What is Open Floor?
Open Floor is a contemporary movement meditation practice and conscious dance modality that invites practitioners to explore embodied awareness through free-form movement. Unlike prescribed dance forms, Open Floor offers an open and exploratory framework for moving through physical sensations, emotions, thoughts, and spiritual experience. The practice emphasizes resourcefulness—learning to track, name, and integrate what arises in the body—rather than following predetermined choreography or achieving specific shapes.
Practitioners move through what Open Floor calls the “Movement Cycle,” a structure inspired by Gestalt Awareness Practice that allows experience to unfold organically. The practice addresses four dimensions of embodiment (physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual) and honors what practitioners call “Relational Hungers”—the need for solitude, connection, belonging, and spirit.
Origins & Lineage
Open Floor International was born in the aftermath of Gabrielle Roth’s death in 2012. The four original founders—Kathy Altman, Lori Saltzman, Andrea Juhan, and Vic Cooper (known as KLAV)—had trained and worked closely with Gabrielle Roth, the founder and creator of the 5Rhythms movement practice, for decades.
In 2013, KLAV brought together a group of colleagues and friends—a brain trust—to explore pooling their collective knowledge. From within this wider circle, eleven people gradually stepped forward with a clear commitment: Cathy Ryan, Cynthia Kennedy, Deborah Lewin, Geordie Jahner, Lucie Nérot, Irit Ziv-Ron, Nele Vandezande, Rivi Diamond, Sarah Davies, Sue Rickards and Tim Stevenson.
Andrea Juhan offered the name Open Floor, drawn from her longtime body of work rooted in Gestalt Awareness Practice and her previous project, Open Floor Encounter. Andrea Juhan had begun to formulate this work in 1992, synthesizing gestalt awareness practice, psychodrama, and somatic psychotherapy. The Open Floor website went live in March 2014, marking the official launch. Open Floor International was founded in March 2014 by the four founders and eleven founding members.
Open Floor shares deep roots with a wide array of movement modalities, and the Movement Cycle in particular draws inspiration from Gestalt Awareness Practice (GAP) developed by Chris and Dick Price. The founders also drew on decades of experience in somatic psychology, expressive arts, and meditation traditions, creating a curriculum that reflects universal principles inherent in embodiment practices.
How It’s Practiced
Open Floor classes and workshops typically take place in studio spaces where participants move to curated music. Open Floor is a transformational movement meditation practice and lively dance inquiry, with emphasis on awakening sensate experience, emotional intelligence, relational skills, and mindful, imaginative and spiritual awareness.
Unlike structured dance classes, methods are open and exploratory rather than prescribed. Teachers offer what the practice calls “guidelines, images, anchors, touch points, themes, creative problems, and inquiries” rather than steps to follow. Practitioners learn to move along a spectrum between habit and creative possibility, between fixed and fluid states.
Practitioners cultivate open attention to all 4 Dimensions of Embodiment (physical, emotional, mind, soul) and embrace Relational Hungers (for solitude, connection, belonging and spirit). The Movement Cycle serves as a container for experience, allowing practitioners to track sensation, emotion, and awareness as it unfolds in real time.
Sessions may range from drop-in weekly classes lasting 90 minutes to two hours, to weekend workshops, week-long intensives, and multi-year professional trainings. The practice is typically drug- and alcohol-free, emphasizing embodied presence rather than altered states through substances.
Open Floor Today
Open Floor has grown into a global movement with certified teachers on multiple continents. Open Floor International operates as a nonprofit organization based in the United States, training teachers through a rigorous curriculum that includes anatomy, somatic psychology, group facilitation, and movement theory.
The practice is encountered in several forms: weekly community classes, weekend workshops exploring specific themes (such as Encounter work, which synthesizes movement with therapeutic process), teacher training programs, and online offerings. The organization uses sociocratic governance, distributing decision-making power across working circles rather than hierarchical leadership.
Open Floor International has developed specialized curricula including “Therapy in Motion” for practitioners interested in therapeutic applications, and “Encounter,” a structured format that integrates gestalt therapy principles with movement. The practice attracts dancers, therapists, educators, and seekers interested in embodiment as a path to self-awareness and resilience.
Common Misconceptions
Open Floor is not 5Rhythms, though the lineage connection is clear and acknowledged. While the founders trained extensively in 5Rhythms, Open Floor developed its own distinct curriculum, language, and organizational structure. The two practices share philosophical ground but are separate modalities.
Open Floor is not exercise or fitness training, though physical benefits may arise. The emphasis is on awareness, emotional intelligence, and cultivating resource rather than cardiovascular conditioning or strength-building. Practitioners are not learning choreography or working toward performance.
The practice is also not formless. While it appears unstructured to outside observers, teachers work within a sophisticated framework that includes the Movement Cycle, attention to dimensions of embodiment, and specific teaching methodologies. The “openness” refers to exploratory possibility within a coherent structure, not the absence of form.
Finally, Open Floor is not therapy, though it may be therapeutic. While some practitioners integrate the work into psychotherapeutic contexts (particularly through the Therapy in Motion curriculum), a typical Open Floor class is movement practice, not clinical treatment.
How to Begin
The most direct way to experience Open Floor is to attend a class taught by a certified Open Floor teacher. The organization maintains a teacher directory on openfloor.org where seekers can locate classes by geography. Most teachers welcome beginners and emphasize that no dance experience is required.
For those exploring Open Floor meaning and practice, the website offers introductory videos and articles explaining the foundational concepts. Weekend workshops labeled “Ground Floor” or “Common Ground” are specifically designed as entry points for newcomers, introducing the Movement Cycle and core principles over two to three days.
Reading about Open Floor provides context, but the practice is fundamentally experiential—understanding develops through moving, not through intellectual study alone. Seekers are encouraged to try multiple classes to get a sense of both the practice and individual teaching styles, as Open Floor teachers bring their own embodied wisdom to the work.