36th Annual BMCA Conference 
Being With. . .
Onsite Program at
Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Presenters | Schedule | Main Conference Page | Register | Pay from the Heart | Register for Room & Board | CE Credit Tracker

Featured Presenter:
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen (Virtual)

Schedule 

All times presented below in Eastern Daylight Time (New York).
Each session runs 1 hour and 15 minutes.
You can convert the offering time to your local time by adding your city here.

Click here to view dowloadable Onsite Schedule (PDF)
Click here to view downloadable Onsite Program (PDF) coming soon
Click here to view downloadable Onsite Presenter Bios (PDF) coming soon

Jump to:  Wednesday, June 21 | Thursday June 22 | Friday June 23 | Saturday June 24 | Sunday June 25 | Presenter Biographies

Click the green presenter(s) names to go to the session description.

Wednesday, June 21

1:15 - 1:45pm
Opening Circle

2:00 - 3:15pm 
Ellen Barlow - Time with Homolateral  
    
E.E. Balcos - Relational Beings: Resonating with the Endocrine System through Contact Improvisation

Toni Smith - Embodying the Nucleus Acumbens (Hybrid Session)

3:30 - 4:45pm        
David France - Being With. . . Discomfort

Wendy Hambidge - 3 become 1: utilizing embryology to embrace the 3 dimensionality of the pelvis (Hybrid Session)

Thursday, June 22

9:00 - 10:15am   
Eva Maes - Transmitting the Body: researching (through) dance
    
Jill Becker - Chair Dancing & Balance Work: 
Rhythmic Movement for Seniors and people with Parkinson's Diseases (Hybrid Session)

B.J. Sullivan with Panelists Billy Hawkains, Caitlyn Schrader, & KT Williams -
Being with Safety Release Technique: pedagogues together discuss their diverse applications (Hybrid Session)

10:30 - 11:45am 
Cynthia Williams - Tropes & Slippery Slopes: The Language of Embodiment
  
Kate Tarlow Morgan - From The Somatic Archive:
Education, Natural Movement & The Basic Neurocellular Patterns                           

2:00 - 3:15pm    
Hannah Park - Breathing Bones 

Megan Nicely with Michelle LaVigne - Embodied Writing Practice: Being with your Writing

Sandrine Harris - Nature Body: Sensing Within The Natural World (Hybrid Session)

3:30 - 4:45pm        
Ildiko Viczian - Body-Mind Centering^® and Centering Prayer

Betsy Wetzig - Working With Our Different Ways of Moving and Being

Sylvia Maes - Our Ground is Water (Hybrid Session)

7:30 - 9:00pm     
8 Video Performances  -

•   Lale Madenoglu:   As it Is
•   Vanessa Chapple, Fiona Harrisson, & Kim Wishart-Sargent :  Traces
•   Bernadett Jobbagy:   Lapsúlyos || Certain Solitude
•   Shay Hartung:   a heart unbound
•   Dr. Leonard Cruz:   Shapeshifting Game
•   Lisa Dowler:   ELaTIon- Enhancing Lives Through Improvisation
•   Snježana Premuš & Anja Bornšek:   Touch Tissue Texture
•   Caryn Heilman,  Sophia Naz, Nana Simopoulos:   Hands

Friday, June 23

9:00 - 10:15am       
Margery Segal - The Whole Somatic Child Engaging Lightness of Being

Mary Ann Rund - As Bodies of Water

10:30 - 11:45am     
MelindaJoy Pattinson - Relaxation Therapy Through Guided Meditation

Sara Vogeler - Let's Open the Gates! Exploring the MemBRAIN as the Key to Cellular Intelligence

2:00 - 3:15pm       
Matthew Nelson - The Brave Space of Ecstatic Dance

Jan Cook with Missy Pfohl Smith & Debra Corea - Resourcing Through Somatic Practices: A Popular 4 Credit College Course

Toni Smith with Panelists Olive Bieringa, David Hurwith, Erika Berland & Miroslav Petrovic - Panel Facilitating Embodiment on Zoom (Hybrid Session)

Lindsay Gilmour - Authentic Movement with the Local Animate Earth

3:30 - 4:45pm        
Jill Becker - Dance Improvisation Workshop Based on Somatic Explorations

Margaret Guay - Nature, Art, and Anatomy (Hybrid Session)

Maren Waldman - Partner Dancing with the Wild: BEING WITH Self, Other, and Nature

7:30 - 9:00pm     
Live Performances  -

•      Paula Josa Jones:  Cavallus      
•      Kate Tarlow Morgan:  Iceplants for Lillian Tarlow
•      Cynthia Stevens with Emily Healy: Small Catastrophes
•      B. J. Sullivan:  Being With One Space Several Times 
•      E.E. Balcos with Margery Segal & Mariah Maloney: Set Forth: Being with Synchronicity
•      Dawn Karlovsky:  Au Lavoir
•      Kate Tarlow Morgan:  Iceplants for Lillian Tarlow
•      Sylvia Maes:  Water, a Story

Saturday, June 24

9:00 - 10:15am       
Sylvia Maes - Being Bones

Amelia Ender - Creating Spiritual Space for Neuro-Divergent Students in a Multi-Faith/Cultural Setting

Paula Josa Jones - Somatic Experiencing and the Embodied Self

10:30 - 11:45am     
Florence Poulain - Moving Still: Being With a Life Model

Dawn Karlovsky - Experience of Being

Tal Halevi - Forms in Motion: Exploring the Density Continuum (Hybrid)

12:00 - 2:00pm       
BMCA Board - BMCA Annual Meeting

2:15- 3:30pm         FEATURED PRESENTER 
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen - New Frontiers in BMC^®

3:45 - 5:00pm        
Jey Hiott with Elizabeth Mackenzie - Being With Our Parts:  an IFS Perspective

Christine Cole - Embryology of the Sexual Organs

Wendy Hambidge with Panelists: Jorge Samuel Faria & EE Balcos
The Nature of Comfort: a round table conversation (Hybrid)

Elaine Colandrea - Continuum Water Blessing

7:30- 8:30pm         Silent Auction/Dance Party

Sunday, June 25

9:00 - 10:15am       
Julie Nathanielsz with Margery Segal - Sudden Moves

Sara Vogeler - A better approach to ADHD through Body-Mind Centering^®

Lillian Stamey with Lindsay Gilmour - Playful Perceptions

10:30 - 11:45am     
Lauree Wise - Being With the Dreaming Body - Following the Process

Elaine Colandrea - Being with Trees: A Continuum Exploration

12:00 - 12:20pm
Closing Circle

Session Descriptions

Ellen Barlow - Time with Homolateral
This session will present homolateral patterns in sitting, standing, and moving in space using cues based in the underlying BNP's. Participants will then choose where and how to explore support from and transitions between prior patterns in the progression, and the contralateral patterns as outgrowth. The intention is to invite the shadow and expression of homolateral patterns as they now live in our adult bodies into the room, to learn from each other's inquiries, and, through practice, to experience greater movement coordination clarity, nervous system/fluid balance and ease.

E.E. Balcos - Relational Beings: Resonating with the Endocrine System through Contact Improvisation
Contact improvisation will be experienced with a focus on the Endocrine System. This movement session will explore the awareness and locations of the glands of the Endocrine System and their correlating affinities. Somatic approaches will be facilitated including integrating the awareness of the 7 major chakras or energy centers based on the ancient Hindu tradition. Through the nervous system, slowing down to sense breath and proprioception will begin with gravity and the earth. The billions of cells that make up the body, communicate both locally and broadly on a holistic level. The neuroendocrine system creates the ability to integrate sensing, communicating, and action while finding balance in homeostasis. Embodying these concepts create more resources to move forward into relationship and expression with self, others, and the earth. Appropriate for all movers, in-person only.

Toni Smith - Embodying the Nucleus Acumens (Hybrid)
The Nucleus Accumbens, a small, almond shape structure in the brain, emits neurotransmitters that manage motivation and emotions. Participants will be given a brief overview of the anatomy and function of the Nucleus Accumbens via a Vimeo. Using touch, imagery and movement, individuals and partners will be guided through a Body-Mind Centering^® approach to accessing and supporting the brain.

David France - Being With. . . Discomfort
Discomfort, disorientation, ambiguity and other unsettling states can pull into unproductive habits and destructive reactivity. BMC^® comfort holds an exalted place in learning, growth, and healing, particularly for children. The territory becomes more interesting when the reins are taken (or not) of these processes in adulthood. Comfort can be both an ally and an enemy. Through games, discussion, and movement participants will explore this rich territory in both the physical and psychic realms—differentiating between discomfort and damage, feeling out what a nourishing relationship with discomfort might feel like; exploring and expanding homeostatic boundaries, investigating the rich field of hormesis, and holding the inherent contradictions the process involves.

Cynthia Williams - Tropes and Slippery Slopes: The Language of Embodiment
“Being with,” “hold the space,” and “listen to your body,” are phrases frequently uttered by those guiding somatic explorations. Much of the language suggests states of being that are not easily translated into specific action, yet there’s the assumption that “everyone” knows what is meant. Often vague, metaphoric, and/or surprisingly specific, these linguistic prompts can frustrate the uninitiated and send them running for the door. Simultaneously, words can facilitate holistic integration of physical sensation and conceptual framing. They can promote a deeper understanding of soma and thought and bring new insights and sensations. Through a combination of writing and moving, responding to verbal prompts and internal sensations, the workshop explores individual and collective responses to frequently used somatic phrases, and will encourage the development of a personal language of embodiment. Participants will engage in free-writing, movement improvisation, and communal discussion.

Wendy Hambidge - 3 become 1: utilizing embryology to embrace the 3 dimensionality of the pelvis (Hybrid)
The pelvis is a spiraling figure eight, an irregularly shaped three dimensional bone. How it comes into being can support the felt sense of the pelvis in one’s body today and its roles as leg and as base of the torso. This workshop will investigate the embryological development of the pelvis through traditional Body-Mind Centering^® approaches, using pictures, props, somatization story time and hands-on work. An offering to facilitate a felt sense of the pelvis deep within the body through understanding how its three parts the ilium, ischium and pubis, become one, bones that don’t fully fuse until puberty.

Jill Becker - Chair Dancing & Balance Work: Rhythmic Movement for Seniors and people with Parkinson's Diseases (Hybrid)
Participants will be lead through a dance class in chairs that has evolved from teaching dance to people with Parkinson's Disease. Gentle movements lubricate the joints. Simple movement phrases and improvisational explorations are used to find pleasure in moving and invite participants to connect with each other. Class will end with some balance exercises.

B.J. Sullivan with Panelists: Billy Hawkains Caitlyn Schrader, & KT Williams - Being with Safety Release Technique: pedagogues together discuss their diverse applications (Hybrid)
This presentation will be a panel discussion with Safety Release Technique creator B.J. Sullivan and fellow SRT Teachers Billy Hawkains, Caitlin Schrader and kt Williams. Discussion will focus on this group and their work together with SRT and individually with B.J., plus addressing how each teacher applies this body of work through their separate teachings in multiple settings and diverse populations. Impacting their practices and lives, SRT has them actively dialoging the differences, connections and intersections with their contributions from diverse backgrounds and current studies.

Kate Tarlow Morgan - From The Somatic Archive: Education, Natural Movement & The Basic Neurocellular Patterns
Knowledge that our ontogenetic roots lie along the phylogenetic “steps” of the animal kingdom is over 150 years old, but the practice of embodying those evolutionary roots in the form of movement patterns came later and spread throughout disciplines of dance, fitness, physical therapy, brain science, and school curriculums. Kate has spent 20 years in archives and studio spaces exploring the movement formations of Doing (Rhythms Fundamentals), Noyes (Noyes Rhythms), H’Doubler (Fundamentals), and Bartenieff (Fundamentals) as they are the antecedents to Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s Basic Neurocellular Patterns of the Body-Mind Centering^® approach. As a Rhythms Fundamentals® teacher, Kate will feature this “natural movement” form as an essential part of the “new” American education and social reform, spear-headed and taught by women. Her multi-media workshop will include an exhibit of documents, an 8-minute archival film, and an experiential sampling of these historic patterns.

Megan Nicely with Michelle LaVigne - Embodied Writing Practice: Being with your Writing
This workshop aims to explore how to be with writing, both as a force that activates bodies and as an embodied practice. Writing helps bodies recognize values, sustain circumstances, and challenge normativity by making them legible to ourselves and others. Do bodies offer the same aspects to writing? How do our bodies activate or deactivate writing? Using particular methods of working with writing in an embodied manner, this workshop seeks to lend clarity to aspects of writing processes that may go unremarked or unnoticed. Participants explore how the relation between moving and writing can call both bodies and texts to become more flexible to changing conditions. The facilitators, whose backgrounds include dance, rhetoric and performance studies, share a series of exercises through which participants reflect on their writing practice as an embodied process and develop ideas for sustaining and re-energizing their writing bodies as action. Please wear comfortable clothing.

Hannah Park - Breathing Bones
The bones, the simplest yet deepest structures in the body, can be used to work on the aspects of clarity, imagery, and energy in movement. Using the bones as a guide, this session will explore ways to yield and push as we relate to the floor with our interior structures, and also relate to self and others. We will practice maximizing movement potential through allowing ourselves to experiment with layers of muscle and organs. We will feel, sense, and move as we focus on deep connections of support, embodying two opposing qualities—meditative calm and hurricane chaos—as we bring our attention to the interior of our bodies and relearn and facilitate change in our own movement.

Sandrine Harris - Nature Body: sensing within the natural world (Hybrid)
How do we come home to our bodies in relationship with the natural world we belong to? How does the seasonality of Nature relate to our internal seasons of sensation and awareness and emergence? This workshop process offers the discovery of our inner curiosity towards formlessness, integrating sensation as an investigation of our core identity as part of Nature. 'Being with' carries a different quality from transforming, and yet, when we are fully present and embodied, what surfaces allows us to transmute and connect with inhabiting the spacious layers of becoming, and relating with each other and our environment from a place of inner resource. Nature Body is an invitation into vibrant being-ness. Starting with subtle sensing on the floor, we grow our somatic inquiry through spirals, breath, sound, and flow. We move within the living organism of We.

Ildiko Viczian - Body-Mind Centering^® and Centering Prayer
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen defined Body-Mind Centering^® as ‘the study and practice of bringing to consciousness what is normally not conscious’. And Thomas Keating described Centering Prayer, based on the Christian Contemplative tradition, as ‘the opening of awareness to God, the Ultimate Mystery within’ . . ‘the unconscious’ . . and ‘willingness to be transformed’. These two Centering modalities for turning in opening out will be introduced by Ildiko to offer the possibility of glimpses of insight, into how can one, being with others, bring more understanding, compassion, healing and justice to the human family, indeed all lives and the planet. Beginning with Centering Prayer, the silent, still sitting and continuous letting go of preoccupations will be followed by Somatization and Body-Mind Centering^® based Movement, Voice Explorations and conclude with sharing of the insights and experiences.

Betsy Wetzig - Working With Our Different Ways of Moving and Being
“This session will experientially explore the physical and mental characteristics of the neuromuscular tension patterns and their tension scale discovered in the 1960’s by Dr. Valerie Hunt, to have primary functions of awareness, creativity, relaxation, and coordination. As a movement-mind link, they create a person’s style and have been applied to improve both physical and mental skills, as well as give insight into behavior and embodiment. They coordinate the body and the brain and were used to create Coordination Patterns™ & Style Dynamics Training. These Patterns are Thrust-Driver-Sensate-Visual (Graham-Picasso), Shape-Organizer-Think-Auditory
(Ballet-Michelangelo), Swing-Collaborator-Feel-Mixed Mode (Hula-Gaugin), Hang-Explorer-Intuitive-Kinesthetic (Isadora-Miro). Though each person uses all four, one is their dominant and lowest tension level Pattern. It is their “Home" Pattern of knowing and is a core aspect of their Movement-Mind State at the moment of creativity.

Sylvia Maes - Our Ground is Water (Hybrid)
The earth's surface is mostly water, our bodies are mosty water. When we contact this ubiquitous and precious molecule, this base of living, we rejuvenate. This workshop will further explore my Body-Mind Centering^® research on water, our fluid ground.

Lisa Dowler: ELaTIon- Enhancing Lives Through Improvisation  
This film documents a day of improvised performances at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital’s Oncology, Renal, Neuromedical and Cardiac units, in 2019 (UK). The process investigated the potential of embodying the fluid system, as articulated in Body-Mind Centering^®(BMC^®), through movement, sound creation, and consciousness as an appropriate performance methodology for improvised, bespoke, bedside performances.
By integrating the fluid system into the performance practice of instant composition, performers experienced enhanced communication through sound and movement between dancers and musicians and an ability to collectively alter performance states seamlessly.
This created the potential for performers to respond appropriately to the children and young people encountered on acute hospital wards, despite their emotional or physical condition. The project offered the the possibility for performers to 'be with' the children using a performative approach.

Caryn Heilman: With the 360 Degree Sea  
This audience-interactive video dance will use 360 imagery of the sea in Greece where Caryn will be at Bouros Seaview Retreat Immersion in water is a profound way to catalyze sensations and flow of our inner fluid systems and connecting to water is a connection to the resonance of water everywhere

Vanessa Chapple, Fiona Harrisson & Kim Wishart-Sargent: Traces 
Traces (2022) is a short experimental film by Vanessa Chapple, Fiona Harrisson, & Kim Sargent-Wishart, created as part of ‘a collection of fluid spaces’ (BodyCartography, Oslo, Norway). Traces was filmed on Wadawurrung Country, along the coastline of Port Philip Bay, Victoria, Australia.
 
Bernadett Jobbagy: Certain Solitude    
Bernadett is a research artist at HUFA - Hungarian University of Fine Arts Doctoral School, Budapest. Her research field is embodied filmmaking, under the title of ‘Moving image and somatic self – embodiment processes as creator, performer and spectator, at the meeting points of film and performing art.’ Her background as dancer, spatial designer (landscape architect with visual art background), and film editor merges in this research, and she is studying the possibilities of somatic driven art making process, especially in filmmaking. The presented video was created in 2022/23 as part of her research. In this choreographic moving image, she was interested in the mechanics of the body, as it aligns with man made machines, and the lack of touch – the longing for touch. Skin plays an important role in this film, as it is the place of touch, and the place of releasing sweat. Our boundary, which calls for certain trespass.

Dr. Leonard Cruz: Shapeshifting Game
In Filipino mythology and folklore shapeshifting is the ability to physically transform through an inherently superhuman and or divine spirit. Cruz explores and transforms into various bird deities and uses animist beliefs to shape-shift, transform and heal. Concept, Choreography and Performance: Dr. Leonard Arvisu Cruz Composer, Musician, Animation and Graphics: Dana Lyn 

Lale Madenoglu: As it Is  
“As it is” is a performance created and performed by Lale Madenoglu. It gets its inspiration from being with what is. Originating from a text written by Lale Madenoglu in 2020, a somatic and creative research process was executed. The premiere took place in the exhibition “Becoming Tree: What Do Trees Tell Us” in October, 2022 in Izmir/Turkey. The conceptual background and movement research encompasses considering nature and the body as an extension of each other - not as separate entities, to hear what silence expresses and to find strength in the cycles of change and transformation. It is nourished by 'being, producing, and allowing its own flow'.

Shay Hartung:  a heart unbound
A solo, metaphorical dance journey tracing the faith and courage needed to relinquish the armors that bind the heart, to open the body and spirit to the possibility of light and to surrender to the vulnerability that allows for being with hope.

Snježana Premuš and Anja Bornšek : TOUCH TISSUE TEXTURE
In the dance project, the choreographers delve into the very nature of communication, which they understand as "action–dialogue" and "situation–meeting". They recognize that the primary relationship is built through touch, which they understand in the broadest sense. Thus, they build and expand dialogue into different spheres of "touching": tangible, perceived/felt, material/ephemeral, intimate/common. Their duet opens up the space where communication “steps out” of everyday linearity. As dancers, they need to adapt, open up the senses, and allow for responsiveness that can flow in many directions at the same time. Their presences extend through the other, following the flow of the qualities that arise through the fluidity of their cells to the exploration of the limits of the self within this relationship. Where does one end and the other start? How does one stop the other, when does one let go, or when finding the borders, help them to transform into a new state of being together?

Margery Segal  & Julie Nathanielsz - The Whole Somatic Child Engaging Lightness of Being
Children are engaged in their felt experience of their body in the world. By feeling into our own somatically sensed experience of them, we can develop an enhancing relationship with their felt sense of themselves. In this workshop, Margery will discuss approaches to working with children who have health or body sensation challenges. The workshop will offer experiential practices to mindfully leave the diagnosis at the door and join with the brilliant humanity of the Whole Child.

Eva Maes - Transmitting the Body: researching (through) dance
Through moments of physical exploration and reflection, the workshop engages with questions that somatic inquirers share, wherever they move to: How to translate a methodology of listening, an incorporated methodology, anchored in (dance) practices of collective learning and communicating through diverse somatic approaches, at the moment of entering in an(y) (institutionalized) field? What to preserve, how to translate? How to ´transmit the body´? Body-Mind Centering^® (more concretely, explorations in movement and touch based on embryological roots of our connective tissue matrix as it interlaces with our circulatory system), as well as other (movement) influences around collectively shared research inform this workshop. How do notions about ´listening´, ´conscious and unconscious dialogue´, a ´collective realm´ inform an explorative dance, as well as move concepts of research in various directions? To what extent is sharing these questions supportive of our singular practices?

Mary Ann Rund - As Bodies of Water
From communion with nature we glean information and inspiration, experience inclusion and integration. As human bodies of water, we have a liquid connectivity and congruence with earthly bodies of water. Our fluid system, comprised of several distinct fluids with different qualities of weight and flow and purpose and pathway is a connected whole which traverses and unifies the entire human body. The intention of this time period is to be with your fluid self, to identify several fluids within, to feel their essential qualities, allowing those to move you. The plan is to be outdoors, invoked and influenced by the waters of Lake Seneca.

MelindaJoy Pattinson - Relaxation Therapy Through Guided Meditation
During this session, participants will be introduced to the process of relaxing the body, through guided meditation. This exercise offers the entire body, from the hair tips to the bottom of the feet and from the epidermis all the way into the bone marrow, the opportunity to deeply rest in relaxation. The process offers great benefit to those areas of the body where tension, discomfort or pain are experienced, and the individual will experience a feeling of general wellbeing throughout.

Sara Vogeler - Let's Open the Gates! Exploring the MemBRAIN as the Key to Cellular Intelligence
What happens if we let our overriding organizing frontal cortex relax and trust in our cells to tell us what we can do, how we can move and live together? Let’s explore the membranes as memBRAINS, by locating them in different systems and sensing what crosses the border by simple diffusion, facilitated diffusion, active transport, or osmosis. We will explore how movement can be directed by the intelligent membrane around each cell—calling for ATP (mitochondria), absorbing what we need (microbiota) and eliminating what we don’t (autophagy). We can sense the cycle of permission, selection, acceptance, rejection, through our cell walls. We don’t have to guide ourselves by ideas created in the brain, but by sensing what is needed from deep places, from what surrounds each cell. Our cells communicate through our membranes. Maybe this experience will lead us to trust what's already there--a knowing of who we are, derived from our embryology, our DNA, and our developmental patterns.

Matthew Nelson - The Brave Space of Ecstatic Dance
Ecstatic dances are conscious, sober dance parties—and a movement quickly spreading the globe. A place for connection, Ecstatic Dances reveal a somatic revolution; an awakening within mainstream culture to embodied consciousness. Drawing from recognizable elements of Authentic Movement, Contact Improvisation, and even Developmental Movement, Ecstatic Dances at their best offer Brave Space. Inclusive and authentic, Brave Spaces are built for inquiry and respect diversity. Brave Spaces encourage improvisation and vulnerability. And, by encouraging mindful reflection without shaming, brave spaces hold us accountable for our actions and attitudes, our power dynamics, and our privileges. The score of ecstatic dance will feel familiar: We gather to speak intentions, we move to music without speaking, and then gather again to reflect. This Ecstatic Dance aims to serve as a Brave Space within which we may commune and examine its constitutional elements.

Jan Cook with Missy Pfohl Smith & Debra Corea - Resourcing Through Somatic Practices: A Popular 4 credit college course
This participatory workshop is based in our 10 year experimentation within the program of Dance and Movement at the University of Rochester
It will include:
Sharing the overview of a co-designed curriculum which integrates somatic practices from Alexander Technique,
Feldenkrais, Bartenieff Fundamentals, Body-Mind Centering^®, Yoga, Functional Movement, and Continuum Movement^®
Demonstrating how an inclusive cross-section of students with diverse interests and areas of study can access their
body’s intelligence to be with the challenges of our culture.
Offering experiential tastes of the collaborative model created over many years of learning together.
Explaining the process of integrating disciplines as teachers to access varied modalities and practical frameworks for the lives of a diverse student population.
Exploring the use of nonverbal approaches to support those whose primary language is not English.
Presenting student feedback on their increased capacity to listen inwardly to their immediate embodied experience, to feel and move from the inherent wisdom of the body and re-pattern from subtle intrinsic impulses to whole body integration

Toni Smith With Panelists: Olive Bieringa David Hurwith Erika Berland & Miroslav Petrovic - Panel Facilitating Embodiment on Zoom (Hybrid)
How can a remote presenter (guide, teacher, facilitator) engage experiential participation over the internet? What kind of approaches provide an opening for participants to sense, feel, “dive deep” into internal territory when separated geographically? Is the screen an adequate tool for sharing research in an experiential format? How can a virtual presenter “set the tone” for attendees around the world to internally shift, feel and discover independently? What are the techniques available to us and others? Panelist will share how their style evolved and provide a brief concrete approach to “dropping in” to embodiment without others in the room? Panelists will welcome input from viewers as well.

Lindsay Gilmour - Authentic Movement with the Local Animate Earth
This workshop explores the reciprocal relationship between body and earth through the Discipline of Authentic Movement. We question: How is it different to witness the whole of the land or focus on the singular wet body of a snail? What can I learn from tracking the experience in my own body as I witness the slow turning of a flower toward the sun or the swift bounding of a hummingbird? And if I am witnessing the land and non-human animals, aren’t they witnessing me? Inspired by David Abram’s work and phenomenology’s concepts of intersubjectivity and the life world, this workshop explores the reciprocal relationship between mover and earth inviting sensing instead of making sense, encouraging direct experience with the natural world without conceptualizing. The grass, ants, flowers cease to be inert objects of perception with mover at the center, but rather animate entities with which the mover is in conversation.

Jill Becker - Dance Improvisation Workshop Based on Somatic Explorations
Moving to music, participants will explore improvisational dance structures to expand movement possibilities and connect with one's self and one another. The warmup will be rooted in enhancing connections within the body using Thomas Myers' fascial work for internal connections.

Margaret Guay - Nature, Art, and Anatomy (Hybrid)
The form of structures in nature are myriad and wonderful and the body is a microcosm of these larger ecosystems. Form and function, microcosm/macrocosm, simple elements combining to develop into more complex structures - these concepts are all part of our somatic investigations. Using visual images, somatizations, and art-making, this will be an opportunity to explore and relate the anatomy of the body to the forms and processes of the larger realm of nature. Art-making is for everyone - no special experience needed!

Maren Waldman - Partner Dancing with the Wild: BEING WITH Self, Other, and Nature
Description: This outdoor workshop combines somatic practices with core principles from partnered social dancing to explore BEING WITH self, other, and a wild nature partner. What happens when trees, water, air, soil are reliable dance partners? Working with a theme that matches the nature site, the workshop opens with somatic movement that enlivens and reminds participants about aspects of nature that innately move inside the body. Next comes a dance game that builds group cohesion, trust, and teaches partnering skills. Participants are then guided to combine the somatic practices with partnering skills to dance with a nature partner of their choice. The workshop completes with sharing the dances, witnessing, and reflecting together. This combination of inner and outer work with each other and the land has proven to be a powerful catalyst for spiritual connection, intimacy, and healing. 

E.E. Balcos with Margery Segal & Mariah Maloney: Set Forth: Being with Synchronicity 
This presentation explores the artists’ lived-experiences as dancers; the histories, people, and places that connect them; and an energetic and resonant transformation of space. Over the years, their trajectories have intersected and Body-Mind Centering^® has brought them together again and again. This sets forth an exploration of a moving improvisational score. A confluence of energy emerges; the light shines bright; and the performance is nuanced by their passion for BMC^® and movement artistry. Inspired by the invitation to dance together at the 2022 Body-Mind Centering^® Annual Conference, they discover a calling that brings together both mover and witness; the inclusivity of the individual; and the celebration of the resonating community. In this work the trio creates a diversity of perspectives that join together the light within and radiates and calls the witness to set forth with this newly created inspiration.

Paula Josa Jones: Cavallus 
CAVALLUS explores the bio- synchrony of horse and rider in the language of hoof and foot, presence and absence, movement and stillness. It is inspired by the death of Paula Josa-Jones’s beloved stallion Capprichio and the poem “My Hunger” by poet Jane Hirshfield: “The way the high-wire walker / must carry a pole / to make her arms longer /you carried me / I carried you / through this world.”

Sylvia Maes: Water, a Story 
Invitational improv of watery movement to accompany the story and paintings of Water Dance by Thomas Locker, read by and further illustrated by Sylvia Maes's water paintings and photographs.

B. J. Sullivan: Being With One Space Several Times 
"Being With One Space Several Times" is an excerpt from B.J. Sullivan's larger work "Running Between Empty" first performed in April, 2022. It is eight minutes long and performed with dance collaborators Billy Hawkains, Caitlin Schrader, B.J. Sullivan and kt williams.

Cynthia Stevens with Emily Healy: Small Catastrophes 
SMALL CATASTROPHES dwells with the geologic forces shaping the Finger Lakes landscape, telescoping from the intimacy of the human body and it's scale to vast stretches of geologic time. Choreographed and composed by Cynthia Stevens; and performed by Emily Healy and Cynthia Stevens.

Dawn Karlovsky: Au Lavoir
This is a live dance performance with choreography created and performed by Dawn Karlovsky, St. Louis, MO. This performance includes a short video and live movement. Au Lavoir was filmed in France at an old washing pool that dates back to the 12th century.

Kate Tarlow Morgan: Iceplants for Lillian Tarlow
This 3 minute dance emerged as a part of a project/study conducted by Giselle Ruzany, Lesley College, with choreographers negotiating their ancestral visitations. During the pandemic, I made a space in my Attic for Lillian Tarlow, my grandmother Eva’s sister, to visit. Born circa 1900, in Brooklyn to a Jewish Family. One of 8 children, Lillian died of the “Spanish Flu,” I have one picture of her and one story: that she liked to dance in the park. That is all I know of her. I also recall the tone of my grandmother’s voice when she spoke of Lillian, which made me feel that she loved her deeply. Lillian is buried in Mt. Zion Cemetery on 54th Avenue in the Chevra Tillem Section, Path #10 her parents and her older sister. On her gravestone, it says "Virgin."

Linda Tumbarello - Being With Self. . . Coming Back Home
BEING WITH SELF - COMING BACK HOME Participants will be guided to embody the fluids, the heart, and find the pleasure of the senses as pathways to return to being with self after injuries, loss, illness and trauma. Explorations will include guided somatizations, movement, music and the dance of touch on the journey back home.

Sylvia Maes - Being Bones
Bring your bones, your feelings, weight, images and artwork, bone sounds and bone experiences- together exploring this strong internal structure in movement or watching witness. For 30 minutes move or rest in bones then for 15 minutes share bone inspired discussion It seems that bones are getting more delicate in our community and a time to resonate in them without a pre-conceived curriculum could be healing The container of time, witness and audiovisual cuing will be held.more delicate in our community and a time to resonate in them without a pre-concieved curriculum could be healing The container of time, witness and audiovisual cuing will be held.

Amelia Ender - Creating Spiritual Space for Neuro-Divergent Students in a Multi-Faith/Cultural Setting
This workshop will review current definitions of neurodivergency. Participants, alone and with others, will envision and embody the qualities of a space that holds and nourishes them, utilizing creative modalities, non-verbal perceptual and motor cues, personal experience and memory. The goal is to demonstrate and engage motoric neural pathways, sensory awareness to brain processes that enhance the inherent flexibility of the brain, and its ability to generate new neural connections. Activities will demonstrate principles that can apply to a group process, and support the possibilities for new and innovative approaches to connection across differences. Discussion will explore prepared community guidelines for dialogue and engagement across differences.

Paula Josa Jones - Somatic Experiencing and the Embodied Self
Somatic Experiencing is a body-oriented therapeutic approach to trauma healing that was developed by Dr. Peter Levine. It is based on a multidisciplinary intersection of physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics and has been clinically applied for more than four decades. Over the past 10 years of studying and practicing SE, I have come to understand the deep and transformative embodiment that can emerge when we begin to unravel symptoms and expressions of stress physiology that result from early developmental and shock traumas, and how that allows us a clearer, more reliable sense of "being with" ourselves. In this workshop we will explore some of the fundamental practices that inform SE, with the inclusion (and infusion) of other somatic practices, including Body-Mind Centering^®, Laban Movement Analysis, and Embodied Horsemanship, the equine-focused work of Paula Josa-Jones.

Florence Poulain - Moving Still: Being With a Life Model
Inviting participants to meet earth and sky being with gravity and stillness in space".
A somatization on exploring how the body systems support holding still in active presence.
Next, in two groups and taking turns, some of the participants will be offering and holding a gesture, while the other half will slowly continuously meander as witnesses.
The session will end with a 15 mn sharing.

Dawn Karlovsky - Experience of Being
This is an experiential, movement-based workshop exploring how we perceive and sense ourselves while in activity through the principles of the Alexander Technique. F.M. Alexander, a pioneer of somatic education, regarded the "Self" as the Unity of Being. This class will focus on the dynamic relationship of the integrated use of ourselves involving thought, movement, breath, and sensory awareness to discover the harmony of the self while in activity. Participants will be guided through verbal prompts to awaken the senses and to discover the important role our senses play in coordinating our movement responses.

Tal Halevi - Forms in Motion: Exploring the Density Continuum (Hybrid)
Presentation Synopsis: The embryologist Eric Blechsmidt spoke of the embryo as forming itself through “growing gestures.” Like plants, mountains, and other forms in nature, we are shaped through this process of motion, of condensing and expanding, and concentration and diffusion. Delving into the kinesthetic experience of this fluid process, understanding ourselves as changing states of density, can allow us to deepen our engagement with the forms we take and illuminate new expressive possibilities. 

Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen - New Frontiers: Our Inner Organ of Perception
In this session we will explore embodying our inner organ of perception – brain and spinal cord. It swims in the flowing sea of cerebrospinal fluid, surrounded by the embrace of the membranes and protection of the skull and vertebral column. How can we protect its sensitivity, so that it can guide our well-being with calm presence, compassionate awareness, and discerning wisdom as we travel through this lifetime together.

Jey Hiott & Elizabeth Mackenzie - Being With Our Parts: an IFS Perspective
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a therapeutic method fusing psychology, body-awareness, spirituality, intra-psychic and systems theory. The IFS method creates safety so clients can experience self-transformational healing. Following a brief experiential exercise, a short didactic presentation will invite participants to gain an understanding of the components of the model: Self and Parts (Protectors--managers and fire-fighters--and Exiles). Similarities and comparisons between BMC^® and IFS will be considered: looking at the "value", not the "problem" as Bonnie says, finding the "protector's" purpose in IFS exploration; innate wholeness as considered in IFS as Self. In a guided meditation, participants will be invited to experience the body/mind in its innate undamaged wholeness and from there, to experience the relationship between Self and one or more of their parts. A 15 minute discussion will complete the session.

Christine Cole - Embryology of the Sexual Organs
Christine Cole will reveal some of the earliest embryonic migrations of the germ cells, in a somatization, which provides a template that students can practice on their own to regenerate, re-connect and discover the lived experience of these organs. She is offering to put aside the scripts,expectations, and the limited view of these organs and how they create our identity. Male and female gonads are named for their role in reproduction and sometimes, sex, lust, desire… some focus on “life energy, sexual energy, tantra” and tend to see bringing up sexual desire as a goal; in reality the germcells protect the unique spark, the genetic imprint of who we are!

This class will lead to the moment before the development of female or male gonads and hopes to offer a wide acceptance, curiosity and openness for a possibility to reclaim this area as a clear and personal source.

After the fall of Roe vs. Wade, Christine felt compelled to DO SOMETHING! She chose to trust herself, meet and embody her genitals,and radically listen,which led to a surprising, intimate and radical attunement of source.

Wendy Hambidge with Panelists: Jorge Samuel Faria & EE Balcos - The Nature of Comfort: a round table conversation (Hybrid)
What is the nature of comfort? What is the role of comfort? What is the experience of comfort? The role of comfort is discussed in social justice work, whose comfort gets privileged? In BMC^® we consider three basic steps/requirements to give rise to curiosity. They are in order: safety, comfort and bonding. It is addressed in the development of the child. In this round table discussion Tarina Quelho and Jorge Samuel from Brazil along with E.E. Balcos, Damaris Webb and Wendy Hambidge from the United States will each express how they experience and consider comfort.

Elaine Colandrea - Continuum Water Blessing
Learn the Continuum breath, sound and movement sequence known as the Continuum Water Blessing - a way to connect with your own internal fluids and to create resonance with the surrounding fluids in the natural world.

Julie Nathanielsz with Margery Segal - Sudden Moves
In this workshop participants will discover this different somatic approach that both unites and liberates the body systems through kinesthetic processes. When this approach is layered in through the body, the body drops away and spaces and inner spaces emerge. Stillness erupts from inner microcosms and explodes into the macrocosm of outer spaces near to and beyond each dancer's body. Perceptions matter. Tensegrity transforms unformed potential, and surprising compositions might happen. This is the archer's clean break or release: coming from stillness, multiplicity in single action.

Sara Vogeler - A better approach to ADHD through Body-Mind Centering®
CDC scientists found that in 2016, 6.1 million children in the U.S. had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. ADHD affects one's abilities to regulate emotions, to shift attention, to handle social settings, to organize, to complete goals, and to remember—functions of the prefrontal cortex. These deficits often make living quite challenging, and reaching a long-term goal seems impossible. Applying the Basic NeuroCellular Patterns may help produce more neurons and neurotransmitters that boost and balance the brain, which would enhance executive functioning so completing tasks, focusing, controlling emotions, and reducing anxiety would be enhanced. By applying sequential development and specific movement patterns missed in infancy, neuroplasticity may increase so the brain has more options to make connections that improve functioning. In addition, shifting from glucose to ketones (coconut oil) for energy could help, along with exercise and good sleep habits.

Lillian Stamey with Lindsay Gilmour - Playful Perceptions
This workshop explores the process of perception formation through the soma. Participants will drop their awareness into the silent level experience of sensation, feeling, and movement. With a beginner’s mind they will invite direct experience to guide them through the space. The inquiry: in what ways can you un-make meaning? What new meaning emerges from the emptiness of the immediate moment? The methodologies used to guide participants will be rooted in play, open attention, and choice-making.

Lauree Wise - Being With the Dreaming Body - Following the Process
Unconscious processes expressing as dreams and within the ‘body field’, carry messages or signals that point to what has yet to unfold and integrate. Within the body field, signals include physical ‘symptoms’, uncharacteristic or spontaneous movements, as well as unconscious gestures that seem incongruous. Signals also show up within other channels, i.e., auditory, visual, synchronicities and relationships.
Allowing curiosity to lead the unfolding process draws one to the creative and challenging edge between conscious/primary identity and unconscious/secondary expression. Drawing from the Dreambody work of Arnold Mindell, aka Process Work, this workshop offers participants opportunities to playfully explore their own process and integrate parts of the Self. 

Elaine Colandrea - Being with Trees: A Continuum Exploration
With the somatic modality of Continuum - using breath, sound and movement practices - the themes of reciprocity, branching, rooting will be explored within the bodies of the participants and in relationship to the trees in the Arboretum on the campus of Hobart William Smith, where the conference is located.