Body-mind
Centering®
Body-Mind Centering® is an integrated and embodied approach to movement, the body and consciousness.
Developed by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, it is an experiential study based on the embodiment and application of anatomical, physiological, psychophysical and developmental principles, utilizing movement, touch, voice and mind. Its uniqueness lies in the specificity with which each of the body systems can be personally embodied and integrated, the fundamental groundwork of developmental repatterning, and the utilization of a body-based language to describe movement and body-mind relationships.
The BMC® also proposes to revisit the stages of the child’s development and to become aware of each person’s movement habits, in order to broaden the range of possibilities.
The feeling and mobility of the body’s tissues are refined through movement, touch, voice and imagination. Learning gradually improves the ability to open up to change and the ability to help others discover new opportunities. It is through this type of exploration that we enter the incorporation process proposed by the BMC®.
The Body-Mind Centering® approach has an almost unlimited number of areas of application. It is currently being used by people in movement, dance, yoga, bodywork, somatic studies, physical and occupational therapy, psychotherapy, child development, education, voice, music, art, meditation, athletics and other body-mind disciplines.
Bonnie BAINBRIDGE
Cohen
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen is the developer of Body-Mind Centering® and the founder and Educational Director of the School. For over fifty years, she has been a movement artist, researcher, educator and therapist. An innovator and leader, her work has influenced the fields of bodywork, movement, dance, yoga, body psychotherapy, childhood education and many other body-mind disciplines. She is the author of the book, Sensing, Feeling and Action.
Bonnie is a Registered Occupational Therapist, a Registered Movement Therapist and a Registered Yoga Teacher (ERYT). She is also certified in Neurodevelopmental Therapy, Laban Movement Analysis, and Kestenberg Movement Profiling. She has practiced occupational therapy and taught in university hospitals, helped to establish a school for occupational and physical therapy for the Tokyo government, practiced bodywork and movement in psychiatric settings, taught in the masters program in Dance Therapy at Antioch New England College, taught dance at Hunter College and at the Erick Hawkins School of Dance in New York, and presented workshops throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia.
pedagogical
training
The BMC® belongs to the field of somatic education, which brings together methods that have in common to work with the body lived to make it more sensitive, more conscious. The individual is approached as a whole, taking into account the interaction between his physical, perceptual, emotional, cognitive and relational dimensions.
In somatic education, it is through experience that we discover ourselves and learn new patterns of movement, perception and relationship with the internal and external environment.