36th Annual BMCA Conference 
Being With. . .
Remote Program

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Featured Presenter:
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen (Virtual)

Schedule

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

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 downloadable Remote Schedule (PDF)
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Click here to view downloadable Remote Presenter Bios (PDF) coming soon

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

Wednesday, June 21

11:00 - 12:15pm     
Remo Rostagno - Midlines applied to movement, BNP, yoga postures, and dance

12:30 - 1:45pm
Erika Paez Manjarres - “JUNTANZA” Somatic & Autocuidado (Self-care) LAB - Latin American women: leaders and in solidarity”

2:00 - 3:15pm        
Elizabeth DeLaBarre - Tonguesegrity: understanding tensegrity structure, how it relates to the tongue and nervous system

Toni Smith - Embodying the Nucleus Acumbens (Hybrid Session)

3:30 - 4:45pm        
Marina Tsartsara - Somatic Art Practice: Senses & Perception

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

5:00 - 6:30pm
Snježana Premuš with Anja Bornsek - Surfaces: A Doorway to the Other

6:45 - 8:00pm
Bob Lehnberg - Embryological Origins of the 3 Dantians

Thursday, June 22

9:00 - 10:15am       
Heike Kuhlmann  -  my/our/their cycle

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     
Marghe Mills-Thysen - Body-Mind Centering^® And The Feldenkrais Method^® : An Integration

12:00 - 1:15pm       
Susan Bauer - Cultivating Presence                                 

2:00 - 3:15pm  
Cathy Boyce - Being With Awareness

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

3:30 - 4:45pm        
Michaela Bartoskova - Being with the Impact of Yoga & Movement of the Jaw & Tongue during Singing and Speaking

Sylvia Maes - Our Ground is Water (Hybrid Session)

Nefertiti Charlene Altan with Amal ElWardi, Samantha Matsumoto, & Marjorye Maciel - Being with geographies; accessing transgenerational memories of place through the body

5:00 - 6:15pm       
Miranda Zapata  - Dancemaking: An Activist Framework Using A Four-Phase Sequence To Cultivate and Foster Community

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

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

Friday, June 23

9:00 - 10:15am       
Ann Moradian  - Mindful Movement, Human Ecologies and Conscious Evolution

Martha Eddy with Shakti Smith -   Inviting neuroendocrine, chakral, and developmental awareness in the Sun Salutation practice 

10:30 - 11:45am
Faye Berton - Embodying Ayurveda

Annie Brook - Fight/Flight/Fun!

12:00 - 1:15pm       
Lilian Vilela - Floor Dances in Brazil

Susan Bauer - Being With Touch

2:00 - 3:15pm       
Mario Tanga - A Community Is a Set of Relations United By People…

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

3:30 - 4:45pm        
Dr. Leonard Cruz - Being With Self, Others, And The Universe: Integrating Animism for Transformation and Empowerment

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

5:00 - 6:15pm       
Kyra Lober  - Being With Distant Healing

Saturday, June 24

9:00 - 10:15am       
Melissa Smith  - The “Rest" of Yoga: Somatic Restorative

10:30 - 11:45am     
Michele Feldheim - A New Protocol to Eradicate Chronic Pain - The Pain Fix Protocol

Tal Halevi - Forms in Motion (Hybrid Session)

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

2:15- 3:30pm         FEATURED PRESENTER 
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen - New Frontiers: Our Inner Organ of Perception

3:45 - 5:00pm        
Kim Sargent-Wishart - body/vision/shape/words

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

Sunday, June 25

9:00 - 10:15am 
Ryuta Iwashita - Touching Sotai (Ancestral Body)

10:30 - 11:45am     
Erika Berland - The Elemental Body

3:00 - 4:15pm 
Trude Cone - Moving Forward on the Path of Others

Session Descriptions

Remo Rostagno - Midlines applied to movement, BNP, yoga postures, and dance
This workshop will be a guided exploration with free movement improvisation. Participants will review the importance of the Midline (from tail bone to ethmoid, from filum terminals to lamina terminalis ), including the cranial vertebras (occipital bone, sphenoid bone and the ethmoid bone) as reference during movement in the space. Embryological development of the midline and at the longitudinal torsion movement that assists the intervertebral disks growth will be addressed. The goal is to discover the beauty of this vertical Midlines in relationship to the three free horizons (earth, human/heart, sky) by exploring movement in dance, yoga, and in the basic neuro-cellular patterns.

Erika Paez Manjarres - “JUNTANZA” Somatic & Autocuidado (Self-care) LAB - Latin American women: leaders and in solidarity”
A: Main findings of the LAB Yoga Somatico & Autocuidado YSA for Latin American Women leaders/other women 2021-23. B:Experiencial Practice:Self-care tool created using Juntanza method, Community organizacion CPC Colombia A key element for YSA LAB is the diversity. From Yoga teachers, somatic practitioners, human rights activist, from different age, race, gender identity, educational backgrounds. Some have not movement practice. Some other lack any political activism or did not know about Latin American women’s rights or critical pedagogy. LAB’s common denominators: 1. All learning and teaching/sharing together, independently of the backgrounds. 2 To make YSA tools accessible to the communities each member work with, following the Juntanza principles (support community building & selfcare to release the effects of social struggle). Less about gurus. rooted in the ancester and own context. A a way to deconstruct yoga, make it more related to the specificities of each body-mind.

Elizabeth DeLaBarre - Tonguesegrity: understanding tensegrity structure, how it relates to the tongue and nervous system
In "Tonguesegrity", Elizabeth will discuss why the ideas about, ideals for, and interventions used on the tongue and oral cavity are taking us further away from having a tensegrity structure. Tongue position reflects the state of our nervous system. If the structure is to reorganize organically from within, how the nervous system is perceiving the environment must be taken into consideration. The presentation will include a sensing and movement practice.

Toni Smith - Embodying the Nucleus Acumens
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.

Marina Tsartsara - Somatic Art Practice: Senses & Perception
In this workshop we will explore different visual artmaking proposals for 'being with' our senses. The sense of touch through and with art materials, the sense of smell becoming a line, a smudge, a color. We will visualise, somatise and play with embodied drawing. Necessary to bring with you drawing paper, a piece of charcoal a soft pencil and any colors that you have.

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

Snježana Premuš with Anja Bornsek - Surfaces: A Doorway to the Other
Participants will explore the creative intelligence of surfaces as response spaces. Such spaces are blueprints for communication, nourishment and a creative sphere of alchemizing—differentiating and merging. The felt sense of cellular membranes (and our skin as our final physical membrane) brings about a sense of insularity, a possibility for connectivity and the ability to hold attention for the inner and the outer. Participants are invited to sense into this response-ability space, which feels, translates, decides, harmonizes and self-protects. In part two, participants further explore relationality through movement: touch (hands) combined with drawing using pencil and paper. Working in pairs, one “draws” (traces) on the other’s body and the other draws (translates, transforms) on paper what they perceive on the body. This process supports the emergence of the associative imaginary world through the experience of touch and presence, which opens up through pre-reflective patterns.

Bob Lehnberg - Embryological Origins of the 3 Dantians
The three dantians, the energy centers of the body, have distinct embryological origins. The lower dantian is located in the gut and originates from the endoderm. It is primarily concerned with our physical body. The middle dantian located in our heart center. It arises from mesoderm and is primarily concerned with our emotional nature. The upper dantian, located in our head center, originates from ectoderm. It corresponds to our relationship with time, space, and spirit. Though arising from different germ layers, the dantians are in intimate relationship with each other; they relate and align along the central channel connecting pelvic floor and celestial crown. In this experiential practice, we will overview these embryological progressions and bring present movement reminiscent of early formational patterns. No particular experience in embryology or qigong is needed.

Heike Kuhlmann  -  my/our/their cycle
How do you experience your mentrual cycle within other life cycles? The beginning of this experiential online performance setting will be a short somatization on the ovaries to introduce the film showing of an artistic research project of the menstrual cycle with a sharing afterwards.

Jill Becker - Chair Dancing & Balance Work: Rhythmic Movement for Seniors and people with Parkinson's Diseases (Hybrid Session)
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 Session)
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.

Marghe Mills-Thysen - Body-Mind Centering^® And The Feldenkrais Method® : An Integration
Explore an integration of Body-Mind Centering^® and the Feldenkrais Method® with the first teacher trained by both Dr. Feldenkrais and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and Certified in their work. Studying and practicing BMC^® for over fifty years and the Feldenkrais Method® for over forty, Marghe Mills-Thysen is pleased to share her assimilation and integration of these extraordinary teachings. Their differences and similarities, rather than diminish either, can complement, enrich and strengthen one another. Enjoy an Awareness Through Movement® lesson illuminated with key BMC^® material and explorations of intention, initiation, sequence and internal/external relationships to space, gravity and each other. Recognize engrained neuro-physical habit patterns. Explore shared somatic foundations of human development, proximal/distal movement and Breath, the doorway to awareness, learning and growth. There will be time for questions and discussion of individual and professional applications.

Susan Bauer - Cultivating Presence 
All somatic practices include our subjective experience; the ‘soma’, or body experienced from within. How do we create a sense of spaciousness to meaningfully explore this inner realm, and deepen our capacity to be present with one another in this process? In this workshop the presenter introduces methods to intentionally create a container, or ritual space, for such personal somatic research to unfold. Drawing on her extensive experience in various contemporary practices—such as meditation, Authentic Movement, Body-Mind Centering®, and Amerta Movement—the presenter shares eight core ritual practices she uses in her work with individual clients to create space for deep listening. These practices establish a shared, intimate, relational space within which to explore our movement and related experience. Working in partners, participants will practice using these elements in a simple score / movement process specifically designed to cultivate profound presence and reveal new insights.    

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

Michaela Bartoskova - Being with the Impact of Yoga & Movement of the Jaw & Tongue during Singing and Speaking
Purpose - The purpose of this study is to find out whether yoga and movement impacts vocal production and jaw, tongue, body tensions and, if so, how. The aim of this study is to detect and emphasize the benefits yoga and movement can have on articulatory, masticatory muscles and sound production. Findings - The participants’ surveys presented that everyone’s jaw, tongue and body tensions were eliminated and freed up during this workshop. Whilst looking further into participants’ responses and the connection between yoga, tension and voice, these themes frequently occurred: the sense of connection, balance, release, safety and loosening. Other themes included: the sense of feeling relaxed, gaining new knowledge, power, freedom, and confidence. While going through the quantitative data in the peer review surveys, it was evident that each participant voice was positively affected by this workshop. These findings confirm my initial thoughts on the information gained from the literature.

Sylvia Maes - Our Ground is Water (Hybrid Session)
The earth's surface is mostly water, our bodies are mostly 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.

Nefertiti Charlene Altan with Amal ElWardi, Samantha Matsumoto, & Marjorye Maciel - Being with geographies; accessing transgenerational memories of place through the body
Four dance professionals with embodied relationships to specific geographies will share insights from somatic-based practices that facilitate vibrational connection, presence, dance between the personal/ancestral memories of specific places that reside in the body or, what it is to be with geographies. Nefertiti will share her experience in co-developing & utilizing the somatic-based art practice Fagun Keko (Yoruba for contract-expand), a tool to access ancestral memory, geographies in the body to produce movement & song. Amal will mine her layered Moroccan/Italian ancestries to reveal bio-behaviors that express shifting resonance between environmental/cultural rhythms.Samantha will share how her body holds memories from previous generations of her Japanese American family lineage while returning back to the Manzanar Japanese Internment Camp. Marjorye will discuss how she transfers the geography in her body & memories of her upbringing in Brazil to her child she is raising in the US.

Miranda Zapata - Dancemaking: An Activist Framework Using A Four-Phase Sequence To Cultivate and Foster Community
Activism is not an end product or final destination. Activism can be defined as a series of bold transformative actions in opposition to government action or inaction, that publicly raises awareness, generates empathy, and informs a variety of audiences so that marginalized voices are amplified and included in the political discourse. Activism can simultaneously happen at multiple levels; personal and collective. In the context of my ongoing research, the choreographer, dancers, stage work, and audience are all activists. This lecture will display how each stakeholder embodies activism differently, understands how one can relate to one another, and how to be with and in community with oneself and others.

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?

Ann Moradian - Mindful Movement, Human Ecologies and Conscious Evolution
Human patterns of living with/in the world are changing our environment faster than species and ecosystems can adapt. In spite of our knowledge, intelligence and technologies we seem unable to change our behaviour quickly enough to arrest the damage we are inflicting on our environment, other species, one another and ourselves. Recent research indicates mindful movement practitioners balance thinking, feeling and doing while immersed within their dynamic processes (Moradian, 2020). This balancing of mind, body and world is foundational to living well together with/in the ecologies we inhabit. Because human technologies are already being used to manipulate ourselves and our world in ways that alter our evolutionary path (Harari 2011) -- replacing thinking and doing, while bypassing feeling altogether -- conscious participation in our evolution as a species is urgently called for. Mindful movement experts and practitioners are critical to this project (Moradian, 2021).

Martha Eddy with Shakti Smith -   Inviting neuroendocrine, chakral, and developmental awareness in the Sun Salutation practice 
Shakti Smith and Martha Eddy, authors of the recently published book, Dynamic Embodiment of the Sun Salutation will share DE's somatic approach to the movement ritual of the Sun Salutation. The focus is on practice that brings awareness using tools from Body-Mind Centering® including info from Martha's interviews with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen from 2020 - 2021. Bring curiosity about BMC^®’s developmental and embodied anatomy applies to yoga. Join in a spacious time for falling into glands and enlivening chakras. Learn and Explore 1) About endocrine glands as the physical bridge to the chakra system 2) How endocrine glands and chakras function as interconnected systems 3) Glandular awareness and relationships to the neurocellular patterns 4) Activating the neurocellular patterns with glandular support to lighten effort 5. Incorporating a taste of Bartenieff Fundamentals and Laban’s tensegrity model to energize the glands.

Faye Berton - Embodying Ayurveda
This workshop is a somatic-awareness-based introduction to Ayurveda and how to use Ayurvedic principles as tools for self-care. Ayurveda is a traditional holistic medical system with a comprehensive understanding of how to create and maintain high-level health and wellness. It is effective for both preventing illness and recovering from it. Ayurveda is a sister science of yoga since both systems arise from the same philosophical ground. The focus in this workshop will be on using subtle movement and self-awareness to learn Ayurveda as a living, breathing reality inside one’s own skin. The foundation of Ayurveda is rooted in the Five Great Elements. Each of these elements will be explored individually and in relationship to each other in how they function in the human body, as well as how they interact with the elements outside of the body. The purpose for these explorations is gaining insight into how to use embodied Ayurveda for enhancing life and health.

Annie Brook - Fight/Flight/Fun!
Participants will be guided through improvisation games and movement to explore the brain map of emotional reactivity. The process will offer choice in new neural pathways; dancing beyond the limbic brain toward higher creative consciousness. This workshop will provide a nervous system map for exploration and re-education of self and others. The result will create distance from flight/fight toward fun, play, flexibility and curiosity. Practices will provide a container for clients who are activated by using BMC^® skills to support a return to relational availability.

Lilian Vilela - Floor Dances in Brazil
"This work proposes to share an audiovisual narrative built by the encounter between the Laban-Bartenieff System and Body-Mind Centering^® (BMC^®). The research indicates processes in link, from internal movements to transitions of position and form in space, in connections with the Cinespheres (internal, personal and external), in the integrated sharing between body and environment with kinesthetic awareness.The ground of the mover are the sand dunes of the beaches of southern Brazil. The author moves with the experience of training at the BMC^® that took place in the southern hemisphere, in the heat of the tropical climate, with lots of water and bodily affections, and intends to articulate how this somatic knowledge can be brought to the environment of artistic creation with ways of involving the movement and its development in relation to other beings and the environment of wild nature.”

Susan Bauer - Being With Touch
In embodied anatomy, our own body becomes the ‘lab’ through which to explore and learn—using movement, and oftentimes, touch. Yet when teaching such somatic practices to adolescents, how can we responsibly include touch in a safe and accessible manner? This workshop introduces participants to the presenter’s “Four Basic Guidelines for Teaching Intentional Touch,” drawing from her book, The Embodied Teen. Topics include teaching specific types of touch, stating a clear intention for each activity, and establishing consent and clear guidelines for communication when working in partners. Participants will then be guided in specific explorations, beginning with self- touch (such as touching the bones in one’s arm or feet), and progressing to touch activities done in partners. Though geared toward teens and young adults, these practices are equally effective in providing adults of any age with a clear format that offers a progressive entryway to somatic practices involving touch.

Mario Tanga - A Community Is a Set of Relations United By People…
A community and the whole of humanity are sets of relations united by people, as well as brain is a set of synapses connected by neurons. It’s time to start from relationship to understand individual units, no more their ontology prevailing on secondary, instrumental relations one another. Knowledge, ethics, values, emotions emerge from plural dimension. Mirror neurons are a specific neural system to understand others, predict their behavior, develop empathy, conceive, organize, regulate and manage interactive behaviors. Chomsky has been exceeded: no more his innate “top-down” grammar for verbal skills, but a “bottom-up” absorbing (relationality is all) of used linguistic patterns, including meaning, functions and everything related to (verbal and not) communication. Primo Levi says: man’s existence has its seat in the soul of those who approach him: if man is a thing in the eyes of man, there is no more humanity. Sloman & Fernbach say: the individual knowledge is an illusion.

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

Dr. Leonard Cruz - Being With Self, Others, And The Universe: Integrating Animism for Transformation and Empowerment
As a child learning Filipino folk/indigenous dances and their connection to animist motifs and beliefs; these transformative experiences were inspirational for a contemporary term titled, “Integrative Environmental Contemplative Pedagogy.” This approach focuses on the well-being of the whole person, mindfulness, the integrative connection with others (both human and non-human), nature, and the universe. This interactive webinar will allow participants to share their stories of animism (all that is larger than the human world), practice animist centered meditations, and take positive actions in building a better relationship with the universe. The goal of this interactive webinar is to enable all participants to form a deeper, sustainable relationship with themselves, others, and the universe.

Margaret Guay - Nature, Art, and Anatomy (Hybrid Session)
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!
 
Kyra Lober  - Being With Distant Healing
Time and space do not need to be a barrier to the healing process for your somatic practice. The opportunity in this presentation is to experience healing at a distance using basic BMC^® techniques. The Covid 19 pandemic has shown that Being With can be at a distance as well as in-person. Throughout the shutdowns being able to teach and give distant sessions has been a useful necessity. If you would like to explore an alternative and an add on to hands-on treatment, ask your questions and practice, this presentation is for you. Those of you who are already incorporating distant healing into your somatic practice are welcome to come and share your wisdom.

Melissa Smith  - The “Rest" of Yoga: Somatic Restorative
Whether you are seeking tools to regulate your system day to day, or simply want to experience a time of pure REST combined with gentle somatic movements to help you optimize a restful posture, this class will lay the foundation for learning what it means to find stores of energy through rest and begin to experience more clarity and resilience as a result. This is the perfect place to start for those of you new to a restful practice. It’s a great addition to your toolbox for those more experienced. We will cover steps to nervous system regulation through the Yoga Sutras, Gentle Somatic Movement, Restorative poses, and a breakdown of the pose.

Michele Feldheim - A New Protocol to Eradicate Chronic Pain - The Pain Fix Protocol
This lecture and experiential class will be exploring the new research of DR. you Whitten, who has come up with and put into practice a chronic pain protocol that really seems to be able to eradicate chronic pain in a real way. We will go into a little bit of his research, his implementation of all the newest in his practice and then practice some of the key principles of this protocol with ourselves or with others. Discussion and Q and A at the end.

Tal Halevi - Forms in Motion (Hybrid Session)
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.

Kim Sargent-Wishart - body/vision/shape/words
This experiential workshop offers time and space to practice across somatic and creative disciplines to access fresh ways of perceiving. Participants will be guided through a somatic movement journey with the intention to deepen interoception – attention to one’s inner landscape – as a foundation for meeting and perceiving one’s immediate surroundings. Writing, mark-making and simple movement scores invite creative conversation between felt sense, visual sense, shape sense and word sense. How might one draw support for creative practice from being with what is at hand – in the inner and outer landscape? Participants will need paper and writing/drawing materials.

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.

Ryuta Iwashita - Touching Sotai (Ancestral Body)
Sotai is a concept that centers rest and connection of one’s ancestral body. It is the collaborative awareness with their ancestors to make decisions instead of the “individual” awareness. There will be a brief writing prompt where participants will answer about their relationship with their heritage, home, childhood and subconsciousness. Then they will take that writing into improvisation-based somatic practices. In this context, somatics represents the inevitable connection between cellular awareness and ancestral awareness. This experiential practice is a research material that has been undergoing from Ryuta’s personal life that navigated their survival as a non-binary, queer immigrant of color. Their intention is to share this liminal space where they can also tap into their ancestral wisdom and joy in this sensitive period of time.


Erika Berland - The Elemental Body
The body is the first environment that we know and the medium through which we resonate with our world. In this guided practice, we will focus our mindfulness practice on the natural elements of earth, wind, water and fire while utilizing the four traditional postures of meditation; lying down, sitting, standing and walking. As we resonate with these natural elements of our own body and the body of the earth, we can experience a deeper sense of our own self-care as well as concern for the health of our planet in this crucial time.

Cathy Boyce - The Science of "Being With"
With the support of illustrative slides, this presentation that will discuss What does it mean to be a human BEING? How do STATES OF BEING impact ourself and others? The importance of primary movements and self awareness on experiencing BEING WHOLE.

Trude Cone - Moving Forward on the Path of Others
In my coaching and teaching work I use the host/guest construction to clarify interactions between those preparing and those taking part. We don’t exist without Hosts creating opportunities for us to begin. Hosts orchestrate and stage what needs to happen, runs the room when it happens, and guide guests as they move through the ‘score’. The communication between the two takes place in the in-between, coming out of interacting, not separate. We will explore in this workshop the relationship.