​Hiie Saumaa, Estonia / United States / France

​Hiie Saumaa PhD (Columbia University), is a somatic movement educator, movement artist, speaker, and a writer. Originally from Estonia, she lived and studied in the US for 15 years and is currently based in Paris. Hiie gives courses and workshops in somatic dance (Nia technique), holistic strength and flexibility, bodily awareness, movement and sensuality, and creative movement. 

In her performances and multi-arts collaborations, she explores somatic approaches to making dances, the relationship between objects and the human body, the stage as a sacred place, and dance as an expression of the soul. Hiie has collaborated with visual artists, sound artists, and filmmakers in the US, France, Germany, and Estonia. She is an accredited facilitator of sacred dance, an honor given by the international organization Sacred Dance Guild. 

Hiie is a columnist on somatic movement for the journal of Integrative and Complementary Therapies and has published academic articles in international dance research journals. She runs a YouTube channel, Hiie Saumaa Somatics, on the wisdom of the moving, sensual body. She was one of the inaugural fellows at the Institute for Ideas & Imagination, where she was working on a project on the creative process of the choreographer Jerome Robbins. She is currently working on a book project on somatic movement and dance as a practice of bodily inquiry, expanded consciousness, enhanced intuition, and personal development.