Curiosity Unleashed
27 May - 1 June 2025
Touch&Play Cologne: CURIOSITY UNLEASHED
How does it alter our relations when our actions are impregnated by a sense of curiosity?
How do our ways change if we are willing to cultivate an embodied attitude of openness and interest?
What leashes and collars are stopping you? When embracing our human desire to learn and to explore the unknown rather than sticking to familiar ideas and judgements, we open up a field of new experiences. Widening our understanding of the multitude of opportunities in our dance, the variety of traits and qualities in our community, and the possibilities of our own movements – inside and outside.
The invitation of this year’s Touch&Play Cologne gathering is to cultivate a common ground of unleashed curiosity towards our Relational Bodies. Freeing our socialised inhibitions concerning ourselves, others, and our community. This may mean overcoming judgements that have held us back from promising potential in the past. Which may in turn lead us to a fuller and richer experience of what it means to be alive.
The word “curiosity” goes back to the term “cura” meaning “to care”. Caring for ourselves and those around us can bring us both more tenderness as well as a space to welcome in more edginess and unknowing.
Imagine what gifts and challenges it could bring to stick to a dance or connection that initially is not smooth and flowy. Or engaging in a conversation with someone who’s mind works totally different from yours. Still showing up, still caring, still relating and the whole time staying curious.
Handling differences is one of humanity’s biggest challenges not only in personal relationships, but also throughout history and in geopolitics. What if rather than wining each other over or trying to eliminate differences, we call in our varying truths and face them with a sense of welcome and wonder?
The root “cura” also means to heal. Healing is to make or become whole. What if we together cultivate an environment where we can start to be curious around all our sensations, including difficult feelings like anxiety, shame or sadness? If we can become interested in learning from them and exploring them in our bodies, understanding that they are here to show us what needs caring for?
In Contact Improvisation, Tantra, Somatics, Kink, Ritual and Community we want to unleash our sense of curiosity and invite in the expansion and inclusion this can offer.
Let’s explore together and plant seeds in our community culture that we might take home from there to our individual lives and environments.
Come and Unleash your Curiosity with us!
Applications are open
Touch&Play gatherings are co-creations that emerges from an intimate collaboration between the curation team, and the teachers, artists, helpers team and participants that join the retreat. We’re an experimental container and open to inspiring off-beat ideas that can support the wider Touch&Play exploration of the Relation Body.
Come and dive with us into the lab of curiosity unleashed!
ABOUT THE TOUCH&PLAY MOVEMENT
“Leave your relationships more beautiful than you found them”
Touch&Play is an exciting and growing global network of local communities that come together around a set of shared practices and a common culture. We’ve been organizing retreats and community gatherings since 2010 and have held events in 16 different countries and 4 different continents. Our events strike a balance between the local context and culture where a retreat takes places and the global embodied, humanistic and spiritual practices and values that underpin our work. In the end we are striving to build a deeply caring and seriously playful world where we can live authentically and in peace with ourselves and our communities.
YOU BELONG HERE
Touch&Play invites individuals to explore their authenticity and relational dynamics in safer and supportive spaces. It acknowledges that embracing life is not just about celebrating strengths and virtues, but also about acknowledging one’s limits, and shadows, fostering a holistic journey of self-discovery and growth.
Testimonials
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