somatic Dance Movement Therapy
tender, supple, daring, and exhilarating
All life moves, in improvisational patterns, unexpected shifts, and habitual rhythms. Movement is fundamental to life. When we feel stuck it is of great value to explore that in motion and generative stillness. Because there we can find liberation and comfort that is whole-bodied. When we feel frozen, soft micromovement helps us modulate and soften that bound place. When we feel droopy and collapsed, soft movement with gravity helps us find our relations with reliable and sturdy Earth again. When we feel scattered and frazzled, movement is a way to come home to a central rhythm that runs through the moment with kindness and wisdom.
Movement is one of the deepest arts for expression and centering into Soul.
Rivers of magic
Movement has been a central current in my life since forever
As a little one I danced to the song of my own being. Eveywhere. Later, as a 4 year old I immersed myself in ballet, then jazz, tap, and musical theater performance as a deep current until I was an adult. I got lost in trauma for a number of years, and found my way home through the doorway of yoga, then modern dance, into Authentic Movement & Experiential Anatomy and from there to Argentine Tango and the 5 Rhythms.
Then, in 2006, when I found Soul Motion Improvisational Conscious Dance I knew I had found a deep and mystical home. This practice is a deeply poetic, playful, contemplative improvisational form of Conscious Dance. I was part of the pilot program to become a Soul Motion Teacher (2007-2009), and spent 11 years apprenticing deeply with my teacher - Vincent Martínez-Grieco - and 2007-2018 - co-teaching regularly in at Madrona Mind Body, Kripalu, and Esalen Institutes and in Germany. During this time, with Aletia Anna Alvarez, I co-founded the Soul Motion Embodied Leadership Training Program, running in Germany and the USA, and spearheaded that program for 2.5 years.
During this time, I also trained in Movement Based Expressive Arts at the Tamalpa Institute with Daria and Anna Halprin, and in Dance Movement Therapy Graduate Training with the Center for Movement Education and Research in California. Experiential Anatomy and Authentic Movement have also been a deep current in my training, primarily with Andrea Olsen and Caryn McHose (2017-2024). I also spent some time training in Body Mind Centering with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and with the Moving On Center.
From 1999 until the present I have trained in Somatic Psychotherapy, first in Hakomi (1999-=2003) and then in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (2003-present). Today I am a Certified Advanced Practitioner of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, an Approved Sensorimotor Psychotherapist, and a Trainer in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy.
why movement, embodiment, and dance?
Human bodies shape space, the inner space (skinesphere) and the kinesphere. We move and gesture and relate to gravity and Earth, Sky and breath, bone and fire. We are heart beating and blood pulsing through like a river current. We are movement and gesture. We express through facial expressions - a micromovement dance. We express through hand gesture, and in the process discover what we think and feel. We can modulate our nervous system states of consciousness through movement, breath, shaping of space, body alignment, and ripples of movement phrases - exploring our range from bound to released, from braced to supple, from animated to tight to responsive….
Our experience is an embodied experience, of movement and stillness - much as the wind, the rivers, the rain, the ocean wave, the seed unfurling a new shoot….
Do you have to be experienced in dance or movement?
No. Because we are all bodies in motion. We are all hearts that beat. We are all breath that flows. Movement is fundamental to all of us. And this homeland is always available, in every moment, for all of us.