Before coming to somatics I had studied and practised as a visual and performance artist for fifteen years. During that time I was either in, or adjacent to, commercial, institutional and independent art worlds. Habitually, critical theory dominated in these contexts over sensual, haptic, corporeal or spiritual perspectives.

Eventually I acknowledged a need for an embodied understanding of what it is to actually be a body: a performing body; a body-in-space; a body-in-relation; a body-mind. Artistically, physically, personally, existentially…

This related to a persistent intuition that the long term discomfort in my back and spine had something to do with the long term emotional, psychological and creative discomfort I also experienced.

At the age of 33 I was accepted onto an MA at HZT in Berlin, which centred on embodied creative practise. Once there I pursued my intuition toward this body-mind connection, without really understanding where it would lead, but trusting a felt urgency.

In the context of a progressive dance school I was able to engage with various somatic practices through the inspiring generosity of movement practitioners and teachers. It was my chosen mentor Ka Rustler, a long time Body-Mind Centring® practitioner, through whom I first encountered BMC®.

In our first session together she simply looked me up and down and announced, “Kidneys”, and proceeded to connect with these organs through vibration, touch and guided movement. An hour or so later I lay splayed on the floor in an awakened state of consciousness.

Supported by Ka, my usually tense and angular frame had slid and moaned its way across the entirety of a large studio floor, like primordial slime urging itself to evolve through aquatic, reptilian and mammalian cellular organisation. It seemed to me I had been fluid, and had moved with expansive ease through different strata of consciousness, layered within my physical body. I had been aware of what was happening, allowing it, but not ‘doing’ it.  I ended on my back, dumbfounded and human, with the profound sense of holding my kidneys in my hands. Ka asked, “What would they say to you?”, they answered, “F**k - here we are!” —

It was an unexpected and ultimately life changing experience. One enabled by the privilege of one on one facilitation by a highly experienced practitioner, and an openness and instinctive trust on my part to explore with her. It was also the first of many subsequent embodied experiences that fundamentally shifted my understanding, not only of myself, my body, its movements; but also myself in relationship: with others, with space, with the vital intelligence underlying our very existence. These somatic encounters, that previously I’d had no awareness of or access to, propelled me to want more and to understand what was happening and how.

Now 7 years later, as a qualified BMC® Somatic Movement Educator and half way through training to become a BMC® Practitioner, I can’t promise I can yet facilitate a similar life changing experience for you. I can however guide you into embodied encounters with yourself you might, like me, had never known were accessible or possible. And through these encounters you can certainly gain resources and insights, and perhaps begin to experience transformation as a possibility.

BMC® has exposed me to our body’s vast intelligence and revealed it to be deeply supportive and restorative. BMC® is also an invitation to discover that body and mind are expressions of each other, and that it is possible to re-pattern and re-balance this relationship.

It might sound esoteric to say BMC® is an exploration of cellular consciousness but, as a somatic approach, this exploration is materially grounded in our biology: its cellular reality; its anatomy and physiology; its embryological and phylogenetic (evolutionary) development. It is an on-going revelation for me discovering how broadly accessible bringing awareness to this organismic intelligence is.

It feels necessary to acknowledge that the experience of being a bodymind can be a challenge. And each will have their own constellation of individual and collective circumstances that make that statement either an intermittent or consistent reality. I have found, since encountering BMC® and the resources it provides, this bodymind experiences far greater ease than previously - something I am extremely grateful for. Subsequently, it is through embodied and somatic practise that I seek to be of service.

A.D (he/they), 2022.