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The body, movement, and consciousness are intimately intertwined. Each influences the others. How we embody our physical structure influences our movement and consciousness.
Although we often think of movement and touch as being muscle based, all the body systems play important roles in the support and articulation of our body and are expressed as a wide range of movement qualities and consciousness. Organs and glands bring special qualities to this complex and fascinating interplay.
ORGANS
Organs have a foundational role in our survival. They allow us to breathe, be nourished, and discard unneeded substances. They develop very early in the embryological process and underlie the development of other body systems.
If there is a difficulty in alignment, flexibility, or strength, initiating movement or sound from the organs or working with them using touch can provide ways to change the skeletomuscular system.
Organs provide three-dimensionality to movement, depth to the voice, and access to deep changes in the neuromuscular system through touch. They bring forth the emotional content that is inherent in the expression of movement and voice and provide depth and contact with the emotional content underlying stress and ease in the tissues of the body in hands-on work with others.
ENDOCRINE GLANDS
Endocrine glands are our major chemical governing system. They act as a bridge between the organs and nervous system. Through embodying the glands, we express clear states of consciousness. Each gland offers highly different and distinct states, from internal stillness to chaos.
Endocrine glands affect not only their immediate physical location, but the entire spine and specific and direct areas of the limbs. Initiating movement or sound in the glands or working hands-on with them can bring increased mobility, strength, and balance to the spine, integrated with freedom and subtle articulation through the limbs.
EXPLORING ORGANS AND GLANDS AS A FOUNDATION FOR MOVEMENT, TOUCH, AND VOICE
Our psychophysical geography (anatomy) and history (embryological development) help us discover where we are in this body and how we got here. Exploring organs and glands through embodied movement, touch, and voice opens a path to an inner feeling of authenticity, three-dimensional presence, and organic movement.
In this course, we explore opening awareness to the physical and expressive foundation of organs and glands. Explorations also draw from other body systems, from embryological development, and from applications to movement, touch, voice, and consciousness.
MOVEMENT PRACTICES (MOBILITY)
Movement is our first language. Although we often think of dance, yoga, and other movement practices as being muscle-based, all the body systems play important roles in the support and articulation of the body and are expressed as a wide range of movement qualities and consciousness.
Through movement, we experience patterns of receptivity, organization, expression, and communication. Expanding our efficiency and range of qualities offers increased comfort and ease and provides us with a great repertoire of movement possibilities and creative movement inventions.
This course offers ways to:
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Improve alignment, flexibility, strength, and balance
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Prevent injuries
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Retrain when problems arise
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Create themes for improvisation and expand choreographic possibilities
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Increase movement vocabulary
BODYWORK AND THERAPY (TOUCH)
Touch is based on internal movement. It is an expression of, as well as a way to assess, that movement. Approached in an embodied way, touch can be a subtle and deep path for communicating with others and ourselves. We can listen with touch, we can communicate and connect through touch, and we can support others and ourselves though touch.
Touch is more than placing our hands on someone. It involves attunement, awareness, consciousness, attention, and intention. It also involves how we initiate touch. With cognitively-initiated touch, the brain directs the hands based on past experience and preconceived expectations. With embodied touch, we listen receptively and cellularly, and on a level more specific than cognitively-initiated touch.
This course offers ways to:
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Evaluate and approach organs and glands through touch, breath, movement, voice, and perception
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Establish a bridge between table work and active movement repatterning to give clients a way to integrate changes through their movement in daily life
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Increase vitality, strength, flexibility, flow, and ease
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Relieve excessive tension, tightness, strain, weakness, and/or exhaustion
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Communicate subtly through touch by differentiating different layers of tissue
SOMATIC PSYCHOLOGY (CONSCIOUSNESS)
Our body moves as our mind moves. The qualities of any movement are a manifestation of how the mind is expressing itself through the body at that moment.
Changes in movement qualities indicate that the mind has shifted focus in the body. Movement can be a way to observe the expressions of the mind through the body, and it can also be a way to effect changes in the body-mind relationship.
This course offers ways to:
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Access the mind by working with the body through movement, touch, voice, breath, and perception
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Address underlying emotional and cognitive challenges
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Trace preverbal experience through movement, touch, and voice
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Ground the past and future in one’s present awareness, perception, and movement
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Increase your understanding of how the organs and glands store and process experience
THIS COURSE IS FOR YOU IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO:
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Relieve excessive tension, tightness, strain, weakness, and/or exhaustion in muscles
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Move more naturally with greater ease and technical skill
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Dialogue with organs and glands and establish a direct relationship with them
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Embody and understand from inner experience how organs and glands engage in both stillness and action
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Expand awareness through the inherent consciousness of organs and glands
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Gain awareness and insight into engaging organ and endocrine systems through perception
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Relieve pathways of stress by opening to and facilitating pathways of ease
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Explore the interplay between cellular (micro) and system-wide (macro) communication
This course is for anyone working or exploring in a discipline involving movement, touch, voice and music, and/or consciousness, including movement and somatic educators and therapists, dancers, bodyworkers, occupational and physical therapists, somatic psychotherapists, infant/child educators, musicians and singers, yoga practitioners, and those from other body-mind disciplines.
No prior experience with the Body-Mind Centering® approach is necessary. Come and share with curiosity and a sense of inquiry about movement, voice, the body, and consciousness.
Live music was performed by John Sprague during this course. John is an improvisational musician and composer with more than 30 years experience accompanying dance classes, including those of Bonnie’s in the 1980s.
REGISTRATION INCLUDES
- 24 class recordings (36 hours)
- More than 80 downloadable supplemental illustrations and documents
- Unlimited lifetime access to all class recordings and downloadable course materials
A full list of the material Bonnie presents in each class can be found on the Embodying Authenticity, Organicity, and Expression Class Index.
Embodying the Authenticity, Organicity, and Expression: Organs and Glands as a Foundations for Movement, Touch, and Voice was filmed during Bonnie’s 12-day workshop hosted by Pomona Dance at Pomona College in Claremont, California July 13 – 28, 2019.
