Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and BMC (complete)

Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen Notes
(information from BMC School website, Jerome Robbins Library and Kestenberg Movement Profiling site)

For over 35 years, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen has been a leader in advancing an integrated approach to the body and mind connection. The body and mind are not separate entities that are at odds with each other. Instead, the mind and body inform each other and changes can be made in the body by accessing the mind.

Credentials:
~ Registered Occupational Therapist
~ Registered Movement Therapist
~ Certified in Neurodevelopmental Therapy,
~ Certified in Laban Movement Analysis
~ Certified in **Kestenberg Movement Profiling.

What she has done:
~ developed Body-Mind Centering® (BMC)
~ founded the BMC School in NY in 1973 (now located in Amherst, Massachusetts)
~ wrote the book, Sensing, Feeling and Action.
~ practiced occupational therapy and taught in university hospitals
~ helped to establish a school for occupational and physical therapy for the Tokyo government
~ practiced bodywork and movement in psychiatric settings
~ taught in the masters program in Dance Therapy at Antioch New England College
~ taught dance at Hunter College and at the Erick Hawkins School of Dance in New York
~ presents workshops throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe.

There is a 30 min. videorecording of an interview with Cohen at the Jerome Robbins Dance Collection. She discusses her concept of body-mind centering and about her training, recalling Erick Hawkins and Irmgard Bartenieff as special mentors. She discusses the aims and program of her School of Body-Mind Centering.

Title: Dance on: Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen [videorecording]
Producer: Billie Mahoney 1990
Call Number: Performing Arts - Dance *MGZIC 9-2279
Interviewer: Billie Mahoney.


**KMP is a complex instrument for describing, assessing and interpreting nonverbal behavior. Developed by Judith Kestenberg who based KMP on Laban Analysis. Download the profiling program here.

BODY MIND CENTERING notes
(Adapted from Sensing, Feeling & Action
by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen)

“There is something in nature that forms patterns. We, as part of nature, also form patterns. The mind is like the wind and the body is like the sand; if you want to know how the wind is blowing, you can look at the sand.” BBC

BMC Philosophy
Body-Mind Centering® (BMC) is an ongoing, experiential journey into the alive and changing territory of the body. It challenges the notion that the body and the mind are separate and opposed entities. In BMC, the body and mind have an intimate relationship on many different levels and the relationship is always changing according to experience. There is no arrival. There is no centered. There is no balanced. Balancing is a constant dialogue based on experience.

Although BMC is based in Western terminology and mapping, it has been informed by Eastern Philosophy. Like the relationship between body and mind, the Eastern and Western value systems blend and complement each other in BMC. Physical substances (eg. blood or lymph) are treated as substances with states of consciousness and processes inherent within them.

“We are relating our experiences to these maps, but the maps are not the experience.” BBC

BMC tracks the connection between “smallest level of activity within the body and the largest movement of the body—aligning the inner cellular movement with the external expression of movement through space.”

The study of BMC includes both the cognitive and experiential learning of the body systems:
Cellular – each cell has its own living intelligence
Skeleton - supporting ground for our thoughts, the leverage for our ideas
Ligaments - helps articulate clarity of focus and concentration to detail.
Muscles - express our power, and engage in the dialogue of resistance and resolution
Fascia - connect our inner feeling with our outer expression
Fat – Static Fat Vs Mobilized Fat. Fat that is embraced offers nurturing comfort.
Skin - It sets our general tone of openness and closedness to being in the world
Organs - habitats of the memories of our inner reactions to our personal histories.
Fluids - underlie transformation, and mediate the flow between rest and activity
breathing and vocalization
The Senses and the Dynamics of Perception
Developmental Movement (both human infant development and the evolutionary
progression of species)
Psychophysical Integration.

DEVELOPMENTAL MOVEMENT
Ontogenetic (human infant development)
Phylogenetic (the evolutionary progression through the animal kingdom)

The Basic Neurological Patterns are based upon prevertebrate and vertebrate movement patterns.
Prevertebrate patterns:
Cellular Breathing
expanding/contracting process in breathing and movement in every cell of the body
correlates to the movement of the one-celled animals
Naval radiation
relating and movement of all parts of the body via the navel
Mouthing
movement of the body initiated by the mouth
Prespinal movement
soft sequential movements of the spine initiated by means of the crossing point between the spinal cord and the digestive tract

Vertebrate patterns:
Spinal movement (fish)
head to tail movement
Homologous movement (amphibian)
symmetrical movement of two upper and/or two lower limbs simultaneously
Homolateral movement (reptile)
asymmetrical movement of one upper limb and the lower limb on the same side
Contralateral movement (mammals)
diagonal movement of one upper limb with the opposite lower limb