ShaGa – A Living Movement Practice

In ShaGa, we move from our body, the ultimate refuge. We allow our bodies to become our teacher and our healer.

ShaGa is a living movement practice of self-discovery, healing, and awakening to our deeper resources. It opens us up to the capacity to experience movement as a source of healing and vitality. We discover that by inhabiting our bodies more fully, we are able to more fully inhabit our lives.

ShaGa is about Healing. We give ourselves permission to find deeper resources that expand our movement potential, reduce tension and atrophy in the body, and illuminate paths towards personal transformation. We take time to listen to our pain on a molecular level and discover layers of guidance. We discover the healing power of working at a very low volume of effort, so we can go places where pleasure in the movement is awakened. 

ShaGa is about Permission. We take time to be curious and to listen to the body. We practice giving ourselves permission to follow our own, unique guidance rather than telling it what to do. As we encourage our innate, inner rhythms, we experience freedom inside our movement and inside our minds while connecting our bodies to our imaginations. We give ourselves a physical pathway to experience and re-experience ourselves. We welcome whatever arises as a guide. We refuse nothing and discover we can enjoy everything. 

ShaGa was developed by ShaLeigh Comerford throughout her life and career as a social worker, intuitive, advocate, survivor, dancer, choreographer, and teacher. Over the last sixteen years, the knowledge and experience she gained has been gradually transformed into a living movement practice, which now together form ShaGa.

VISION

The ShaGa Teacher Training Program believes in research, creativity, agency, autonomy, and expansive knowledge. The program not only supports students to develop a high level of skill, curiosity, and perception, but also a strong sense of personal responsibility, integrity, and an openness to discover the unique work they will bring into the world when it is rooted in a deep commitment to personal transformation. Our integrated curriculum allows students to develop a balanced, grounded approach to the full expression of their passion into their lives and their healing. The ShaGa practice and principles are built on presence, truth, honesty, curiosity, sensitivity, and deep listening. These principles apply to all teachers and students and serve as foundations of the program.

The program trains teachers according to the highest standards of excellence and cultivates an atmosphere for students to develop themselves while building on their individual expertise. The program also aims to support its students after their certification. The ShaGa movement language is a living practice that is constantly evolving. For all teachers, it is encouraged to take at least 1 intensive within a two year period to ensure their continued personal development. Each annual intensive adds different layers of information and provides mentorship to teachers to continually progress their teaching practice. 

The program asks each student to develop in a unique way that honors agency and individuality. The training strives to preserve the uniqueness of each student and to allow each student to develop their own voice as a ShaGa teacher through an in-depth understanding of themselves through the practice. 

The program commits to providing its students with an encouraging, challenging, and engaging atmosphere for learning. The curriculum is designed to be attentive and sensitive to the individual needs of each student and provides assistance to address each individual’s personal goals.

The curriculum is divided into five areas of growth:

WHAT OUR TEACHERS ARE SAYING

“Now that I’m just training in ShaGa, my body is more capable. I can find a better path to do things that is less painful and more mindful. I use to wake up with a lot of pain in my hipsthat would stay with me most of the day. Now with the increase of taking more classes,my body is starting to change for good. I wake up with less pain and more mobility, even the amount of energy is more. I’ve found more mobility in my joints and the arthritis pain is less. This is one of the best things that has happened in my life, my career, and my continuous learning.” – Steven James

“As I dive deeper into my own personal importance of ShaGa, I’ve noticed just how much of a need it always becomes for me to connect to the whole of my body. It’s like becoming super intuitive to how you feel and the energy around you. I love discussing with movers what ShaGa has given them and it’s so powerful seeing the similarities we share with it. It really proves to me that I will continue to discover more moments like this through my life. ShaGa has given me an abundance to cherish, in community and in dance, it is simply in some ways a memory. Like stepping through a door to my past and reliving every moment of it. Giving me the keys to unlock my passion and the permission to be in charge of myself. I hope to give individuals the same hope and passion through this practice. Offer those a safe space and for them to learn just how much power they can create in their lives. We really do hold the answers for ourselves, and from being brought into this movement language it really inspires me to want everyone to experience their own truth, their own inspiration. Simply by looking inward and accepting the treasures that are there to behold.” – Isabelle Frame

“The practice of ShaGa and the ShaGa Teacher Training have allowed me to go deeper into myself and to find more liberation than I have been able to do through years of therapy, cognitive observation, self-care practices, and yogic and Buddhist studies. I do understand that all these other parts were necessary as well. But I feel that ShaGa is what threaded everything together, and integrated all of the other practices.  ShaGa is something that is so fluid and adaptable that anyone can arrive into their own version of liberation, based on their own life experiences and their own understanding and insight. I spent big parts of my life trying to come into understanding, of both myself and of what I may have perceived to be outside of myself, through my intellect and through cognition. The practice of ShaGa has allowed me to connect into my past self and my history, and has allowed me to use my body to make these types of breakthroughs. There have been many moments during classes and practices where I was able to travel back in time and touch into traumatic experiences, change the narrative and experience re-patterning that my mind could not fully grasp, yet I knew to be true.  I came into my ShaGa Teacher Training not as a dancer or a mover. I always felt that dance and movement was for others to understand and experience, and this created a world to which I did not belong. ShaGa has taught me, not just on an intellectual level, but in a visceral, tactile, physical, and emotional way that I do in fact belong, and that nothing is separate from me. The ShaGa Teacher Training is for anyone who wants to deepen their sense of connection to themselves, to others, and to the world in which they live.” – Bart Westdorp