The Pantarei Approach is a somatic bodywork method founded in Berlin in 2016 by Vered Manasse and Claudia Glowik. A session combines two things that usually live in separate rooms: conversation and touch. You talk about something real in your life, and the practitioner uses hands-on touch to help you notice how that thing actually shows up in your body. The name comes from the Greek phrase panta rhei, everything flows. The idea behind the name is simple: people are not fixed, and change is always available.
That is the whole method in one paragraph. The rest of this page is detail.
Where it comes from
The founders were long-time practitioners of the Grinberg Method, a body-based teaching approach, before developing Pantarei as its own school. The school is based in Berlin and has certified practitioners who now work in many countries. Berlin is the method's home city, which is part of why you will find more Pantarei practitioners here than anywhere else.
What a session is actually like
You arrive, you sit down, and you talk about what you want to look at. Not your childhood by default, not your dreams. Something current: a decision you keep postponing, a tension you carry into every meeting, a feeling you can name but not locate. Then you lie down on a bodywork table, fully clothed, and the practitioner works with touch while the conversation continues. The touch is not massage. It is closer to being pointed at: here, this is where you hold that. Sessions usually run around an hour.
What it is not
Pantarei is not therapy, and I will never present it as a substitute for one. Sessions do not diagnose anything and do not treat any medical or psychological condition. If you are dealing with a health issue, a doctor or licensed therapist is the right first stop. Plenty of people have sessions alongside that kind of care, and the two do not compete.
It is also not energy work. There is no talk of fields, chakras, or anything you would need to take on faith. The working assumption is ordinary and fairly hard to argue with: your body is involved in everything you experience, and paying attention to it gives you information you do not get by thinking alone.
Who tends to get something out of it
People in the middle of a transition. People whose work lives entirely in their head and who have started to notice the cost of that. People who have done talk-based work and hit the limit of what more talking adds. And people who are simply curious what it is like to be listened to by hand.
If you recognize yourself in that last sentence and are still a bit skeptical, good. This practice is built for the curious, not the convinced.
Sean Paul Denny is a student practitioner of the Pantarei Approach in Berlin and the founder of Room to Expand. Sessions take place in Neukölln, Berlin. Read what to expect in a session or get in touch.