Body-Mind Centering® Workshops
exploring the dynamic relationship between mind & body
Spring / Summer Workshops 2025
All the Body-Mind Centering Workshops listed are open and accessible to anyone interested in body-mind integration and related disciplines.
The May and June workshops listed below also form part of SELF (Somatics Experiential Learning Facilitator) course. For more information about courses at SOEL click here or for information and to register for a workshop click contact.
MAY 2025
The Unseeable Animal
Encounter and kinship in the natural world
Module 13: SELF | course pre-requisite | details click here
Monday 12th May at 3pm - Thursday 15th May at 4pm
FEES: £290 / £255
During this workshop we will be in the studio and outdoors along river, in meadow & woodland. We will take time to immerse ourselves in the living landscape in which we are embedded through the embodiment of our heart perception, gut brain, solar plexus and the still quietude of our cranial brain. Through creative practice, wildhood and spontaneous exchange we will explore the qualities of mind that arise from these organs; walking, witnessing and deep listening.
Okanagans teach that the body is Earth itself. Our flesh, blood, and bones are Earth-body; […] We are everything that surrounds us, including the vast forces we only glimpse. Jeanette Armstrong
Teachers: Rosalyn Maynard & Daisy Martinez
Information and registration: click here
JUNE 2025
Our Life Sense
The Immune system from an embodied perspective
Module 14: SELF | course pre-requisite
Monday 2nd June at 2pm - Thursday 5th June at 1.30pm
FEES: £290 / £255
The Immune system is a fluid, cellular system keeping our body in a healthy balanced state, constantly present, maintaining our molecular identity. In this workshop we will explore our shared and individual sense of this system through the embodiment of: our skin and membranes, bone marrow, thymus, heart, spleen and the fluid circulation of our lymphatic system.
Teachers: Rosalyn Maynard & Julie Rousseau
Information and registration: click here
SEPTEMBER 2025
Our Pelvis
poised between spine & hips
Monday 1st - Wednesday 3rd September 2025 | FEES: £225 / £190
Open & accessible to anyone | drop in taster workshop
In this workshop we will explore the living structure & the contents of our pelvis including the lower organs of digestion, reproduction and urination, our pelvic diaphragm, our lower limbs and our spine. Through gentle, guided, facilitation we will take time to meet our pelvis, her internal structure, tone and function recovering greater ease in our expression of internal and external movement, breath and voice.
Information and registration: click here
Body-Mind Centering® workshops at SOEL, offer a holistic, creative teaching approach to multi dimensional waies of learning about our self and our relationship with our world.
Through the process of embodiment we explore the wonders of our anatomy & physiology, developmental movement and embryology offering us a deeper understanding of how the mind is expressed through movement, touch and perception.
Workshops include gentle movement inquiry, dance, discussion & dialogue, gentle sounding, directed breathing, quiet contemplation, somatic writing & somatic drawing, & hands-on touch upon our self & in partners.
The study of BMC® is a creative process in which embodiment of the material is explored in the context of self-discovery and openness. Each person is both the student and the subject matter and the underlying goal is to discover the ease that underlies transformation.
The Body-Mind Centering® approach has an almost unlimited number of areas of application. It is currently being used by people in movement, dance, yoga, bodywork, somatic studies, physical and occupational therapy, psychotherapy, child development, education, voice, music, art, meditation, athletics and other body-mind disciplines.
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen: www.bodymindcentering.com
"The separation of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual faculties in our culture is a direct reflection of our by-passing the need to survive on an automatic physical level. This means on one hand that automatic physical defense mechanisms on the low brain level are minimally stimulated to develop, while on the other hand, high brain mental consciousness is greatly emphasised.
Less and less time is spent on low brain development. For example, many of our infant rearing practices are emphasising early and out of sequence eye-hand and bipedal activities (infant seats, baby bouncers, early walking), less and less time is devoted to prone, supine, and quadrupedal development which stimulates lower brain. Infants are being placed in advanced postures before they have developed the means to move in and out of them on their own. Without fully developed automatic physical survival mechanisms, higher brain consciousness lacks a balanced grounding."
Developmental Movement Therapy
by Margret Mills & Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen.
TEACHERS & Assistants at SOEL:
Teachers & Assistants at SOEL have been teaching and researching somatics movement education together & independently within their own fields and professions for many years, and share a rich history of working together informed by the experiential anatomy of Body-Mind Centering®, Elsa Gindler's Human Work, western science & anatomy, the arts, philosophy, human embryology and the evolutionary history of life.
Over time, we have explored the development of our approach to the application and the practice of somatics in many contexts, activities & projects including pedagogy, well being, arts and ecology, community workshop, natural horsemanship, small mixed farming, mentoring practice, mythology, walking, pilgrimage and personal development. At SOEL we are dedicated to knowing and learning about our self and the world as an interdependent, interconnected, creative, whole; through experience, felt sensation, intuition and mind.
I got a lot out of the workshop and it has provoked my increasing awareness of my internal environment. I feel so much more aware in a positive way which has lead me to be more consciously aware of the interconnectedness of us all - the essence of life which is in all living things. Just so simple yet so profound. A beautiful piece of work, literally.
Heather Griffith Retired OT
(Body-Mind Centering® Workshop: The Heart as an organ of perception FEB17)
Description of Body-Mind Centering®
Body Mind Centering® is an innovative approach to experiental anatomy and physiology, within the expanding field of somatics. BMC® offers a deep understanding of how the mind expresses itself through movement, touch, and perception. It fosters an embodied knowledge of the human body, with a special emphasis on the different body systems, the principles underlying the development of our movement patterns, and the study of embryology.
The method was founded 30 years ago by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, a pioneer in the arena of movement research, who has
never ceased to deepen its scope and expand its curriculum. The essence of the work lies in the subtle consciousness and inherent intelligence with which every cell, tissue, organ, and system is endowed with. This study leads to an understanding of how the mind is expressed through the body and the body through the mind.
Merging creatively the cognitive and experiential dimensions, BMC® opens a doorway that leads to an increasing awareness of the conscious body.
Body-Mind Centering® is a creative process in which we learn to meet and recognise ourselves and others through the exploration of embodiment: through feeling, sensing and action. Each person is both the student and the subject matter. Principles and techniques are taught in the context of self-discovery and openness. We learn to engage ourselves and others non-judgmentally starting at the place where we are and the place where others are. In this way we seek to find the ease that underlies transformation.
About BMCA Professional Members
BMCA Professional Members have completed a rigorous, hands-on training which ensures a safe and consistent experience of the work and are required to fulfil continuing education requirements on an ongoing basis. To locate a professional member of BMCA go to: bmcassociation.org
Further reading about BMC®
Body-mind Centering® by Bonnie Bainbridge-Cohen click here to download
Somatics: the experience from within by Thomas Hanna click here to download
To learn more about Body-Mind Centering® go to: bodymindcentering.com
Body-Mind Centering® and BMC® are registered service marks of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, used with permission.