The Program for
Plural Third Body
Staff
Dr. Shinar Pinkas-Samet, Prof. Daniela Eisenberg- Shafran, Dr. Liora Bar-Tur, Galit Lis, Yael Itay- Pak
Advanced Training for Therapists: Body-Aware Psychotherapy in Aging
The course “Plural Third Body” is a unique and innovative theoretical – clinical – movement - based program, offered for the first time in Israel. It integrates thinking about aging, body–movement practice, and clinical study, grounded in an approach that regards the aging body as a living source of knowledge - not merely an object of observation.
The course departs from the premise that aging does not occur “within a single body,” but rather within an intercorporeal field - a living space in which bodies meet, affect one another, and are co-created. The aging body is understood here as layered and multi-temporal, carrying within it memory, movement, loss, and vitality simultaneously.
The Body-Aware Psychotherapy Program offers a profound, innovative, and distinctive course of study, designed to deepen therapists’ bodily awareness and to strengthen their connection to zones of aliveness and vitality. Through a wide range of embodied–experiential modes of inquiry, the program refines the physical body and the spectrum of possibilities inherent in the living body, linking psyche and consciousness to the bodily unconscious and to the multiplicity of languages that dwell within it. Beyond personal development and the intrinsic joy of embodiment, the body holds information that is not always accessible to verbal language. Within the program, participants learn to work with somatic patterns, bodily memories, and symptoms; to extract movement–linguistic expressions; and to move back and forth between physical and psychic layers of experience. Some of this material is translated into clinical content, while other aspects are absorbed into the body as residue, continuing to reverberate across the different layers of experience.
The program is intended for licensed therapists holding a master’s degree in a therapeutic discipline, with at least six years of clinical experience, who maintain an ongoing embodied practice (such as meditation, yoga, dance, or another awareness-based movement discipline).
Priority will be given to applicants who have completed a foundational psychotherapy training program.
Throughout the program, the group is accompanied by one or two assistants who participate in all sessions and provide continuity, containment, and additional perspectives within the learning process.
Participants are strongly encouraged to support their studies through ongoing personal therapy, appropriate to their stage of professional development and to the depth of the material studied. In addition, the program includes separate payment for individual and group supervision,selected from a carefully curated list of supervisors who combine deep psychotherapeutic training with substantial somatic and movement-based practice. This structure is intended to ensure that the clinical integration of the work is held with both emotional rigor and embodied sensitivity.
The program spans two academic years. Classes meet bi-weekly in sessions of six and a half academic hours each.
Each year includes 22 meetings, not including performances and artist talks (2–3 per year).
The total scope of study is 150 academic hours per year.
The program takes place at Kelim — Center for Contemporary Choreography, in a spacious and welcoming studio at 2 Nefaha Street, Bat Yam.
The uniqueness of the program is articulated through three central dimensions:
Theoretical–conceptual expansion
Participants are exposed to a broad spectrum of contemporary thinking about the body, including philosophical, choreographic, somatic, and psychoanalytic perspectives. The program encourages dialogue among these approaches and offers an entry point into a rich and evolving field of embodied clinical practice in Israel and internationally.
Somatic work within a psychodynamic framework
The program integrates practices, body-based clinical thinking, and somatically focused interventions within psychodynamic psychotherapy, with the aim of bringing the actual bodies of both therapist and patient into fuller presence in the analytic encounter and the therapeutic relationship.
Artistic collaboration and choreographic inquiry
The program includes artist workshops led by prominent choreographers from Israel and abroad. It is grounded in long-term, sustained research and dialogue between these artists and the program’s founder, with the aim of examining which aspects of choreographic thinking and practice can nourish, enrich, and transform clinical work.
This collaboration includes attendance at dance performances, artist talks, and embodied studio-based inquiry, opening a reflective space that links choreographic experience with clinical thinking.
The program is grounded in eight core anchors:
1.
Phenomenological anchor — with particular emphasis on the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as articulated in his seminal work Phenomenology of Perception.
2.
Clinical anchor — the evolution of the body in psychotherapy, from Freud to contemporary relational psychoanalytic perspectives.
3.
Critical perspectives — body, language, politics, and relations of power, inspired by Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, Iris Marion Young, and Jessica Benjamin, and in dialogue with contemporary feminist and critical thinkers of the body, movement, and embodiment, emphasizing the multiplicity of languages and modes of experience.
4.
Body psychotherapy — from the classical traditions of body psychotherapy (Janet and Reich) to the work of Bessel van der Kolk and contemporary neuroscience research.
5.
Physiological–experiential learning — understanding bodily processes through direct, lived experience.
6.
Embodied inquiry — diverse methods of bodily and movement-based investigation.
7.
Choreographic–artistic anchor — an exploration of how creative processes, choreographic thinking, and artistic practices may generate change, transformation, and renewed movement of experience, meaning, and relationship.
8.
Performance in supervisory processes — a bodily–experiential action in which the therapist brings the therapeutic experience into live enactment, as an act of re-created making. This process enables thinking, reflection, and transformation through the body, resonance, and collective presence. Supervision thus becomes a liminal space of living learning, in which clinical knowledge emerges through enactment rather than through verbal representation alone.
Theory of Aging — Psychological, clinical, and phenomenological perspectives on aging processes in the third and fourth age
Body-Aware Clinical Thinking — The body as an active field within the therapeutic encounter, including work with bodily transference and non-verbal languages
Experiential Movement Inquiry — Studio-based work, centered on the practice of Galit Liss with older adults, enabling an encounter with the body not as knowledge about the body, but as a lived, moving, and sensed experience
Throughout the course, we will explore how the aging body reorganizes time, space, and identity, and how sensations such as pain, fatigue, or trembling are not merely symptoms, but modes of being in the world. We will cultivate the capacity to dwell within this complexity through bodily inquiry, and examine how movement, image, and sensation may become a clinical language - particularly where words are insufficient.
The uniqueness of this course lies in the encounter between academic knowledge, movement practice, and living research - developed in collaboration with the Body-Aware Psychotherapy Program, the Clinical Program in Psychology of Aging at Ruppin Academic Center, and the work of Galit Liss. This encounter seeks to rethink body, aging, and therapy - not only through repair, but through opening to vitality, movement, and meaning, even within conditions of finitude.
Within the course, we will engage with the concept of the Ageful Body, coined by Prof. Daniela Aisenberg-Shafran and Dr. Shinar Pinkas-Samet as part of their joint research on Galit Liss’s work.
In contrast to the Ageless Body - a body that seeks to erase signs of time, distance itself from aging, and preserve an ideal of youth - the Ageful Body offers a different perspective: a body full of age. A body that carries within it time, memory, movement, loss, experience, and vitality.
The aging body is not merely a body that has “grown older,” but a body in which time is inscribed and accumulated. Every slowing down, shift in tone, movement limitation, or change in rhythm is not only a sign of decline, but also an expression of rich bodily history. In this sense, the body is not only a testament to what has been lost, but also to what has been gathered.
From this perspective, working with the aging body is not an attempt to restore a former body or erase the marks of time, but rather to learn to listen to the new knowledge the body embodies. This marks a shift - from denial or struggle against time, toward dwelling within it, reading it, and working (from within) it.
The Ageful Body also invites a rethinking of agency. Here, agency is not expressed through absolute control or infinite expansion, but through the capacity to regulate, choose, refine, suspend, and remain in movement even within limitation. It is a reflexive agency, operating within conditions of finitude rather than outside them.
At the same time, the concept challenges the simple distinction between activity and passivity: slowing down, stopping, resting, or dwelling are not necessarily signs of resignation, but rather different modes of action and presence. Thus, the Ageful Body proposes an alternative aesthetics and ethics of the body - an aesthetics of time, layering, complexity, and a visibility not dependent on youthful ideals.
Scope: Semester course, 60 academic hours
Dates: December 15, 2026 – March 9, 2027
Time: 10:15–13:45
Format: Hybrid — Ruppin Campus, Zoom, studio in North Tel Aviv
Certification: Graduates will receive a certificate of specialization in psychotherapy with older adults, awarded by the Clinical Program in Psychology of Aging, in collaboration with Kama Center and the Body-Aware Psychotherapy Program
Academic Director - Prof. Daniela Aisenberg-Shafran
Clinical psychologist, PhD in neuropsychology of healthy aging. Her research integrates interventions for preserving cognitive capacities and promoting well-being in aging.
Head of the Clinical Program in Psychology of Aging, Ruppin Academic Center.
Director of Kama Center, a unique therapeutic model for making psychotherapy accessible in later life.
Developer of a mindfulness-based intervention protocol for aging populations, implemented with hundreds of older adults across the country.
Professional Director - Dr. Shinar Pinkas-Samet
Bibliotherapist,psychodynamic psychotherapist, and body researcher.
Head of the Body-Aware Psychotherapy Program—integrating somatic, movement-based, and pre-verbal models into psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
Her research explores the relationship between choreography, therapy, language, and creative processes, in collaboration with numerou choreographers, including Galit Liss; the Gaga movement language developed by Ohad Naharin; and Yasmeen Godder in her work on bodily empathy.
Associate Artistic Director -Galit Liss
Choreographer, teacher, founder, and artistic director of the “Gila” School for Movement and Performing Arts for older women.
Began her work as a creator in 2008 after many years of teaching modern dance and composition, creating for dance departments, and working in arts administration.
For over 15 years, she has created with women aged 60–88 who are non-dancers, presenting her works in festivals in Israel and internationally.
She developed the “Gila Language” - a unique methodology for working with the mature body through exploration of its distinct physiological aesthetics.
Recipient of the Rosenblum Prize for Performing Arts (2022, Tel Aviv–Yafo Municipality) in the category of promising artists, and recognized as one of the “People of the Year” by Keshet and Mifal HaPais (2022).
Member of the Choreographers Association; graduate of the Musrara School of Art (Artists for Social Change program); holds an MA from the Academy of Music and Dance.
Liora Bar-Tur - A clinical psychologist, certified psychotherapy supervisor, and gerontologist. In her clinical, academic, and research work, she specializes in mental health in later life, with particular emphasis on the psychological challenges of advanced old age, intergenerational family dynamics, loss and aging, ageism, psychological resilience, and suicide prevention. She is a partner at “Tzometim,” a private institute specializing in counseling and services for older adults and multigenerational families.Dr. Bar-Tur is the author of thebooks The Challenge of Aging: Mental Health, Assessment and Treatment and A Second Thought on Life – Conversations with Naftali.She serves as a board member of the The Israeli Gerontological Society and heads the roundtable on suicide in old age within the National Council for Suicide Prevention at the Israeli Ministry of Health. She is also a member of the advisory committee of the National Association for Suicide Prevention and serves on the board of KAMA Center.
Yael Itay-Pak - Clinical psychologist and supervisor.
Supervisor at the School of Psychotherapy, University of Haifa, and at the Winnicott Center, Givat Haim.
Course Sessions
10:15–11:45 — Dr. Shinar Pinkas-Samet
Opening: Introduction to Body-Aware Psychotherapy — The Body as a Living Therapeutic Field
12:15–13:45 — Prof. Daniela Aisenberg-Shafran
Aging Processes and Successful Aging
10:15 11:45- Prof. Daniela Aizenberg- Shafran
Psychotherapy in Aging
12:15-13:45- Dr. Shinar Pinkas-Samet
Body-Aware Psychotherapy in Aging
Prof. Daniela Aizenberg- Shafran and Dr. Shinar Pinkas-Samet
Research on Dance in Aging: From Dance in Aging to A Somatic–Movement Model for Working with Older Adults: Laying the Foundations
Galit Liss
The Presence of the Body in Space: A Live Studio Practice and an Encounter with Women Who Dance
Dr. shinar pinkas-Samet
“Gila Language”: On Galit Liss’s Methodology in Working with Older Adults-
In Practice
10:15-11:45 - Dr. Shinar Pinkas-Samet
Bodily Inquiry A & B:
Multiplicity of languages in the clinic; gestures and physical imagery
12:15-13:45- Yael Itai-Pak
Clinical Supervision- Encounters: The Emotional Meeting Between Therapist and Older Patients- Part A& B
Dr Shinar Pinkas-Samet
Working within limitation:
Embodied empathy, pain, surrender and submission
10:15 - 11:45 - Dr. Shinar Pinkas-Samet
Body-Aware Supervision: Case Study
12:15-13:45 - Yael itay-Pak
Clinical Supervision- Encounters: The Emotional Meeting Between Therapist and Older Patients- Part C
Prof. Daniela aizenberg-Shfran\ Dr. Shinar pinkas-Samet& Liora Bar-tur
Integration: Body, Aging, and Clinic
Prof. Daniela aizenberg-Shfran& Dr. Shinar pinkas-Samet
Conclusion and Closing: Aging as a developmental space
Second Year
While the first year is oriented toward the experience of the personal body, interpersonal relationships, and being-in-the-world—aimed at opening the sensory range, becoming acquainted with bodily language from within, developing a new and refined movement repertoire, and deepening bodily inquiry and diverse body–mind experiences—the second year moves toward a deeper engagement with practice and the development of embodied–clinical skills through supervision processes. In addition, participants will be introduced to additional creators with a therapeutic orientation, with the aim of weaving together therapy, language, body, choreography, and creative processes.
The highlight of the year is the artist workshops, in which we will spend extended time immersed in the bodily inquiry of leading creators from Israel and abroad, and be exposed to their working materials. Their inspiration and spirit will accompany us in our therapeutic work and within the creative processes we will undertake as an integral part of our development—as individuals, as therapists, and as human beings in the world.
Body, Movement, and the Nervous System – Dr. Ram Matzliach (MD)
An experiential–theoretical course focusing on the living body as a space of sensation, movement, and consciousness, and on the relationship between physiological, emotional, and clinical processes.
Sensation and Mobilizing the Body
Introduction to the nervous system, sensory systems (proprioception, interoception, and exteroception), and the perception of movement in space. Exploration of bodily experience, choice, and movement from within awareness.
Autonomic Defense and Emotional Touch
In-depth study of the autonomic nervous system, muscle tone, reflexes, and patterns of touch. Working with tension, energy, and emotional regulation through the body.
Shifts in Consciousness and Embodied Learning
Exploration of altered states of consciousness, emotional regulation, and their impact on movement and learning. Processes of deconstruction and reconstruction of experience and movement.
Instability, Holding, and Integration
Engagement with practices of instability and holding, psycho–somatic integration, and a deeper examination of the relationship between movement, structure, and meaning.
Artist Workshops
One-Day Workshop with Orly Portal – Primordial Tribal Movement: Pelvic Work
Dance connects the human being to their highest and deepest values, allowing one to live their essence fully and to delight in being a wondrous creature. The body is a vessel—the great container of light; the physical home, the dwelling of the human being, is a sanctuary in which one can contemplate, learn, and develop endlessly.
The workshop focuses on the method Orly has developed following in-depth research into feminine movement in general, and the pelvic girdle in particular. Orly guides women to inhabit their pelvis—to hold both vulnerability and resilience—and to grow in order to continue leading this vital energy. At the same time, she opens a gateway for men to embody softness and desire alongside healthy authority—an authority that does not misuse power.
Orly invites each participant, women and men alike, to fully inhabit their being—both physical and mental—and to practice connecting to the roots of movement and existence: to the source, to the body, and to the self. This is a form of movement that honors the bodies and psyches of women and men, together and separately.
Our meeting will support each participant in their own pelvis. We will practice the method together and learn a series of exercises that allow access to hidden places in both body and psyche. We will converse, dance spontaneous primordial tribal movement in space, and explore relationships through movement and shared weight within the spatial field.
Two-Day Workshop with Galit Liss – The Presence of the Body in the Present
A two-day intensive workshop, preceded by a session dedicated to the shared research conducted by Galit Liss together with Dr. Shinar Pinkas-Samet, Dr. Daniela Eisenberg-Shafran, and Dr. Liora Bartur from the Department of Clinical Psychology of Aging at Ruppin Academic Center.
The movement workshop offers an introduction to Galit Liss’s working method, “The Language of Age,” which focuses on the presence of the body in the present moment, with particular attention to work with the aging body. We will outline the methodological language developed by Liss through work with “movement anchors,” including the use of imagination, imagery, and
the various senses, as well as the application of principles of cortical memory—encoding, storage, and retrieval—to performative artistic practice.
The workshop will include a conversation with the choreographer and participants about creative processes, and especially about what lies between them: ageism, pain, falling, libido, and the beauty of the body at every age.
On the second day, we will spend time in Galit Liss’s studio, view a rehearsal of “Blue Ones,” engage in movement practice with the women dancers, and hold a shared discussion with them.
Experiential Anatomy / Axis Syllabus – Nitzan Lederman
The Axis Syllabus method integrates floor work and upright movement, using structured material (set movement sequences) as well as improvisation. The work takes place individually or in pairs and involves exploration of the body inwardly and in relation to the physical and human space that surrounds us. The practice draws on a comprehensive body of knowledge from the sciences related to the moving body, including anatomy, physics, and their integration through biomechanics.
Therapeutic Performance – Dr. Shinar Pinkas-Samet
Introduction:
How does one create a performance? What is the relationship between performance, supervision, and therapy? We will study the principles of performance practice and view excerpts from classic performances, from the 1960s to the present day.
Clinical Seminar:
Within the seminar framework, each student will write a case description. Together, we will explore what elements can be brought to life and presented performatively. We will move from everyday gesture toward performance and then return again, in order to examine what can be carried back into therapy and into life. The seminar will engage with various modes of supervision, including embodied re-enactment, fishbowl work, and related methods.
Creative Processes - Arie Borstein, Dr. Shinar Pinkas-Samet, Einat Tal
As a living culmination of the two-year program, participants will engage in an ongoing creative process based on improvisation, which will gradually develop into a final movement work—both personal and collective. The process will serve as an integrative space in which embodied knowledge, clinical experience, and movement language meet and find creative expression. The improvisation processes will be guided by Arie Borstein, with an emphasis on developing movement language, listening, and the exploration of movement materials.
Second Year
Year A is dedicated to establishing the foundations of body-oriented psychotherapy and focuses on embodied presence and the development of embodied clinical thinking. The year unfolds as a moving and evolving research laboratory, centered on ongoing embodied exploration, aimed at refining the physical body and deepening capacities of attention, movement, and regulation. The work moves through time and space in relation to the private body, the body of the other, and the atmosphere that emerges between bodies in encounter.
We engage with images not as conceptual ideas or metaphors, but as living states to be experienced and enacted through the body itself.
Year A is dedicated to establishing the foundations of body-oriented psychotherapy and focuses on embodied presence and the development of embodied clinical thinking. The year unfolds as a moving and evolving research laboratory, centered on ongoing embodied exploration, aimed at refining the physical body and deepening capacities of attention, movement, and regulation. The work moves through time and space in relation to the private body, the body of the other, and the atmosphere that emerges between bodies in encounter.
We engage with images not as conceptual ideas or metaphors, but as living states to be experienced and enacted through the body itself.
Answe
Year A is dedicated to establishing the foundations of body-oriented psychotherapy and focuses on embodied presence and the development of embodied clinical thinking. The year unfolds as a moving and evolving research laboratory, centered on ongoing embodied exploration, aimed at refining the physical body and deepening capacities of attention, movement, and regulation. The work moves through time and space in relation to the private body, the body of the other, and the atmosphere that emerges between bodies in encounter.
We engage with images not as conceptual ideas or metaphors, but as living states to be experienced and enacted through the body itself.
Answer
Year A is dedicated to establishing the foundations of body-oriented psychotherapy and focuses on embodied presence and the development of embodied clinical thinking. The year unfolds as a moving and evolving research laboratory, centered on ongoing embodied exploration, aimed at refining the physical body and deepening capacities of attention, movement, and regulation. The work moves through time and space in relation to the private body, the body of the other, and the atmosphere that emerges between bodies in encounter.
We engage with images not as conceptual ideas or metaphors, but as living states to be experienced and enacted through the body itself.
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Previous BAP Photos
Masterclass by Galit Liss, part of the BAP Program, 2025. Photo: Shinar Samet Pinkas
Previous BAP photos
From a masterclass with Yasmeen Godder – Somatic Empathy: Working with People Living with Parkinson’s, 2024 photo: Shinar Samet Pinkas
Previous BAP photos
From a masterclass by Galit Liss, 2025, as part of the Body-Oriented Psychotherapy Program. Photo: Shinar Samet Pinkas