The Return to Embodiment: consciousness, culture, creativity and flourishing

In this conversation, I am speaking with Amelia Burns. I found Amelia through her masters thesis article, Embodiment and embedment: integrating dance/movement therapy, body psychotherapy, and ecopsychologyAs a body worker, a dancer and a somatic therapist/dance therapist, Amelia has gathered threads of a myriad different experiences and inspirations to create a tapestry of her work exploring embod...

In this conversation Kristen Mennona is the guest host of the Return to Embodiment Podcast. Kristen interviews Rachel Lewis-Marlow, a somatically integrative psychotherapist dually licensed in counseling and therapeutic massage and bodywork. She is a Certified Advanced Practitioner in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and has advanced training and over twenty five years experience in diverse somatic ther...

In this conversation, I speak with Jenny Macke about the ways in which dance practice supports how we show up in our lives, relationships and the broader world. We examine some of Jenny's origins and inspirations, and her intentions in facilitation of conscious dance through open floor theories and her spacious capacity for presence with what is. For more information about Jenny, her facilitation...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Dr. Suzi Tortora, Ed. D, BC-DMT LCAT LMHC CMA, NCC who is a dance/ movement psychotherapist, mental health counselor, author and educator. Dr. Tortora is a world-renowned specialist in the field of infant mental health, and has written two books, including Dance/Movement Therapy for Infants and Young Children with Medical Illness and The Dancing Dialogue: U...

In this conversation, Leslie interviews Kim about embodied speech as a practice that grounds conversation in the phenomenological experience of the body in the present moment, which tunes each of us into the truth as it arises within us and sensitizes us to the lived experience of others. We discuss the origins of this podcast, Kim's own cultural situatedness, and the applications of practices of...

Elissaveta Iordanova, M.S., MFA, MA is New York State licensed creative arts therapist, and American Dance Therapy Association Board-Certified dance/movement therapist, and ADTA member. She obtained her clinical professional experience as a dance/movement therapist at Maimonides Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry, NY. Elissaveta opened her full time private practice Inspired Creative Arts Th...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Melanie Cooper Pennington. We talk about her own fraught experience of embodiment, how art has allowed her to move pain outside of her body, and how her love of bodies has propelled her sculpture. Melanie Cooper Pennington  is an interdisciplinary artist living in Bloomington, Indiana. Pennington recently had solo exhibitions at the I Fell Gallery, (Bloomin...

an inquiry about how a podcast on embodiment fits within our current time. amidst wars and division. i am wondering. how do our acts of creation, of nurturing, of designing and building of gardening craft a future we long to leave our children?

Cuquis Robledo is a mental health counselor in Houston, TX with a passion for incorporating the arts, movement, and advocacy with her clients. Prior to her work as a counselor, Cuquis was a disability advocate and a documentarian, documenting the lives and empowering the voices of people of disabilities and other marginalized communities. Being disabled herself, specifically Cuquis is a Little Per...

Rebecca Barnstaple is a dance researcher and clinician who brings dance therapy to people with chronic pain, Parkinson's Disease and Alzheimer's disease. As a postdoctoral fellow at York University in Toronto, Rebecca conducts research on the neurbiological effects of dance on health and disease.

In this conversation, Kristina traces ways her own body and development interfaced with limitations of the dance world, and how she has found home in practices of intenttionally dismantling harmful conditioning and building movement from a posture of love and seeking pleasure in the body. Kristina talks about the therapeutic dance certificate offered through EEIC and the honor of facilitating the...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Tārāvajrī. Leslie McCormick (Taravajri) is a somatic creative, licensed somatic psychotherapist, registered dance movement therapist, poet, and ordained Dharmacharini with the Triratna Buddhist Order. In this conversation we discuss poetry as companion, our shared love of our teacher, Zoe Avstreih, and the phenomena of touch and sound in authentic movement....

Ashley Fargnoli is a dance/movement therapist, a licensed psychotherapist, a dance performer, a choreographer, a film maker, a researcher, and a Fullbright scholar. In this conversation, we explore the multicultural origins of embodiment and the ways in which parts of ourselves and are accessed and healed through different styles of dance. Ashley describes working with a performance as therapy mod...

Molly Shanahan is a Canadian-born, U.S.-based choreographer and dancer, educator, thinker, and writer about movement, body, and healing. She makes dances. She supports movers in reinhabiting their own bodies in relationship with other movers, prioritizing deep exploration of movement and inquiry into what human experience and response drives our movement choices, especially within the phenomenon o...

In this conversation, Dr. Amber Elizabeth L. Gray asks a series of questions, which deepen us into the question of embodiment and its function to sensitize us to one another and cultivate respect and reciprocity within the more than human world. Dr. Gray is a Dance/Movement Therapist, Somatic & Human Rights Psychotherapist, and long-time yoga and Continuum teacher. She works with survivors of...

In this podcast, I reflect on time spent in the middle of the night with a green sea turtle in the southern great barrier reef, witnessing her toil and labor and eventually, without completing the work of laying her eggs, return to the ocean. I am aware that this podcast itself is a digging a nest, a gathering together stories, and perhaps it will in this new year expand beyond my voice and vision...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Román Baca. Román is a U.S. Marine Iraq war veteran as well as the co-founder and artistic director of Exit12 Dance Company in New York City. Román was invited to do a TEDx talk in San Antonio in 2013 (⁠https://youtu.be/EjwFMgsQmBI⁠). When I learned of his work, I took the opportunity to visit New York to see his company rehearse and talk with him about his...

Kamahria Hopkins, is a therapist, coach and consultant who offers "online therapy for the modern mystic." Kamahria integrates somatic and transpersonal practices including dance therapy and psychological tarot/astrology. In this conversation, Kamahria shares about her work in hospice, as a doula, and as a journalist and how these roles have prepared her to work with clients to reignite t...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Selena Coburn BC-DMT, LMHC, LCPC, who is currently serving as the ADTA Standards and Ethics Chair. We discuss the challenges the ADTA is facing as an organization and how the change and growth often involve discomfort and negotiating difference. Selena is a mental health and dance/movement therapist in Great Falls, Montana and an adjunct professor at Lesley...

As a student of art, yoga and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen's Body-Mind Centering® work since the 1980's, Lisa Clark describes the how the creative process aligns with embodiment as a practice that begins in subtle movement, incubated with patient curiosity, and expands to engage the myriad relationships within and beyond the body. She describes how this lemniscape of self, other, and the broade...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Lauren Elise Peterson, a dance therapist and body image coach who uses beginner friendly dance to help people feel confident in their own skin. She combats the messages that emphasize the need to change the body: to tighten, to diminish, to take up less space, to be more like the virtual avatars we are often bombarded by in our social media. Instead, she in...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Lea, owner and executive director of Body Language Studio and Jeromeskee, co-director and creator of Body Rock Breaking, a championship breaking training program. We talk about the origins of their passion for dance, their past successes professsionally and how they currently channel their experience to prioritize joy, authenticity and leadership through da...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Ebony Nichols.  Ebony is a somatic mental health and wellness practitioner, Board Certified Dance/Movement Psychotherapist, Licensed Creative Arts Therapist, licensed cosmetologist, and entrepreneur. She completed her Bachelor of Arts at The College of New Rochelle in psychology and a Masters degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with a specializ...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Julia Rae Antonick and Jonathan Meyer, executive & artistic directors of Khecari (https://www.khecari.org/).   Khecari ‘creates dance works furthering the transformative power of live bodies witnessing live bodies and advocates for the essential role of art within society, of dance within the arts, and of all artists working within the dance ecosystem.’ Ple...

In this new season of the Return to Embodiment, I am delighted to share the treasures of these conversations, wistfully holding them as a garden from which I ask: take what nourishes & leave for the compost heap what is not for you.  May we explore the pathways that lead towards curiosity and delight and hope. Forgive any parts that show up clumsily with mismatched socks.  We are but these brief m...