Learn ConTact C.A.R.E Flinchlock Release®
Learning begins with what you already have — your hands, your attention, and your curiosity. What you weave into that foundation, over time, becomes your practice.
ConTact C.A.R.E Foundation training
Foundation training weekends are open to anyone who feels drawn to explore the body in a different way. You don’t need a background in bodywork or health — just a genuine willingness to slow down, pay attention, and practise.
This isn’t about learning techniques to fix people. It’s about developing a quality of observation: the ability to be still enough to notice what’s happening, and present enough to work with it. Over a weekend, you’ll get hands-on with the ConTact C.A.R.E approach and the Flinchlock phenomenon, learn the Flinchlock Release® method, start developing the practitioner’s eye, and come away with a new way of reading the body — yours and other people’s.
A skill that keeps revealing itself
The ConTact C.A.R.E approach and the Flinchlock Release® method are learnable. It’s also the kind of practice that keeps going deeper the longer you stay with it. What starts as simple contact — learning to notice what doesn’t move — can, over time, become something quite profound: a refined sensitivity, a trained eye, a spacious and ever-expanding understanding of how the body organises itself.
Practitioners keep learning through the dojo in Ngatea, under Dale and Kym. The expansion of this discipline — from its origins on a Hauraki Plains farm to practitioners across New Zealand and internationally — is built on exactly that: people who stayed curious and kept weaving their experience deeper into their practice.
Who is this for?
Honestly, anyone who’s curious. People who work in bodywork or animal care and want a different approach. People who feel drawn to the martial arts lineage this comes from. People who just want a hands-on self-care practice they can use at home, with their family, or with their animals.
Dogs, horses, and other companion animals respond to this work just as readily as people do — many practitioners end up learning these skills to support their own animals.
Upcoming Foundation Training in Auckland 17/18 Oct 2026
Stephanie works closely with Simon Wright, a certified ConTact C.A.R.E Instructor and Advanced Practitioner at Auckland City ConTact C.A.R.E based in Mt Wellington.
If you’re interested in the next course or have questions, you contact Stephanie.
Some photos from our 2025/2026 courses
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Some photos from our 2025/2026 courses 〰️
The pathway
ConTact C.A.R.E training follows a structured, three-year pathway combining hands-on practice, theory and case studies.
Year 1 — Foundation
Foundation is the entry point, and the prerequisite for everything that follows. It’s designed for anyone wanting a hands-on way of working with family, sport, and work-related injuries — including health professionals looking for an approach that complements their existing clinical work.
• A minimum of 64 hours of Foundation coursework
• Hands-on practice with at least 40 clients, each with follow-up sessions recorded (80 treatments total)
• A practical Foundation assessment with a qualified Instructor
Once Foundation is complete to a satisfactory level, students move into Practitioner Training — with one intake each year.
Year 2 & 3 — Practitioner Training
Practitioner Training deepens the work considerably. It covers cranial-interconnected relationships, the extremities, and the six ConTact C.A.R.E Charts that map the body’s Skeletal Self-Defence Systems — the systems that support normal function, and that contort and disrupt when in Flinchlock contraction.
Year three introduces the Bone-Organ Support System (B.O.S.S.) — understanding how the body’s systems work in complementary pairs (lung/large intestine, stomach/spleen, heart/small intestine, bladder/kidney, pericardium/triple warmer, gallbladder/liver). Students complete four evaluations with selected instructors assessors, plus a direct evaluation with both Dale and Kym.
• 300 client sheets, recorded throughout training
• A Diploma in Anatomy & Physiology (120 hours minimum) — a mandatory requirement for all ConTact C.A.R.E practitioners, and the only component of the training that can be completed by correspondence. Stephanie recommends Holistic Health Training, a NZQA-approved provider based in Nelson.
The full training programme is expected to take three years to complete.
Animal pathways
ConTact C.A.R.E also offers dedicated courses for animal work — Equine Foundation and Practitioner courses (North and South Island), an Animal Care course covering dogs, cats, and farmyard companions, Canine Skills, Bovine Training for farmers, and combined Equine/Human Foundation courses for those who want to work across both.
Find a course
All ConTact C.A.R.E Foundation training approved by ConTact C.A.R.E New Zealand Limited — in New Zealand and internationally — is listed at contactcare.co.nz