Body-Mind Centering ®
A holistic approach
Body-Mind Centering ® is a contemporary and sensitive approach to body in movement.
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In a BMC® session, we explore the richness of the living body through the ensemble of elements that it is composed of : the skeleton, the muscles, the ligaments and the fascia, the organs, the fluids, the nervous system and the endocrine glands, the skin and the respiratory tract, as well as the perception organs.
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This approach connects our actual being to our personal evolution in time and as well to our evolution as a species.
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In this way Body-Mind Centering® enables us to link our body to our mind, as a whole indissociable, and to enrich our forms of expression on a personal, both physical and psychological level and on an artistic level.
Body-Mind Centering® is part of the field of somatic education. It is concerned with the anatomy and the physiology of the living body and the body in movement.
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It was founded by the American dancer and ergotherapist Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen in the sixties and developed by her and her close students in the seventies. It has the specificity of being concerned with all the body systems and as well with cellular life. It explores both the embryonic development, the development of the newborn and the development of the species.
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It offers consciousness of our actual and living bodies and in this way it offers an extension of our perceptions and body images. These perceptions are moved and experienced through touch, voice and movement to anchor them ‘in the living’. In this way we give them a form (“gestalt”) by connecting the physical expression to the mind.
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Body Mind Centering® allows us to extend our scale of possible perceptions and possible movements. It helps to enlarge our choices of being, of reacting and of acting. It supports the expression of the experiences in multiple ways : by dance, singing, drawing or any other form of individual expression. It is not necessary to be a professional artist for this : BMC® is accessible for every open-minded person who is looking for his/her own ways of expression, wherever he/she is on her path right now.
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This practice can help to be ‘readier’ in everyday life, to feel more embodied in the present and to find more ease and pleasure in movement. It is a rich tool to explore specific aspects of one’s professional, artistic or sports life as well. It is possible to extend and to narrow one’s perspective; the micro- and the macromovement, the micro- and the macrocosmos.
How does it work ?
Sessions & Workshops
Individuals sessions
In an individual session, the thematics of the person that is consulting is in the foreground.
We advance together, on equal terms, using touch, movement or any other form of expression that is wished for, to fluidify, or even resolve the thematics set.
The session offers paths that the person can use to find his/her own solution, in his/her own rhythm.
Every deviation is welcome.
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Workshops
Each workshop is built around a theme that we explore together, in a spirit of curiosity and kindness. We often begin in a quiet way, with a guided journey back to oneself.
We use anatomical and physiological tools (skeleton, images) in order to evolve to guided and/or free movement.
Exercises alone, with a partner or in the group enable you to learn and to appropriate the material. Touch allows you to integrate and to refine your qualities of perception.
In this way movement can become richer, wider and freer. Resources coming from dance and martial arts as well as breathing and singing exercises are used to re-introduce pleasure and ease in movement.
There is time to exchange what we’ve experienced, this exchange being an integral part of the learning process.
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