Body-Mind Centering

Body-Mind Centering® (BMC) is a system of exploration through which you learn how your body’s anatomical systems support you in all your activities. Using movement, voice, breath, perceptions, and touch, BMC helps direct awareness to every part of your body. You develop an internal awareness that supports your external world.

BMC was developed by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, an occupational therapist and trained dancer who set out to explore the possibilities of the human body in the 1960s. A pivotal influence for Cohen was her study with the founders of neurodevelopmental therapy, a method of restoring developmental movement patterns in children with brain injuries.

Cohen also studied other forms of therapy and movement, including yoga, Laban Movement Analysis, dance therapy, neuromuscular reeducation, and katsugen undo (a Japanese method of training the involuntary nervous system). In 1973, she founded The School for Body-Mind Centering, which she still operates in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Today, the principles of BMC are used in movement, dance, athletics, bodywork, physical and occupational therapy, psychotherapy, child development, education, voice, music, visual arts, meditation, yoga, and other body-mind disciplines. This somatic practice is continually evolving based on the experiences of Cohen and her students.

Cellular Awareness

A first step in Body-Mind Centering is developing cellular awareness. The cell is the basic unit of life and contains the potential for developing more complex and differentiated forms and encouraging the emergence of higher levels of consciousness.

You can make contact with your cells by focusing your attention on them. You can breathe into your cells, use imagery, or experience the touch of another person who is focused on your cells. Once you focus attention, energy follows and brings about awareness.

Developmental Movement

Body-Mind Centering works with the automatic patterns of movement responses known as Developmental Movement. These patterns are the sequence of movements that an infant goes through as it grows.

Each movement is a brick in the foundation on which other movements are built. Any missing bricks weaken that foundation, cause excess tension in the body, and create less effective or efficient movement. A child’s Developmental Movement sequence can be interrupted by injury or illness or by being pushed into activities before the child is developmentally ready.

As an adult, you cannot use skipped developmental patterns for everyday movement unless you go back and develop those patterns. Furthermore, Cohen believes that the underdevelopment of certain patterns is a factor in almost any social, physical, or psychological pattern you experience as an adult.

Anatomical Systems

BMC also focuses on the in-depth and experiential study of all the body’s anatomical systems and teaches you to make direct contact with the different systems.

Usually we think of movement in terms of bones and muscles. But Body-Mind Centering looks at how all your anatomical systems (skin, organs, nervous, endocrine, fluids, fat, muscles, ligaments, fascia, and skeleton) can support movement.

Each system reflects an aspect of the self and expresses its own quality of movement, feeling, touch, sound, perception, and attention. Through movement, breathing, and touch you can bring these aspects of self into a more balanced and dynamic relationship with each other.

Each system provides a type of support.

For example, organs provide inner support to our movement, breath, and voice; underlie our feelings and expression; and give aliveness and expression of feeling to movement. Active organs support the muscular and skeletal framework from within. Energy blockages and torquing patterns in the organs can cause joint weakness and alignment problems.

In summary, the study of Body-Mind Centering is a creative process that leads to an understanding of how the mind is expressed through the body and the body through the mind.

Recommended Books

The Wisdom of the Body Moving: An Introduction to Body-Mind Centering by Linda Hartley.

Sensing, Feeling, and Action: The Experiential Anatomy of Body-Mind Centering by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen.