Discover the stages of infant development. Connect with the dimensions of memory. Use reversibility as a tool of freedom. Recover deep and lasting autonomy. Awaken consciousness through movement. Return to the original vibration through sound.
A unique integrative approach that honours each being's natural rhythm — following step by step the wisdom inscribed in the body from the very first moments of life.
A six-month-old baby can do
what you no longer can.
Not because you have forgotten.
Because no one taught you to remember.
The MANANDAH Exploration brings you back to what you already knew
I did not choose this work. I simply watched my daughter grow.
Very early, I understood that the body is not a machine to be repaired, but a memory to be heard. That what we call blockage is often an intelligence waiting to be recognised. And that most of the methods I saw around me were trying to correct what only needed to be allowed to return.
What she showed me, I wanted to understand. Not to analyse it — to integrate it.
I explored Feldenkrais, yoga, elite sport. I discovered Sadhguru's teaching. Each discipline laid down a layer.
What I was looking for was the thread. The one that links the infant's movement to the adult's consciousness. Fascial tissue to emotional memory. Breath to meaning.
For years, I believed I had to choose. Then I understood that the thread was mine to weave.
MANANDAH is not a school. It is a synthesis.
The name carries a promise: the fertile interval between what we were and what we can become. The space where something becomes possible again.
What I offer is not a therapy. Nor is it a rehabilitation. It is a return — guided, precise, gentle — to what the body knew before it was taught to forget. Sixteen dimensions to be awakened. A differential test to identify, in each person, the layer that asks to speak first.
Today, 25 years on, I transmit this exploration through individual sessions, seminars, books, and to those who wish to make it their craft. And I continue, every day, to learn from the bodies I meet.
the body knew
before it was taught
to forget.
The MANANDAH Exploration rests on a fundamental principle: the body is a living memory system. Every experience, every emotion, every trauma leaves an imprint in the tissues, the fascia, the neuromuscular patterns.
Everything is already there. A baby does not decide to walk — they explore. The twelve stages that lead from lying on the back to free walking are inscribed in the nervous system before they are even traversed. Without intellect. Without memory. Without knowing who one is.
As we grow, this programme does not disappear. It buries itself beneath layers of compensation and habit. The work I offer is a return — not a rehabilitation, not an effort. An exploration, in the same spirit as the baby's. Layer by layer. Without forcing. Letting the body recover what it has never forgotten.
A movement that cannot be undone is a movement that was never truly made. A mental process that cannot be undone is a process that was never truly integrated.
The baby provides the most striking proof of this. Its head makes up nearly a quarter of its body — a disproportionate mass that gravity should render unmanageable. Yet it rolls, tips, and rights itself. It can do so only because every one of its gestures is reversible: at any moment, it can go back, undo, begin again. Without this ability, the weight of its head would pull it into a fall. Reversibility is not a luxury — it is what makes movement possible.
What we can undo, we can possess. What we cannot undo, possesses us.
There is a memory in the body that precedes everything — prior to the first gesture, the first breath, the first thought. It is not acquired. It is simply there. Whole, silent, since always.
From this primal memory, three families of dimensions emerge — twelve in all — that develop, intersect, and sometimes collide. Some relate to perception, others to the intelligence that organises movement, others still to what makes us recognise ourselves in our own flesh. None of them ever disappear. They fall asleep. And this is what the differential test allows us to find — which dimension, in this particular person, is asking to awaken first.
When we know, we no longer explore. We execute. Movement becomes automatic, efficient — and mute. We stop feeling it.
Awareness through movement is a return to the state before knowing. That of the baby who explores without a programme, without expected outcome — only the sensation of what changes when one moves differently. This is not learning. It is remembering that we do not yet know everything. And that it is there, precisely, that everything becomes possible again.
As we age, we walk the baby's path in reverse. What the body took months to conquer — turning over, standing up, walking freely — begins to fade. Not through biological fate. Through lack of use.
But this is not only a physical loss. When the body loses its capacities, a part of identity disappears with them. What we can no longer do, we end up believing we never were.
The work consists of regularly reminding the body of what it already knows. Awakening the movements integrated in childhood, before they fall asleep for good. Five minutes a day are enough — not to heal, but in order not to forget.
Before seeing, the baby hears. In the womb, the world is acoustic — the mother's heartbeat, blood flow, voices filtered through fluid. Sound is the first sense that carries information about the outside. And at birth, the first act is a cry. The first breath is a sound. Breathing and vibration are inseparable from the very first second of life.
A reversible sound — a hum you can stop, modulate, resume — is a free sound. An irreversible sound — a scream, a voice that spirals out of control — signals a loss of mastery, just like a movement that can no longer be undone. The baby moves from the cry to the coo: that is maturation. The adult who rediscovers conscious humming retraces that same path.
When you produce a sound, the entire body vibrates. The chest, the skull, the pelvis — each area responds differently. Free zones resonate. Restricted zones absorb or block. Sound reveals what movement alone does not always show: the deep asymmetries, the spaces that no longer participate, the tissues that have gone silent. It crosses all other dimensions like a photographic developer — and brings the body back to its original vibration, the one that existed before the silence.
Louella, our daughter, was raised for twenty years with the MANANDAH Exploration. Not as a protocol. As a language — learnt from the very first gestures, transmitted through daily life, inscribed in the very way of inhabiting a body.
What you see in this image is not a performance. It is a bodily grammar that has never been forgotten — because it has never been interrupted.
The art of movement is what I understand best. It even goes beyond my perception.
The foundation of my upbringing is solving problems through movement — being able to slip through the smallest crack life offers me.
I had to learn to see things from a different angle, and I am grateful to have been accompanied in this exploration.
The key is letting yourself be guided by your body and trusting it to change the way you approach life.
"It is not just a method,
it is my life."
Individual Session · Seminar · Conference
Choose your practitioner
Tenerife · Brussels · Online
Deep work on body patterns, body memory and reversibility. 20+ years of integrative practice. Each session adapts to what your body presents.
5 days of personalised exercises on Telegram. Each morning, an exploration in one of the six dimensions: baby stages, memory, reversibility, autonomy, awareness through movement, sound.
Berlin · Online
Dance, aerial silk, balance and body awareness through movement. A dynamic approach rooted in the MANANDAH Exploration, adapted to all levels.
Special rate for Canary Islands residents — contact us
Two to three day immersions in the MANANDAH Exploration. For therapists, caregivers and any accompaniment professional. Groups of 8 to 12 participants.
Invite Christian Schaekels for a conference at your institution, hospital, university or centre. Customisable themes. Format from 1 hour to a full day.
Common themes: Body memory in hospital settings · Introduction to the dimensions of memory · Body, trauma and resilience · The baby-stage exploration in clinical practice
E-books · Free Resources
Every journey is unique. Here are some experiences from people who have explored the MANANDAH Exploration.
"After years of chronic pain, I rediscovered a freedom of movement I thought was lost forever. The MANANDAH Exploration helped me understand my body in a completely new way."
"This work has transformed the way I support my patients. The dimensions of memory offer an extraordinarily rich framework for understanding the body."
"A profound approach, never forced. Christian has a rare ability to listen to the body and guide you toward a new awareness. I recommend it to everyone."
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