LTSY Conversations Ep.10 – Somatic Training & the Gift of Consciousness with Gloria Desideri
In the tenth episode of LIFE THAT SAID YES conversations Ivan talks with Gloria Desideri. Gloria Desideri is a Certified Teacher/Practitioner of Body-Mind Centering®, Somatic Movement Educator and Infant Developmental Movement Educator. She is also a certified Kinetic Awareness™ Teacher and a practitioner of Somatic Experiencing® (Dr. Peter Levine’s work on the resolution of post-traumatic stress symptoms). She integrates her experience as a professional dancer and choreographer (1977 – 1992) with numerous movement practices and studies on the body-mind continuum.
From 1984 to 1998 she lived in New York where she trained and worked first as a dancer and choreographer and then in the field of somatic-oriented practices. She became particularly interested in development in the age of development, first observing Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s work with infants and children with special needs, then gaining experience for two years as a volunteer at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Beth Israel Hospital in New York, in a special programme for children born to drug-addicted mothers.
Back in Italy, from 1999 to 2006 she collaborated with the Complex Operative Unit of Child Neuropsychiatry of the ASL of Viterbo, conceiving and directing innovative projects based on the BMC® approach and aimed at children with severe disabilities, their parents and carers. He has also collaborated with municipal nurseries in the city of Viterbo, with training programmes for educators.
In 2005, in Tuscania, she founded the Cultural Association for Social Promotion Leben and in 2009 Leben nuova, a centre she directed and the only one in Italy to be authorised by The School among Body-Mind Centering for BMC® training programmes. In collaboration with Piera Teatini, she edited the Italian translation of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s book ‘Sensation, Emotion, Action’ (SomaticaEdizioni 2011).
From 2013 to 2015 she coordinated the Italian team in the European partnership project SPARKS – Somatic Practices, Art and Creativity for Special Needs.
Since 2014 she has been President of the Kinesfera Social Promotion Association and since the beginning of 2015 she has been managing the multifunctional space called Supercinema in Tuscania, where, in addition to the training activities managed by Leben nuova, Kinesfera organises and promotes cultural events, conferences and social activities aimed at the territory.
In Rome and in Tuscania, Gloria privately carries out educational and therapeutic counselling activities for children and adults.