Essential Motion Senior Leaders
Jane Flint and Karen Roeper have been collaborating with one another for close to thirty years. Together they created the “Eyes of the Beholder” workshops and offered them between 1994 and 2004. Those workshops combined Essential Motion with video feedback, which at the time was new and sometimes challenging for people. Over the past couple of years, they’ve expanded what they learned from “Eyes of the Beholder” by making use of the video features on peoples’ smartphones as they develop their own Essential Motion practices during live workshops.
Since her college days, Jane Flint has brought her passions for lifelong learning and the human capacity for healing to her decades-long thought partnership with Karen Roeper. From developing “Eyes of the Beholder” to imagining Essential Motion leadership training and virtual groups to laying the groundwork for somatic leadership at The Roeper School, Jane and Karen have been witnesses to their own and each other’s lives.
Jane is an author, poet, and lay Zen Priest.
Diahna Fortuna has been performing in theater and dance since she was four years old and has been teaching Essential Motion classes & groups throughout the Bay Area since 2000. She’s studied with Karen Roeper, Founder of Essential Motion, since 1997 and continues to assist Karen’s gourp trainings. Diahna enjoys inspiring her clients, students, and audience members in becoming more enlivened, relaxed, and joyful in their bodies.
Diahna supports clients and students of all ages and physical capacities, teaching individuals and groups ways to embody their creative power as they enrich their mind-body connection. In private practice since 1994, she draws on an extensive repertoire of techniques; BA in dance, Breema Bodywork instructor and practitioner, Rosen Method practitioner, Essential Motion instructor, Somatic Coach, Therapeutic Massage practitioner, and certified Pregnancy and Postpartum Massage Therapist. She has built a brand for large online movement/dance celebrations that she designs and conducts for corporations.
Watch her interviewing Annie Murphy Paul, Author of The Extended Mind: Thinking Outside the Brain
Pat Samples unexpectedly passed in January 2024. It’s a big loss for our EM community and our thoughts are with her family.
She was a passionate advocate for conscious aging. She helped people find meaning and peace of mind as they age. She showed them how to uncover the brilliance in their bodies, express their creativity, and live from their spiritual essence—so they could live their older years as a creative force, with an unbridled sense of freedom.
Pat, a certified Essential Motion Leader, was an international speaker, workshop leader and the author of eight books, including Body Odyssey: Lessons from the Bones and Belly and The Secret Wisdom of a Woman’s Body: Freeing Yourself to Live Passionately and Age Fearlessly. The Essential Motion process is featured in both books and in her TEDx talk called “Your Aging Body Is a Great Read”.
Read more about Pat at www.patsamples.com.
Flea (Felicia Tripp) is a dancer, healer, and lover of social justice and wellness. As a nature-based, somatic life and career coach, Flea steps into every meeting intending to listen with her body, mind and heart and offer a healing space where clients can tap into their bodies, minds and hearts to discover themselves and create change as they desire. In her form of healing justice, Flea guides people to call upon nature, spirit, their identities and emotions to unearth and embody their intentions.
Flea, a certified Essential Motion Leader, is a somatic life and career coach, healer, and educator. She runs her own coaching and consulting practice, Trippin’ with Reflection, while also working as a higher education professional for 15+ years. Flea has created her own healing offering, called Dancing with Grief, that draws upon ritual and Essential Motion strategies to allow people to find a home in their bodies/spirits for the wandering feelings of loss. Learn more at https://www.linkedin.com/in/feliciatripp/