Liesje

(lee-sha) she/her

Close-up of a person's face with a background of green foliage.

To be alive, I want to be centered through myself-this journey of finding my way back to center when I feel a fall. I want to physically feel and sense my dance with balance-my suspension through space and my recovery with ground. That aliveness is a gift between me and life. We all can feel it. I want a lot of it and I want others to feel it too.

Liesje Smith with short brown hair, wearing gold hoop earrings and a beaded necklace, standing outdoors with a blurred background of trees and sunlight.

My Loves

I love to move and I want to be able to move well for many years to come. I depend on it. I bet you do too.

I want to move in a healthy way that keeps pain, posture and performance in my attention and my life to my devotion to that healing journey.I’m gaining comfort in leaning into sharing this because we could say that we are all on stage now, especially when we actively share material with the public, whether that be easy as pie or painfully hard to find your real voice .

This has been my life struggle and this is what I help people get familiar with their performance in the world by addressing their posture and the pain that comes along with it.

I do this with gentleness and sincerity. I show up to be kind friendly and real. I love to do one on one sessions with anyone who finds me helpful. I love to do sessions with people who find me irritating becasue I hope that someday, they will turn around and look again. I have not left. You can still find me.

I love to be around movement groups and curate spaces where people can sense that curiosity eventually creates safety and friendliness. Relationships are the world we live in.

I swim around in the originality of our existence for questions about why we’re here and why this body? And what’s good information for handling it all? My special interest premise is that movement is our conscious reality because movement is life force and the fluid nature of everything. I like being in and exploring a more fluid reality and then talking about it.

When I say, “I love…”, that means “I’m working toward this"…”

I love to see everything through the axis of my heart, especially when I work with people, deeply appreciating the connections I have made through the years due to my journey as a somatic practitioner. I am grateful to so many teachers, the pleasant ones and unpleasant, you know who you are.

I’m most grateful to those who keep showing me courage.

I like to think that we all are trying to see through the axis of the heart even though it’s hard to think that at times.

I aim toward figuring out how to be adaptable while ongoingly lovable, as I journey this life with love.

I like to suggest to myself to stop judging others or myself, but reach for compassion and not have to decide the next step till it presents itself. I trust in pausing and “elegant pedestrian movement” (Barbara Dilly)

I like to express myself and prepare for viewing.I also like helping others prepare too.

My Influences

Like many of us, when I was young, I noticed that I was very seriously drawn to movement. Dance, in particular, was what fascinated me. I loved dance. I learned how to dance and perform and I noticed that it made me feel good. I knew I was on a life journey when, after high school and a year traveling, I began my life continuing my childhood love for dance and artistic performance.

It was at the Naropa Institute (now Naropa University) where I finally got to create what I wanted to! I wanted to create and perform dance pieces. I went all out; avant guard, dynamic heroism pieces with prodigy poets, beautiful talented dancers and my incredibly young and complicated short and troublesome life. Somewhere in the middle of it, I had my first minor brain injury in a car accident and before I knew what I had started, I began what is healing my life.

In those early years, away from home, I was confused, but I found a deep part of my soul, the moving dancer, show up in the spot light.

Through the somatic field of movement, consciousness and artistic performance, I started a deep and often confusing journey toward my own views of natural holism, which for me was revealed by trusting gravity as always workable.

Over the last 12 years, I have been in the world with a Rolfing practice that has grown to give people a combination of a lot of skilled touch for transformative change, as well as appreciating the need for teaching people about how tightness and limitations are happening in their bodies and how to begin to do something they may not have been advised to try before: preparing and experiencing movement. 

That small difference invites a chance for true perception to dawn; that our sensations are our awareness, which is the information that feeds thinking.

We’re invited to perceive. New choices can be reprogramed for lasting and effective outcomes with more aliveness and less pain and limitations.

My Approach

My practice weaves together structural integration (Rolfing Structural Integration®), energy medicine (SourcePoint Therapy® and Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy®) and somatic movement education (Body Mind Centering® and Rolf Movement®) to offer an approach to wellness that places education at the center of one’s health and wellbeing.

I don’t see much purpose in perfection. Instead, I celebrate progress continuously.

My somatic movement classes, workshops, and private sessions are rooted in experiential learning—inviting students and clients into a lived, felt relationship with their bodies. I offer a foundational framework that supports people in learning how to help themselves, moving toward greater softness, ease, and agency in their embodied experience.

My work with individuals and groups is holistic, attentive, and individually attuned. I create spaces where people feel seen and heard, supported in their own unfolding process of healing, and empowered to participate actively in meaningful, lasting transformation.

Liesje with her family
a trio sharing weight and momentum through space

My family

Favorite kind of movement: Contact Improvisation

Mountain range where Liesje grew up.

One amazing childhood home

large open dance studio/healing space

a favorite studio

Liesje Smith wearing glasses and a black shirt is raising her right arm in a Rolf Movement class. Another woman with gray hair and glasses, wearing a teal shirt, is slightly out of focus in the background.
Liesje and a friend on the floor

Grateful to teach!

Teaching the developments of movement

Thank you!

I want to offer my sincere gratitude to my community and support circles who walk alongside me as I learn, grow, and build.

To my students and clients: you shape and inform my work. Your trust, curiosity, and commitment to your health and well-being are profound to witness.

My deep thanks to my teachers and mentors for their generosity, wisdom, and guidance. And to my friends, family, and the friends who grow and become family—you breathe life into me daily. I am so filled with appreciation.