Donnalea Van Vleet Goelz, PhD
Activate the fluid, living intelligence of your cells by listening to what’s present in your body to gently dissolve pain and trauma, recover from injuries, and enhance mobility with age.
Through the powerful integration of breath, sound, sensation, innovation, and somatic movement, you’ll revive your body’s natural capacity for healing, wholeness, and ease.
What if the discomfort in your mind and body isn’t something to push through, but a signal from within asking you to slow down and listen?
Maybe you've spent years trying to feel better — through various therapies— but still feel disconnected, trapped in old patterns, overwhelmed with emotion, or simply tense in your body.
In a world that conditions us to be efficient, productive, and always “fine,” we’ve forgotten that the body is not a machine. It’s a fluid, living intelligence — and when we learn to listen, profound healing becomes possible, shares Donnalea Van Vleet Goelz, PhD, Executive Director of Continuum Movement®.
Donnalea brings decades of experience at the intersection of science, movement, and healing. With a PhD in somatic psychology, training in energy medicine, and a lifetime immersion in dance and embodiment, she carries the lineage of Continuum Movement forward with depth, clarity, and heart.
Modern science is catching up with what ancient cultures have always known: we carry trauma in the body — and we can’t think or talk our way out of it.
That’s why Continuum Movement integrates tools from polyvagal theory, somatic psychology, embryology, and more — offering a grounded, research-backed approach to unwinding trauma from the inside out, which soothes the stress response and invites deep states of calm awareness.
Continuum Movement is a somatic method developed by Emilie Conrad, and now taught by Donnalea, that invites you into a new relationship with your body — one based not in fixing, but in listening.
Because the human body is composed of nearly 70% water, we are inherently fluid beings — designed to move, feel, and respond with grace. Water, the most resonant element in the cosmos, carries information that shapes who we are. Continuum helps us reconnect to this bio-intelligence so the separation of body, mind, and spirit can begin to dissolve… revealing a somatic sense of wholeness and flow, as you restore your fluidity and vitality.
Grounded in science and infused with spirit, this practice works with five foundational elements: breath, sound, movement, sensation, and innovation. Together, they form the gateway to what Emilie called the fluid system — a vast, intelligent network within you that’s always responding, adapting, and offering information.
Join Donnalea for a 7-week course, where you’ll learn how to gently tap into this system — designed especially for pain, injury recovery, and aging bodies — and experience your body not as a collection of symptoms, but as a source of healing, connection, and creativity.
Through subtle, wave-like movements called dives, you’ll dissolve chronic tension and release patterns stored in tissue. Through breath and sound, you’ll calm your nervous system and open up new pathways for vitality. And through sensation, you’ll begin to recognize the quiet signals of your body — so you can respond from wisdom instead of habit.
You’ll learn how to identify your own nervous system responses — fight, flight, freeze, or shutdown — and use breath and sound to gently bring yourself back into a state of regulation. You’ll begin to understand the difference between emotions and sensations, and how working with first-order sensations can create a direct pathway to healing.
And perhaps most importantly, you’ll remember that pleasure and play are essential resources — not luxuries — on your healing path. Movement becomes a meditative, even mystical, practice — opening a pathway to expanded consciousness through somatic awareness.
Each session includes a rich blend of guided movement, scientific insight, group reflection, and personal inquiry. You’ll be introduced to specific breath practices like the O Breath, Hu Breath, Cave Breath, Theta Breath, and Lunar Breath — each offering a unique way to support your nervous system, soften tissue, and increase self-awareness.
As you move through the course, you’ll experience firsthand how:
- Sound can dissolve tension and shift locked patterns
- Breath can rewire your nervous system and invite aliveness
- Movement — when fluid and spontaneous — can reignite creativity and connection
- Sensation can guide you out of trauma loops and into embodied presence
- Innovation is not something you force, but something you allow to train yourself into adapting to change becoming more resilient
Continuum Movement is cyclical, spiraling, responsive. It meets you where you are — whether you’re recovering from trauma, navigating chronic pain, or simply seeking a more authentic way to be in your body.
By the end of the course, you’ll walk away with a personalized somatic toolkit you can return to anytime full of tools to help you self-regulate, reconnect, and find safety and freedom within.
During this experiential course, you’ll:
- Learn how to use Continuum Movement’s 5 elements — breath, sound, movement, sensation, and innovation — to regulate your nervous system and reconnect with your body’s innate wisdom
- Be guided through immersive movement “dives” that help you soften tension, release old patterns, and experience your body as a fluid, responsive system
- Explore the science of interoception and polyvagal theory so you can better understand your body’s stress responses and gently shift back into regulation
- Discover how to track first-order sensations and use them as cues for self-awareness, healing, and emotional resilience
- Practice breath and sound techniques like the O Breath, Cave Breath, and Lunar Breath to support calm, creativity, and connection
- Understand the difference between emotions and sensations so you can stop overriding your body and start listening to it
- Reclaim movement as a playful, healing, and pleasurable practice instead of a mechanical or performative one
- Leave with a personalized somatic toolkit to help you navigate life’s challenges with more ease, embodiment, and self-agency
- Transform your relationship with pain, aging, and physical limitation as you shift from mechanical to fluid movement and rediscover ease, adaptability, and resilience in your body
- And much more…
As you deepen into this practice, you’ll begin to sense the subtle rhythms beneath your symptoms. You’ll gently uncover the habitual patterns — physical, emotional, and energetic — that have kept you bracing, disconnecting, or pushing through…
… and through breath, sound, and movement, you’ll begin to return to a sacred state of fluid presence, where your body becomes a portal for healing, your nervous system finds safety, and your soul is free to rest in wholeness.
If you’ve spent years caring for others, managing pain, or simply trying to hold it all together — this is your space to soften, slow down, and begin again.
Come home to the wisdom of your body — and let it lead the way.
What You’ll Discover in These 7 Weeks
In this 7-week transformational course, Donnalea will guide you through the skills and competencies you’ll need to successfully learn how to access your body’s fluid intelligence to release trauma, restore regulation, and reconnect with the deep wisdom within you.
Join the Livestream — or Stream Later to Watch at Your Convenience
You’ll connect with Donnalea and experience her teachings through livestreaming video via any connected device. This connection is easy to use and will enhance the impact of Donnalea’s transmissions. Can’t make it live? After each class, you can stream the video and audio recordings to enjoy anytime and anywhere at your convenience.
Course Sessions 2025-08-28 1:00:00 pm
This course will feature LIVE teachings, interactive sessions, experiential practices, and Q&A with Donnalea. Each session will build harmoniously upon the previous ones, so you’ll develop a complete holistic understanding of the practices, tools, and principles you’ll need to gain a practical, embodied toolkit to help you regulate your nervous system, release old patterns, and feel more grounded, connected, and alive.
Module 1: Explore Continuum Movement to Awaken Your Somatic Wisdom (2025-08-28 1:00:00 pm)
What does it mean to be a human being — not just culturally, but biologically and cosmically? This opening session invites you into the somatic world of Continuum Movement, a fluid-based approach to healing and self-inquiry developed by somatic pioneer Emilie Conrad. You'll begin by exploring what it means to engage in a somatic practice, from the inside out.
Through a guided experiential called a dive, you’ll learn how to slow down, listen to your body’s subtle cues, and access the deep well of wisdom within you. You’ll also be introduced to Continuum’s foundational elements — breath, sound, movement, sensation, and innovation — and begin to explore how cultural conditioning can limit the way we move, feel, and relate to our bodies — while the body’s biological intelligence holds the potential to restore fluidity, presence, and a deeper sense of wholeness.
This session offers a gentle but powerful entry point into reclaiming your body’s natural intelligence, reawakening your interoceptive capacity (your ability to sense what’s happening inside), and experiencing movement not as something you do, but something you are. Whether this is your first somatic experience or a return to inner knowing, you’ll be supported in cultivating a felt sense of connection, wholeness, and possibility.
In this session, you’ll:
- Be guided through your first Continuum dive, using breath, sound, and sensation to explore your body’s inner landscape
- Discover how to take a baseline — a foundational practice that teaches you how to sense what’s happening inside your body with clarity and presence
- Learn the 3 anatomies of Continuum: biological (primordial), cultural, and cosmic — and why they matter in somatic healing
- Explore what makes a practice somatic and how Continuum helps you access your body’s inner wisdom, rather than override it
- Experience the power of the O Breath and how specific sounds can restore fluidity, awareness, and presence
- Reframe movement as an expression of your essential being, not just an action or exercise
Module 2: Breathe Into Healing to Cultivate Nervous System Resilience (2025-09-04 1:00:00 pm)
Breath is the gateway to movement, sensation, and healing. In this session, you’ll explore breath as the first of the five foundational elements of Continuum Movement — and learn how it shapes your body’s ability to respond to stress, trauma, and emotions.
When breath is restricted, so is your capacity for vitality. By engaging with breath through specific somatic practices, you’ll begin to restore mobility, calm your system, and open space for healing to occur from within.
You’ll also be introduced to polyvagal theory, a groundbreaking framework that helps explain your nervous system’s trauma responses — fight, flight, freeze, and fawn— and how breath can guide you back to a state of regulation.
Through this lens, you’ll gain insight into your own patterns, sensations, and healing possibilities. You’ll explore both scientific research and somatic practices, expanding your set of tools for supporting your emotional, physical, and spiritual resilience.
In this session, you’ll:
- Be guided through an experiential practice using Continuum’s Cave Breath and E Breath to explore and shift your internal state
- Discover how your breath impacts nervous system regulation and begin to sense where yours may be restricted or held
- Learn how to apply polyvagal theory to understand your body's trauma responses and track when you're inside or outside your window of tolerance — the optimal zone where you can process life’s challenges without becoming overwhelmed or shut down
- Explore the connection between breath and healing, and how sensory awareness offers insight into emerging emotions
- Understand how breath supports fluidity, resilience, and a renewed sense of aliveness
Module 3: Use Vibrational Breath to Shift Patterns & Release Stagnation (2025-09-11 1:00:00 pm)
Sound is breath made audible — and in Continuum Movement, it becomes a powerful tool for dissolving tension, awakening sensation, and restoring flow. You’ll explore sound as a vibrational force that travels through your tissues, gently shifting density and re-patterning stagnant areas of the body.
You’ll learn how sounding activates both physical and emotional release, helping you reconnect with your body’s innate fluid system.
You’ll also dive into the science of cymatics — the study of visible sound — and explore how frequencies shape matter, affect the nervous system, and support healing.
From ancient chanting to modern sound therapy, you’ll look at how sound has long been used to restore balance and connection. By combining sound with breath and movement, you’ll increase agility, deepen interoception, and experience a renewed sense of resonance — within yourself and with the world around you.
In this session, you’ll:
- Explore the Hu Breath in an experiential sound dive to feel how vibration moves through and shifts your internal landscape
- Learn how sound affects locked tissue, helping release stagnation and support fluidity throughout the body
- Discover the science of cymatics and how sound waves create patterns that impact your physiology and emotional state
- Understand why sound has long been used in Indigenous healing practices — from chanting to drumming — and how it enhances connection and communication
- Review scientific studies on sound therapy and its effects on cellular health, nervous system regulation, and wellbeing
Module 4: Move Like Water to Awaken Fluid Intelligence Through Spirals, Waves & Play (2025-09-18 1:00:00 pm)
Movement isn’t something you do, it’s something you are. You’ll explore the third foundational element of Continuum Movement: movement itself, rooted in the undulating, spiraling language of the body’s fluid system.
Rather than repeating mechanical patterns, Continuum invites you into organic, wave-based motion that softens boundaries, dissolves constrictions, and awakens your bio-intelligence. You’ll learn how even the smallest micro-movements stimulate neurological growth, deepen sensation, and enhance creativity.
You’ll explore the science behind fluid motion, water’s resonant nature, and why it’s central to vitality and wellbeing. From blood to cerebrospinal fluid, the body is a living stream — and through sound, breath, and playful exploration, you’ll begin to move in harmony with that stream. As Emilie Conrad once said, “If it’s not pleasurable, why are we doing it?”
In this session, you’ll:
- Experience a movement dive using the Mem Breath to explore wave motion and fluid expression in your body
- Feel and sense how spirals, undulations, and micro-movements increase freedom, sensation, and creativity
- Learn about the body’s unified fluid system and how movement enhances the intelligence of blood, lymph, and cerebrospinal flow
- Understand why mechanical movement shuts down information flow — and how fluid movement restores it
- Explore scientific research on how fluid motion supports healing, emotional resilience, and expanded states of consciousness
Module 5: Awaken Interoception & Rewire Your Nervous System Through Pleasure (2025-09-25 1:00:00 pm)
In Continuum, sensation is more than just feeling — it’s a guide, a teacher, and a pathway to healing. You’ll explore sensation as the activating principle of the life force and deepen your capacity for interoception — your ability to perceive internal states like temperature, tingling, or pulsing. These first-order sensations are distinct from emotions, yet they often precede and inform emotional responses.
You’ll be introduced to the Affect System to help clarify the link between sensation and emotion, and explore how tuning into pleasure creates a powerful climate for self-renewal. This shift in focus is radical in a culture wired for negativity.
Drawing on polyvagal theory, you’ll learn how sensation, breath, sound, and movement can help shift your nervous system’s state and expand your window of tolerance. This session offers a fresh approach to emotional regulation — one grounded in presence, pleasure, and embodied wisdom.
In this session, you’ll:
- Be guided through an experiential practice to track first-order sensations and explore how they affect your state of being
- Learn what interoception is and why it’s key to embodiment, emotional regulation, and nervous system awareness
- Discover how sensation differs from emotion, and how the Affect System helps you recognize early signs of activation
- Explore the role of pleasure in healing and why tuning into what's right (rather than what's wrong) creates resilience
- Apply sensation tracking to polyvagal theory to understand how to shift into regulation using breath, sound, and movement
Module 6: Embody Innovation to Restore Aliveness Through Creative Adaptation & Flow (2025-10-09 1:00:00 pm)
Innovation is life’s natural rhythm. In this final element of Continuum Movement, you’ll explore innovation not as a lofty idea, but as a living, embodied process — one that allows you to respond to life’s challenges with creativity, adaptability, and resilience.
To innovate is to heal, to shift, to evolve. And when your body becomes a closed system — trapped in fixations or trauma patterns — it can’t access this essential flow. Drawing on general systems theory — developed by biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy to describe how living systems grow, adapt, and remain healthy — you’ll explore how the body, like any living system, thrives when it’s open to new information and experience. Continuum practices support this openness by encouraging spontaneous movement and inner listening, helping you stay fluid, responsive, and fully alive.
You’ll also explore trauma as a kind of closure — and how breath, movement, and awareness can gently reopen pathways to wholeness. Innovation is the foundation of resilience, and in this session, you’ll reclaim your capacity to move, feel, and be in new ways.
In this session, you’ll:
- Engage in an experiential dive to explore innovation through spontaneous, responsive movement using the Theta and Jacque Breaths
- Learn how to recognize and shift from a closed system to an open one — physically, emotionally, and energetically
- Understand Bertalanffy’s general systems theory and its relevance to healing, growth, and evolution
- Reframe trauma as a form of systemic closure, and explore how movement and breath can initiate gentle change
- Discover how innovation in your body’s patterns leads to greater aliveness, creativity, and adaptability in daily life
Module 7: Weave the 5 Elements Into a Living Healing Practice for Integration & Renewal (2025-10-16 1:00:00 pm)
In this final session, we gather the threads of everything you’ve explored — breath, sound, movement, sensation, and innovation — and weave them into a living practice of embodied wisdom.
Rather than offering a fixed system of postures or routines, Continuum invites you to enter a creative, ever-evolving relationship with your body’s intelligence. You’ll work somatically with all five elements, reflecting on how they interact and support your healing process.
You’ll explore how fluid movement and open attention — a receptive, non-judgmental way of sensing your inner experience — offer pathways to redefine structure, dissolve trauma patterns, and reawaken vitality. You’ll also be invited to share insights, ask lingering questions, and hear from others on how this work has supported them. Through pleasure, play, and presence, you’ll be reminded that you are nature — and that change, creativity, and healing are your birthrights.
In this session, you’ll:
- Move through an experiential practice weaving all 5 elements together, guided by the Lunar Breath
- Explore how to gently shift trauma patterns through fluid movement, sound, breath, sensation, and innovation
- Reflect on your own journey and hear from others how embodied awareness has brought them insight, relief, or change
- Learn how “open attention” supports healing by listening from within rather than overriding with thought or effort
- Reclaim pleasure and play as tools for healing, creativity, and ongoing self-renewal
SPECIAL BONUS OFFER
In addition to Donnalea Goelz’s transformative 7-module course, you’ll receive this special bonus offering to complement the course and take your understanding and practice to an even deeper level.
Continuum Movement — Somatic Communication and the Healing of Trauma
Chapter by Donnalea Van Vleet Goelz, PhD, From the Book, “Somatic-Oriented Therapies: Embodiment, Trauma, and Polyvagal Perspective”
Donnalea Van Vleet Goelz, PhD, is a contributing author to Somatic-Oriented Therapies, a groundbreaking volume that brings together leading-edge research and clinical practices for healing trauma through somatic modalities. Her chapter highlights the evidence-based use of breath, sound, movement, sensation, and innovation to support trauma resolution and restore embodied resilience. This comprehensive text pays tribute to the pioneers, scientists, and therapists who have advanced the field of somatics and offers a vision of healing as an accessible, body-centered journey. As Bessel van der Kolk, MD, author of The Body Keeps the Score, notes: “A brilliant, state-of-the-art compilation of therapeutic interventions for traumatic stress as well as the underlying science. Read this book!” Somatic-Oriented Therapies is an essential resource for clinicians, healers, and anyone interested in the transformative power of the body in trauma recovery.
An Introduction to the Essential Elements of Continuum Movement
Video From Donnalea Van Vleet Goelz, PhD
This 3-hour video introduces the five Essential Elements of Continuum Movement®: breath, sound, movement, sensation, and innovation. These elements form the foundation of every Continuum class and serve as gateways to deeper embodiment and healing. Whether you’re brand new to Continuum or looking to reconnect with the core principles, you’ll find this video to be a valuable resource. It’s perfect as both an introduction to the series and a touchstone you can revisit anytime to refresh and realign with the heart of the practice. Let it guide you into a more fluid, responsive, and alive relationship with your body.
What People Are Saying About Donnalea Van Vleet Goelz, PhD…
Join the Global Community
Continuum Movement® offers some of the most transformational online teachings available, within a thriving global community of learning and practice.
Join fellow students and practitioners to support and inspire each other as you integrate the teachings and practices Donnalea Van Vleet Goelz, PhD will share in this powerful program.
You’ll join an international community on the leading edge of manifesting a world grounded in the principles of cooperation, harmony, and reverence for all of life.
Here’s What You’ll Receive
Seven 90-Minute Class Sessions With Donnalea Van Vleet Goelz, PhD
Experience a unique opportunity to be mentored by and learn from the executive director of Continuum Movement Donnalea Van Vleet Goelz, PhD — from the comfort of your own home. Each class session includes a livestreaming video option and will guide you to regulate your nervous system, dissolve chronic patterns of tension, and reconnect with your body’s natural intelligence through breath, sound, sensation, and fluid movement. Course sessions are on 2025-08-28 1:00:00 pm.
Seven Video Recordings of Class Sessions
After each class, the video will be available for you to stream in a high-quality format. You’ll never have to worry about missing a session, and you can watch anytime and anywhere at your convenience.
Seven Audio Recordings of Class Sessions
After each class, the audio will be available for you to stream. You’ll never have to worry about missing a session, and you can listen anytime and anywhere at your convenience.
Seven Transcripts of Class Sessions
You’ll also receive the entire class transcription after each session is completed. You can then review, print, and highlight the most important insights and practices you were given.
Interactive Exercises and Questions for Each Lesson
Between class sessions, you’ll have the option of completing related exercises, practicing new tools, and answering questions to accelerate your learning and integrate each week’s lesson.
Online Community
Our exclusive Facebook online community is the perfect place to continue your discovery process after each class. Here, you can continue the discussion about your course materials and interact with your fellow students to take your exploration to an even deeper level.
An Unprecedented Opportunity to Join the Online Course, Continuum Movement®
We feel honored that Donnalea Van Vleet Goelz, PhD, has chosen to partner with The Shift Network to offer this exclusive LIVE online course. This is a unique opportunity to interact directly with the executive director of Continuum Movement whose powerful insights and pioneering work are helping us heal and awaken ourselves and our world.
If you’re serious about discovering how to use breath, sound, and movement to heal from within and reclaim a sense of safety, pleasure, and wholeness in your body, then you owe it to yourself, your loved ones, and our world to take this one-of-a-kind program.
If you’re ready to take the next step in your own evolution, click the register button below to reserve your space now.
Your Satisfaction Is 100% Guaranteed!
Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed! If you don’t absolutely LOVE Continuum Movement® — or don’t feel that it meets your needs — please submit your refund request form on or before September 11, 2025 and we’ll happily issue qualifying customers a refund.
More Praise for Donnalea Van Vleet Goelz, PhD
Taiwan
South Korea
Authorized Continuum Movement Teacher/Practitioner and Associated Professor at the University of Quebec in Rimouski
About Donnalea Van Vleet Goelz, PhD
EDIT
Donnalea Van Vleet Goelz has a PhD in Somatic Clinical Psychology. She is executive director of Continuum Movement®, founded by Emilie Conrad-Da’oud, and chair of the ECD Initiative for research in the somatic movement arts.
She is the founder and owner of Cobalt Moon Center, a center for integrative health in Neptune Beach, Florida, an authorized Continuum Movement teacher since 1998, and a Tai Chi Instructor since 1990.
Donnalea is a graduate of the Barbara Brennan School of Healing (BBSH) where she served as senior faculty, and as Dean of the third year class in the U.S. and Europe.
She is also a certified Brennan Integration Practitioner, a graduate degree at BBSH that incorporates psychology and the human energy field. Other certifications include Object Relational Psychotherapy from the Center for Intentional Living and Kabbalistic Healing from the Society of Souls.
She has an extensive training in dance (ballet, modern, African), is on the faculty of Esalen Institute and Hollyhock Educational Institute, and teaches workshops nationally and internationally in Continuum, Tai Chi, and the healing arts.