Holistic Wellness: A Path to Embodiment: Body-Mind Centering
By Michèle Drivon
How do your movement patterns affect the ways you think and feel? How do your feelings and thoughts express themselves physically?
Body-Mind Centering® (BMC) is a creative process that explores anatomy in the context of self-discovery and openness. Developing a friendly relationship with all our bodily systems can illuminate how and why we act and feel as we do, and create space to change patterns that limit the comfort and ease we can experience on a daily basis.
Sometimes current movement difficulties are the result of skipping essential aspects of childhood development—learning how to roll over, sit up, stand and walk. Injuries or confinement can interfere with a child’s exploration of movement, or parents can hurry a child into standing and walking before they’ve had adequate time to creep and crawl—activities that provide a solid foundation for good coordination through adulthood.
In addition to revisiting and revising developmental stages that we all passed through as infants and children, Body-Mind Centering goes beyond a study of the mechanics of the body to consider the temperament of bone, tissue or glands. It might be discovered that a particular mood is related to an imbalance in an organ or system, which when remedied can facilitate a shift to greater emotional freedom or stability.
Peter Shea, clinic director at Asheville’s Daoist Traditions Acupuncture College, finds a seamless correlation between how BMC and Chinese medicine map the relationships and systems of the body. “When we listen to our body’s evolutionary development—its skeletal, connective tissue, nervous and vascular systems and more—we discover not only our personal story, but the story of humanity as well. And I like to think that as we personally heal at this level, we also help heal humanity.”
There is no agenda within Body-Mind Centering about how the body “ought” to operate, feel or move; instead, a BMC practitioner collaborates with your body to discover what is ready to be revealed or resolved. Because BMC undertakes to simply illuminate and explore what is ill defined or unknown, it is an ideal learning and healing component for anyone suffering vague malaise, or for artists trying to express a subtle nuance of tone or gesture. Embodying and integrating various aspects of the body is an invitation to wholeness, and leaves the student with an appreciative relationship to all the parts of herself.
“More than any other modality I know, Body-Mind Centering lies at the heart of embodiment,” says Jessica Mark, owner of Happy Body, a Pilates, yoga and wellness studio in South Asheville. “BMC is an essential path for anyone wishing to live with deeper understanding, heightened presence and endless compassion. The journey with and through our own body is the most awe-inspiring travel we can ever make and Body-Mind Centering provides a roadmap and support toward that embodied experience.”
This fall, One Center Yoga is hosting three BMC workshops. Dedicating two full Saturdays each to Embodying Fluidity (October 8 and 15), Living in Our Bones (November 5 and 12), and Expressing Organ Vitality (December 3 and 10), local BMC practitioner Erik Bendix will guide students through an experiential approach to developing consciousness within the body.
Teacher of world dance traditions and published poet, Bendix was educated as an academic philosopher at Oxford and Princeton. Recurrent back pain led him to train in both the Alexander Technique and Body-Mind Centering. Inspired by influential work using the Alexander Technique with swimmers, Bendix developed an innovative method to teach skiing (easeonskis.com), and has led ski workshops for beginners and experts in Europe.
One Center Yoga is located at 120 Coxe Avenue in Asheville. Workshops are 1:30–5:30 p.m. with optional hands-on study 7:30–9:30 p.m. and the cost is $150 for two Saturdays of one topic. Register on the events page at onecenteryoga.com.
