Find a sense of calm and take notice of your own body. Together we create a secure and playful atmosphere with practical exercises in order to arrive in your own body. Using elements from a variety of massage styles (Esalen, deep tissue, classic), we remain in contact with ourselves and with another at the same time. The focus in this case is not on the technique but the way that we mindfully and wordlessly communicate. It plays no role if you have experience with massage or if you simply would like to give it a try.

Peter Bolliger works as a Certified Rolfer® and Esalen® Massage Practitioner in the Lotlinie Massage Practice in Zurich. He works part time in healthcare institutions as an adult education teacher and training officer. During his many years as a Healthcare Professional (psychosocial counseling about issues around HIV for men, addiction, end-of-life care, acute psychiatry, somatics) he quickly learned what is possible with conscious and mindful touch. He continues to be interested in where the exploration of physical processes leads and everything there is to discover. Allowing yourself to feel good, flexible and light is the goal of and approach to his work.

This workshop is an opportunity to be more bold about expressing your desires. Take time to identify what you really want and to express it as clearly and as detailed as necessary.

Reclaim your desires as an expression of your souls drive and Eros. Let yourself be nourished by the energy contained in them despite your possible fear of rejection, of judgment or despite the fact that your desire might not be fuliflled.

Kai is a breath therapist based on Prof. Ilse Middendorf's work, an authorized Continuum Movement teacher, holds the German Heilpraktiker license for psychotherapy and co-founded the Somatic Academy of Berlin. He created "Authentic Eros - Explorations for Men" and curates the STRETCH festival. He believes that the conscious body and the reclaiming of Eros are crucial elements in our evolution toward an integral way of life. Kai teaches since 2002 in Europe and in the US.

Ever wanted to learn massage techniques to share with your lovers, friends or clients without the need of a table? Bodyflow Technique gives you the tools to touch with confidence, creativity and intuition. Andy, who pioneered BodyFlow massage, teaches positions, posture and techniques of touch, specific to floor massage, that make both the giving and receiving of the massage relaxing and enjoyable. 

Please note: the BodyFlow massage is done on a floor mattress that demands a certain level of flexibility and fitness. Therefore, in order to participate you will need to be in good health and be able to sit comfortably cross legged with both your hands free to massage for up to 20-30 minutes at a time.

More on BodyFlow massage and UK workshops on www.menintouch.co.uk

Andy Saich is a Body Electric school-trained sacred intimate who weaves therapeutic touch with body, sexual and relationship coaching. As the creator of the exquisite BodyFlow massage technique, and a pioneer of tantric work, he has helped men, women and trans people since 1990 through one to one sessions and workshops in the UK and in a variety of other countries. As co-founder of LoveSpirit, organising events for the LGBT+ community exploring and celebrating spiritual and sexual diversity, he is committed to helping others grow, share their stories and wisdom.

Contact Improvisation is a dance form that engages touch, weight and listening as the main principles of moving together. There is no leader and no follower. Some people call it an art sport. Invented in 1972 by Steve Paxton and developed by a group of men and women around him C-I keeps growing as a social dance form in a predominantly straight scene. Lets queer it up!

Peter Pleyer is a dancer and choreographer living in Berlin, teaching and performing internationally. He is a co-founder of P.O.R.C.H. summer-education program at ponderosa-dance. His most recent performances were with Keith Hennessy and together with Jenniffer Lacy for Antonija Livingstone. Fake Healing was a regular practice during these projects as a warm-up and a deepening of the relationships between the performers, an exercise on beauty.

Full power dancing, including self-touch and pleasuring. Being with your body and expressing your emotions, heart and sex. Throwing yourself into the music, letting yourself be taken into different states.

We start blindfolded, to make it your personal journey to express all that lives inside of you! YES! Free body = free mind = free spirit. Dance!

Volker Moritz is pioneering the edge of sex, heart and spirit. He is working as psychologist (MSc) and licensed sex therapist in his own practice in Amsterdam. He is a Certified Sexological Bodyworker (IISB ®) and authorized Continuum Movement teacher. He gives workshops and trainings in Europe and the US. He has set up projects for male sex workers in Amsterdam and muslim LGBT youth. For more than 20 years, he has been practicing meditation, studying different approaches to bodywork and healing. His qualities are on the one hand his warmth and on the other hand his clarity and depth. He enjoys nature in all it's aspects.

Show off and play in front of the camera (and to the other participants!)

1. Explore the way you feel and see yourself right now. 

2. Or why not show off and celebrate your favourite sexiest body part for the camera. 

3. As time is limited for each participant you're encouraged to have an idea in mind, you can stage yourself the way you would like to be. A pose, a part of your body, a mood / scenario for your picture. You can bring an outfit, accessories, props, toys.

Just be imaginative, be bold, be a pig, be sweet, be yourself or become a character, dress up or undress. It's up to you! 

Jörg Andreas, born 1966, is filmmaker and photographer and lives in Berlin. He is the founder and for a long time producer and principal director of the gay porn studio "Cazzo".

Penetration doesn’t have to be limited to cocks, tongues, fingers or eyes. We can also use our consciousness to enter or  merge with anything or anybody. Using Continuum Movement, we can penetrate our bodies in an unusually deep way by increasing our capacity for sensory awareness and by surrendering to our felt, organismic responses. This awakens our pleasure and animal nature on a cellular level. We can connect to the joy and beauty of life pulsating through and moving as us.

Kai is a breath therapist based on Prof. Ilse Middendorf's work, an authorized Continuum Movement teacher, holds the German Heilpraktiker license for psychotherapy and co-founded the Somatic Academy of Berlin. He created "Authentic Eros - Explorations for Men" and curates the STRETCH festival. He believes that the conscious body and the reclaiming of Eros are crucial elements in our evolution toward an integral way of life. Kai teaches since 2002 in Europe and in the US.

In this workshop I invite you to undertake a journey to yourself. Within a safe space you can allow yourself to be fully held by another man, to surrender to the feeling of being held – and also you will hold another man.

Explore your subtle sensations that unfold from the shared silence. Find out how you can create more depth, surrender and connection in your intimate encounters. 

Peter Kogelbauer is a Gestalt therapist, Ludotrainer (“game therapist”) and trainer in communication, emotional intelligence and group processes. Collaborating therapist at the Center for Psychotherapy Atrium Gestalt in Barcelona. Co-founder and group facilitator in Espai d'Homes (Catalan for “Space for men”), a Barcelona-based initiative for promoting self-awareness, personal growth and well-being for men who love men. Peter gives individual sessions as well as courses and workshops for gay and bisexual men, where he aims to integrate the Gestalt approach with playful and creative elements.

Habits, patterns, and routines bring comfort and stability to our everyday lives. But what happens when those routines grow stale? Whether you’re partnered and puzzling over how to keep sex juicy or single and pondering new ways to make contact, what does it take to “get outside the box”?

In this presentation, we will practice imagining new ways of connecting with each other that involve verbal communication, and touch, and artistic expression (music, movement, pictures).

Don Shewey is a writer and pleasure activist in New York City. He is a Body Electric-School trained masseur and sacred intimate as well as a certified Gestalt Therapist, and his private practice specialises in sex and intimacy coaching. His work as a teacher and community health activist revolves around healing through pleasure, adult sex education, and grounded spiritual practice.

Welcome to the pleasure zone:  in this vocal-workshop we can do no wrong. We all have the potential to express ourself through voice and body. We make sure we are connected  and play with our creative energy via vocal, movement and funky material. If we open up, we can evolve ourself and have more fun. We use our intention and surrender, that there will always something coherent come out of us – especially if we are balanced. We improvise and experience our vocal and moving performance in the group. We enjoy the power of singing together and color our creative abilities.

André Eigen Coach for music und movement. He is working with teams & firms for their creative resources („sound step colour“). Co-Manager of the „creativityschool Bergisch Gladbach/ Germany“  institute for cultural education. Initiator of the mobile musical exhibition „Klang-Räume“. Singer & songwriter

Felix is proposing a collective experience: a space of carefully designed vibrations, contininously using breath, voice and movement. The participants become co-creators of a sound and body sculpture, which is evolving in unpredictable ways. This material is combined with tools for physical touch – which everyone can use and adapt according to individual desires and needs. Once these instruments are mastered the score will move into a permissive, transgressive and transformative collective creation, accentuated by moments of reflection and analysis, thus give each creation its unique colour and taste.

The question is: Can the individual dissolve into the collective and come back empowered? Pleasure is the path; body awareness, a sex positive  attitude and a substantial culture of touch are necessary prerequisites for this event, as well as discipline, courage and flexibility.

Felix works as a dancer, his experimental dance pieces and installations, his participatory work, but also his choreographies for ballet companies earned him an international reputation. For the last ten years he has been involved in a practical and theoretical investigation of BDSM and its connection to artistic practices, developing an art and philosophy of sensual communication. He directs the performance space schwelle7 in Berlin and curates the annual festival Xplore in Berlin as well as its international branches. 

Lomi-Lomi (massage) Nui (healing) has its roots in the ancient Hawaaian tradition of healers(Kahuna Lapa'au). Still today many people turn to the Kahunas, not only for healing, but also for advice and counseling. But not only Kahunas practice Lomi-Lomi Nui. Many families have a long-running tradition with their very own unique style of massage. Flowing motions, at times subtle, at times dynamic, delivered from the heart aim to give impulses that open the way towards health and well-being. Before every massage the practioner sings the traditional prayer for help and support.The receiver is the choreographer; you are the dancer.

Roman started his career as a modern dancer in New York. Injuires forced him to give up the life of a dancer, and pushed him into becoming a massage therapist and bodyworker, trained in many massage techniques. Many residential trainings in Lomi Massage in Hawaii followed and opened a new world, where healing touch, dance, and spirituality became one.

Over the years, Roman has been giving many trainings in Lomi Lomi. For 16 years now, the love and respect for the "Queen of Massages" have been a fundamental part of his life. Apart from offering bodywork in his private practice in Nuremberg, Roman is a writer, singer, ritual worker and gives lectures about myths and fairy tales.

This workshop playfully breaks down some of the dynamics involving role play. Let yourself experience in multiple, brief scenarios your expressions of “power” and “surrender” and explore fluidity in regard to names and roles that verbally describe them.

Kai is a breath therapist based on Prof. Ilse Middendorf's work, an authorized Continuum Movement teacher, holds the German Heilpraktiker license for psychotherapy and co-founded the Somatic Academy of Berlin. He created "Authentic Eros - Explorations for Men" and curated the STRETCH festival. He believes that the conscious body and the reclaiming of Eros are crucial elements in our evolution toward an integral way of life. Kai teaches since 2002 in Europe and in the US.

Magic is ordinary and everywhere available.  Indigenous peoples around the world have long considered queer people to be sacred beings, magicians, and healers. Using our bodies and breath we will raise energy as a circle of men and give it back to Earth as an act of ritual, gratitude, and healing.

Ben Haggard is an artist, designer, author, and teacher.  He has been a pioneer in the field of ecological design.  He is also a trained body worker and sacred intimate.  Ben is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but lives part time in Berlin with his partner, a musician. 

Almost all of us grew up in straight families without direct gay role models, but (known to us or not) we all have gay ancestors. In this workshop, using elements of ritual, we connect to the ancestor field that lies behind us so we can step into the footprints of the gay men from our own lineage. In each generation, gay men have been born - regardless if they could live an open life or not, gay men have always been there, throughout all time. Connection to our own gay ancestors gives us a new sense of place, it gives us roots and ground.

Shamanic practitioner for more than 25 years, Daan has studied with traditional healers and shamanic teachers from carious cultures (Lakota, Southern Ute, Sami and others). Combining elements of shamanic ritual and family constellations, he developed Systemic Ritual®. Daan is the author of seven books, his work has been published in then languages. He works internationally and lives in Amsterdam and Berlin.

Male labor is an experiment of becoming through embodying physical qualities, emotional states and breathing patterns usually accompanying a process of birth. Though anatomically not possible for the male body, I believe that labor is a collective human experience that can connect us to a fundamental life force beyond gender and sexual orientation. For the (hu)man to become whole, embodying the female experience can generate personal liberation, collective healing or simply a smile on the lips :)

Christine Borch is a choreographer, dancer, vocalist, writer, spiritual midwife and light warrior living as a contemporary nomad. The core of her work is based on experimenting with physical, sensorial and spiritual processes of transformation within choreographic structures. She presents her performances, texts and workshops throughout Europe grounded in her own lived female experience. Recently she spent half a year studying plant shamanism with indigenous tribes in the Amazon forest of Brazil. 

In this version of contact improvisation it is allowed to touch the entire body by chance and also intentionally.  Co-creative dancing and being with others, assuming active and passive roles in various percentages, queer sensuality, erotic, even acrobatic moments – all of this will be put into context with each other.  A safe container will be held which will allow the participants to express themselves fully and freely.  This will not only be a lot of fun, this practice also has a very integrative and healing effect.

Ralf Jaroschinski was born in Southern Germany and grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He trained to become a dancer in Hannover, Germany, and New York.  He works as a dancer, choreographer and teacher since 30 years.  Since about 15 years, he focuses on contact improvisation and facilitates it in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia.  In 2009, he developed „sensual contact improvisation“ in San Francisco and has already taught several workshops and class series in the US, Peru, Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany.