What is Body-Mind Centering®?
Body-Mind Centering® is a somatic approach to body and awareness developed by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen through decades of experiential and embodied research. BMC® is a journey through the living and changing universe of our body and consciousness through which we learn to develop intimacy with ourselves and feel our processes (and ourselves as a process). We explore our beginnings, as a living body in motion, as an inseparable part of Nature and community. In doing so, we awaken different qualities of consciousness, the body’s innate intelligence and inner resources — leading to psychophysical integration and a sense of wholeness. With that comes greater presence, groundedness and ease of being and moving. The mind calms down, and we come into contact with that deeply nourishing part of ourselves, which has always been a part of us. And from that maybe comes gratitude and admiration for the miracle of Life.
The scope of BMC® is vast, spanning the following elements of the human being — each one helping us know ourselves on a new level:
— the cell as the basic structure of our body and consciousness, itself a living intelligence capable of knowing itself and communicating with its environment; cellular respiration; subcellular structures.
— body systems (bones, ligaments, muscles, organs, glands, nervous system, body fluids, immune system), each of which carries its own quality of awareness, state of mind, and feeling
— senses and perception, and how we take in and make meaning of the world around us
— embryology and developmental movement, and how the earliest processes of our body’s formation from conception are still present in us, continuing to support and nourish us in adulthood; reflexes
— breathing and vocalization, the voice as an extension of breath
— touch, as both a way of sensing and a way of communicating
I’ve been shaped by this practice for years, and it continues to shape how I move, teach, and show up in the world. I offer Body-Mind Centering® through individual sessions and through Povratak doma, my seasonal workshop cycle — both based in Zagreb, both open to you in person or online.
If you’d like the fuller story of how I first came to this work, I wrote about it for Currents*, the journal of the Body-Mind Centering® Association — you can read it here.*