Judith Salamander & Matthias Gockel

Judith Salamander is a touch artist, sexological bodyworker, somatic coach and above all a curious human being.
Always fascinated by how body perception and body feeling influence our well-being and happiness when we move, when we eat, in contact with other people, in sexuality – in fact in everything we do – she decided to make this interest her profession over ten years ago.
Since then, she has accompanied people in massages, coaching sessions and workshops in exploring and developing their own body awareness.
She sees this as an emancipatory act: if we really perceive how we feel in any given situation and have learned to influence that if necessary, we can live much more self-determined lives. Furthermore, the ability to feel oneself is the basis for connecting with other people.
The pleasurable exploration of one’s own sexuality takes on a special significance here, as this is an area that is so essential for all of us and which, at the same time, is often filled with shame and fear and characterised by speechlessness.
One of her main concerns is to create spaces where curious sensing is encouraged, experimenting, reflecting, verbalising – without time and performance pressure – and always respectful of individual boundaries.

Matthias Gockel is a doctor who spends the year working full-time with endings and finitude, and is using Xplore to try something completely different: Beginnings.

Remembering his own irritation and speechlessness at his first Xplore and motivated by Judith’s support, he is trying to make it easier this year for first-time explorers to get started.

DIE / ONE TIME EXPERIENCES

FIRST TIME AT XPLORE

Xplore is a playground, an experiment, a journey of discovery outside the everyday and the familiar, where the usual rules of polite distance and non-committal coexistence are temporarily suspended. This freedom can also be exhausting and unsettling, especially when you are new to the playground and everyone else seems to move like fish in water.

This year, in this workshop for first-time xplore visitors, we try to make the playground more familiar, the courage and social toolbox bigger, and getting to know each other easier.

It’s an invitation, not an obligation….