing how the body feels), better balance (shifting weight side to side and front to back). You may also offer practical ideas for people confined to wheelchairs or beds.

• You are presenting your content so that your students understand how to adapt it to their own ways of moving through life, to fit actual personal needs.

You may also teach:

• The necessity of…

  • asking if there are medical restrictions in movement

  • being attentive to how the movement feels to a partner and respond to their feedback appropriately

  • keeping movement and touch within a pain-free range, to create an experience of safety and well-being

  • being patient with current limitations and playing with supportive feelings* like lightness, length, space, elasticity, grounding, tone, …

• The attitude of exploration and inquiry; suggesting and facilitating rather than ‘’trying to fix’’

• Pausing, feeling and noticing with a quiet mind

• The importance of looking for comfortable positions while working with each other during trades; finding ease of movement for both giver and receiver

• The value of discretion – being delicate with personal information

* Trager principles, feelings and qualities include: meditative state, being with self-awareness, contact and connection, less is more, self-care, freedom in the body, effortless, lightness, feeling waves, vitality, fluidity, softness, stability, length, space, elasticity, tone, weight, mobility.

Content and framework NOT authorized

• It is inappropriate to give a demonstration of a whole Trager session or to instruct how to give a whole Trager session during your Trager for Daily Life classes. You may teach the quality of soft touch and the concepts of elongation, rocking, supporting and weighing, but you are not allowed to teach the sequence of Trager « moves » for a whole section of the body as it is taught in the Certification Program. Remember that you are not an appointed Trager Instructor unless you have completed the required training. Invite the people wishing to learn how to give a Trager session to take a Level I training.

• You may include some anatomy notions to explain a concept you are teaching, but refrain from including a formal in-depth anatomy training.

• You may not distribute the Trager Manual to your students nor study its content with them.

• We recommend that you give a certificate of attendance to your students. Trager for Daily Life classes are one of the possible prerequisites to register in the Trager Certification Program. They could also count as Continuing Education credits in particular conditions.

  • Trager Practitioners should check with their National Association to know if the Trager for Daily Life classes are approved as Continuing Education in their area.

  • Practitioners of other disciplines should check with their professional association to know if these classes could count as Continuing Education within their organization.

At the end of your Trager for Daily Life classes, your students are NOT ALLOWED to…

• charge money for using the techniques and concepts learned during the class

• teach this work to others and claim to be teaching Trager

• use the Service Marks (“Trager”, “Mentastics” or the Dancing Cloud logo)

It is your responsibility to inform your students of these legal and ethical restrictions.