body-mind centering (BMC)® is a somatic modality/pathway, founded by Bonnie bainbridge cohen, that works with the western map of the body and enters these internal systems with the tools of movement, touch, somatization, & vocalization.

M Y J O U R N E Y

After studying the Silvestre Technique & African Diasporic dances from Yoruba with my teachers Rosangela Silvestre and Vera Pasos - I had a deep yearning to continue learning about somatic movement with elders in the field. At the time, I had an understanding and inclination towards connecting with intuitive movement as a means to dialogue with the elements and sense/integrate my lived experience. What felt unclear, was my relationship with the systems of my body: organs, bones, bloods, and so forth. I wanted to know their names, I wanted to build a relationship.

When I learned of Body-Mind Centering (BMC)® through a somatically minded friend, my body screamed YES, this is the experiential knowledge we are craving. Satiating a personal desire to know who I am from the inside out, as well as a curiosity to get to know this language so that I could make connections and facilitate experiences from this lens that our culture is most familiar with. BMC felt like a way to build a bridge between the intuitive and scientific ways of knowing body and self through somatic movement.

In 2019 I began my studies with BMC® in the somatic educator movement program at Moving Within - a BMC® educational hub located in the forests of Lorane, Oregon. Moving Within is led by Mary Lou Seereiter - it’s here that Mary offers space for students all over the world to be in relationship to their environmental community as well as build a somatic movement community.

My teachers over the years were Mary Lou Seereiter, Amy Matthews, Olive Bieringa, Walburga Glatz, and Rebecca Haseltine. Each teacher taught from their lens of experiences, no one class was alike. It was here, with the moss, usnea and ferns that I began to open up dialogue with aspects of myself. Gaining information from my personal somatic experience, as well as in relationship with my cohort. My cells are forever changed, some systems unraveled me until there was nothing else left, and somehow, they helped me find a pathway towards midline. My teachers, the land, my cohort, and my internal systems helped me gain tools to sit in questions, make space for all experience in the room, how to show up for myself as a facilitator, create boundaries, and playful ways to engage with the material.

Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, the founder of BMC®, is keen on having BMC® be an approach, not a protocol. There is no one way to share the BMC® lens. I am enthusiastic to offer my way of engaging with BMC®, both as a facilitator and as a human being in our global community.

WHO IS THIS APPROACH FOR?

• Folks new/familiar to Somatics who want to learn an experiential approach to embodiment

• Folks in physical and/or emotional pain

• Folks who want to get in touch with the language of their systems through sensation

• Folks wanting to learn who they are from the inside out

• Gain tools to listen to the systems of the body through touch, movement, and sound

• ALL HUMANS w/ BODIES!

SME | SOMATIC MOVEMENT EDUCATOR

You might be asking: what is a Body-Mind Centering® SME? It is a somatic facilitator that works with the systems of the body, their processes, embryological development, and developmental movement and offers students, both in group and private settings, the tools of movement, sound, and touch to connect and sense these internal landscapes.

As an SME facilitator, I use verbal cues and guidance to guide students into these sensory places in the body. I also work with touch, not as a therupetic modality, but another way to communicate and listen with a students system. An SME private session uses the BMC® somatic approach as a tool to be in dialogue with a particular system. As a means of educating the client and the system, bringing them into connetion to better get to know their relationship. A group experience or private session has potential to re-pattern, integrate, connect and build relationships with the systems of the body.

I currently offer community classes as well as private sessions as a somatic movement educator (SME).

HOW I INCORPORATE BMC®

Our body systems often mirror or are similar to the ways that nature navigates the world. I bring BMC® in to offer extra support when working with nature processes as a means to connect it back into our own system. For instance; calling on blood when we work with the rivers, cellular breathing when connecting with stone, and fascia when speaking of the mycelial network.

Offering space to listen to the language of these systems is another way I like to engage with this work. Offering both movement experiences to allow these systems to be in relationship with a student as well as through writing practices. I feel inspired by this question: if we get to know who these systems are, learn how to listen, how to connect - can this affect the way we show up in the world? Can these experiential learning spaces create individual and collective change?

“Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen is a movement artist, researcher, educator, therapist, and developer of the Body-Mind Centering® approach to movement and consciousness. This approach is an exploration of how we embody our body systems, tissues and cells, our developmental movement patterns, and our embryological development.

In 1973 she founded The School for Body-Mind Centering® where students from over thirty countries have studied. Her work has influenced the fields of dance, bodywork, yoga, body psychotherapy, infant and child development, and many other body-mind disciplines.

She is the author of the books, Sensing, Feeling, and Action, The Mechanics of Vocal Expression, and Basic Neurocellular Patterns: Embodying Developmental Movement, and numerous videos on dance, embodied anatomy, embryology, and working with children with special needs.”

- excerpt from site of Bonnie