Nicholas Gilchrist

After years of creating and performing music under his alias Phortah, Nicholas emerged from behind the guitars and synthesizers to engage crowds in more directive ways. He explores the principles of Zenthai Shiatsu, incorporating his passions for contact improvisation and exploratory play to land what may otherwise be challenging content safely amidst immersive fun.

He combines a grounded, gentle clarity and presence with light-hearted, eccentric humor to create a facilitation style that delivers depths of philosophy and healing intended to land in participants' bodies.

Nicholas is passionate about supporting and witnessing the discovery and exploration of the unique gifts held inside others.

Workshop/Presentation:

Zenthai Shiatsu Elements

Zenthai Shiatsu Elements combines exploratory movement with partner games and Zenthai Shiatsu bodywork to create a journey of returning home to our individual and collective selves.

Movement journeys are woven to guide participants into their bodies and imaginations so that they can reconnect with the curious exploration that children undertake as they connect with the world.

Games and challenges are offered and scaled to fit the crowd so that people can observe, notice, and possibly challenge their edges, expanding their body-mind potential. Zenthai bodywork is given and received, allowing a combination of specific Zenthai techniques and the participants’ own emergent, intuitively guided bodywork style to be further revealed and experienced. Your inner healer is invited to grow.

Contact Improvisation Facilitation

Contact Improvisation is becoming increasingly popular for conscious explorers around the world. As an up-and-coming CI facilitator, Nicholas creates a space intended to hold and nurture the capacities of newcomers and experienced dancers alike.

We begin with a guided flow, which brings us into direct connection with our own bodies, before easing into the exploration of physical contact with others. We then flow into an open jam, wherein the potential for experience and connection is incredibly vast, supported and informed by the lead-in practices already visited.

When practiced safely, contact improvisation opens our neural and physical pathways to new ways of being and brings us into deeper discovery of the unfurling mystery that we are.

Without proper guidance and the practice of one's own bodily autonomy and boundaries, contact improvisation can cause harm. Nicholas places emphasis on these safety markers along with offering cues intended to sedate the analytical mind so that body awareness and intelligence can guide our flow.