Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen

Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen (born December 31,1941) is an American movement artist and therapist. She is the developer of Body-Mind Centering philosophy and the founder and educational director of The School for Body-Mind Centering in El Sobrante, CA

Biography
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen has extensive training in dance, martial arts, katsugen endo (Life-force Movement), yoga, voice, bodywork, and dance therapy. She began to research movement therapy and anatomy in 1958. In 1973 she founded The School for Body-Mind Centering which continues to educate people in the Body-Mind Centering discipline. She purposefully decided to not self-title her somatic practice, unlike other somatic practitioners such as Irmgard Bartenieff, and Frederick Matthias Alexander.

She received her B.S. in Occupational Therapy from Ohio State University. She is a Registered Occupational Therapist, a Registered Movement Therapist, and a Registered Yoga Teacher (ERYT). She is certified in Neurodevelopmental Therapy, Laban Movement Analysis, and Kestenberg Movement Profiling. She taught kinesiology in the masters program in Dance Therapy at Antioch New England College, taught dance at Hunter College and the Erick Hawkins School of Dance in New York, and conducted various workshops throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. She has practiced and taught occupational therapy in University hospitals and helped establish a school for occupational and physical therapy for the Tokyo government.

Philosophy
To create her philosophy, Bainbridge Cohen studied anatomy and physiology to understand how biology (physical aspects of the body) can affect human sociology (emotional state of being). She also studied Eastern philosophy and its relationship to Western medicine. She had particular interest in the study of cells and tissues, and she believed her philosophy was about truly feeling one’s cells, tissues, and organs from within. The movement itself has been inspired by “circus movements (especially the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus), American modern dancers (Erick Hawkins), Laban movers, Indian yogis, practitioners of tai chi, etc.”

Body-Mind Centering
Body-Mind Centering (BMC) is a somatic practice developed by Cohen that combines movement improvisation and mediation. Her philosophy is described as an “embodied and integrated approach to movement, touch and repatterning, experiential anatomy, developmental principles, perceptions and psychophysical processes.”. The method aims to utilize all senses to increase self-awareness and self-exploration through the study of how the body and mind work together to produce patterns. These patterns will aid in the isolation of various limbs which will produce unique and defined movement.

Books
Cohen is the author of Sensing, Feeling and Action: The Experiential Anatomy of Body-Mind Centering (1993).

DVDs
Cohen has made five DVDs: The Nervous System, The Lower Limbs, The Upper Limbs, The Axial Skeleton, and Four Special Children. She is featured in two other DVDs: The Origins of Movement: The Embodiment of Early Embryological Development and Dance and Body Mind Centering.

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