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

In this conversation, we talk about embodiment from the perspective of acting practice, examining our shared roots in an acting community and the applications and understandings that grew from those roots.  Andy reflects on how the creation of the treatre is a humanizing force, which connects people to themselves and others, crafts shared story and community.  Andy Mangin has been at Wheaton since...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Alicia Patterson.  Alicia is a dance/movement therapist, a somatic therapist and a massage therapist trained in abdominal and pelvic massage.  Deep wounding exists in this area, both personal and collective.  The womb and the root have been exploited, neglected, and denied education and support. Shame too often silences desperately needed con...

Deanna James is a Licensed Professional Counselor, a Certified Eating Disorder Specialist and a Registered Dance and Movement Therapist. She has worked with clients with Eating Disorders, Trauma, Mood disorders and life adjustment issues for over 15 years, incorporating the creative arts therapies, internal family systems therapy and cognitive behavioral therapies in a holistic approach to healing...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Amarillis Vazquez, president of the Puerto Rican chapter of the American Dance Therapy Association.  Amarillis Studied Dance Movement Therapy at Columbia College Chicago from 2001-2003. She has a Post Degree in Play Therapy and is candidate for a Doctorate in Transpersonal Psychology with concentration in Consciousness and Creative Studies at Sofia Universi...

ERICA HORNTHAL is a licensed clinical professional counselor, board-certified dance/movement therapist, and the CEO and founder of Chicago Dance Therapy. Since graduating with her MA in Dance/Movement Therapy and Counseling from Columbia College Chicago, Erica has worked with thousands of patients aged 3-107. Known as “The Therapist Who Moves You,” Hornthal is changing the way people see movement...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Mariah LeFeber. Mariah's doctoral research explores how supervision occurs within dance/movement therapy education.  We discuss some of her findings, aspects that make dance/movement therapy unique in the world of supervision, and the richness found in returning to roots, to mentors, and to our own breath. For more information on publications, clinical offe...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Susan Aposhan.  As a student of Bonnie Baimbridge Cohen's body mind centering work, Susan formed one of the first somatic psychology programs in the United States in the 1990's at Naropa University.  In addition, Susan has authored three books, Body-Mind Psychotherapy, Natural Intelligence, and the most recent, Heart Open, Body Awake, which is the culminati...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Julie Brannen.  Julie's mission is to restore, rewild, + reunite humanity with nature via the avenues of creativity, community, education, health + wellness. Her greatest joy comes from guiding folks into an organic + compassionate practice of fiercely approaching vulnerability + embodying whole-hearted living.  Her goal is to create brave, inclus...

Kyle Koch is a former IT software technician turned nature nerd. Since leaving the office in 2011, Kyle has dedicated his life to helping others reconnect with the natural world. He has been facilitating transformative experiences in nature for almost a decade: inspiring youth and adults to connect to their gifts through experiential play and natural curiosity. Kyle has taught nature connection sk...

Jamila Kekulah Kinney (she/they) is the creator of The Moving Soul, a holistic movement practice that utilizes curiosity, focus and self observation to explore body awareness, body conditioning, and self-inquiry. Jamila's multifacted body and movement training includes GYROTONIC® & GYROKINESIS® methods, Pilates, dance, dance/movement therapy, mindfulness training, somatic meditation, Reiki, yo...

In this interview, I am speaking with Damien Norris, who I met at an Evolve Move Play retreat in Washington in Fall of 2021.  We were placed in a group together, called the Vikings, and shared interests drew us into conversation about how embodiment within nature can combine to transform individual and collective experience and perspective.   Damien is completing a PhD at Simon Fraser Un...

Kristen Mennona  is a licensed professional counselor, a board-certified dance/movement therapist, a certified eating disorder specialist (CEDS), a registered yoga instructor (RYT 200) and a BTTI trained clinician for pediatric OCD.  Kristen owns Nurture Family Counseling LLC, a counseling practice designed to treat pediatric eating disorders, ocd and anxiety within the context of the fa...

Marissa Voytenko seeks to bring comfort and beauty through her paintings and sculptures. Marissa has been painting with encaustic, a molten wax medium, for over a decade.   In this conversation, Marissa shares about how her art practice is a practice of meditation, of prayer in which she holds within her consciosuness the suffering in our world as she creates.  Although our con...

David is a contemporary artist who creates sculptures, installations and archetectural experiences that usher the participant into deeper awareness of themselves, others, and the world we share.  David describes the origins and theoretical underpinnings of his passion for art and music as encounters of meaning and awakening, of his practice of creating spaces of comfort as a child.  He also speaks...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Grace Bella Harman LPC, R-DMT, an embodied grief guide. Grace traces the origins of her pull to this work, sharing her own experiences of loss and transformation have equipped her to trust that grieving is a sacred process that requires the intentional engagement of the body. Grace holds sacred space for people to utilize their bodies to move through, proce...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Melissa Walker MA, LPC, R-DMT about the integration of the worlds of somatic psychotherapy, dance/movement therapy and sex therapy.  Melissa takes us along her personal journey of how a full body "yes," arose in relation to witnessing bellydance as a teenager, which propelled her on the path that lead to publishing of her book, Whole Body Sex: Somatic...

In the fourth season of the podcast, I am so delighted to share the ongoing conversation that inspire and enlighten me, specifically for this episode the importance of ecological belonging.  This season the podcast is full of conversational inqueries about how the lived experience of our bodies informs the essence of how we understand our lives and our being within the world.  Welcome an...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Paul Sevett BC-DMT, LICSW. When Paul was elected president of the ADTA in 2017, I reached out to him to have a conversation about taking on this role, but our conversation was delayed as 2020 unfolded and Paul decided to step down from the role of president.  This year I had a chance to sit down with him to hear his experience. Paul has been studying dance/...

In this conversation, I am speaking with Susan Imus MA, LCPC, BC-DMT, GL-CMA, about her attempts to create language and theoretical scaffolding for the field of dance/movement therapy.  Susan was motivated by a question: how does dance/movement therapy work?  In her most recent article, Creating Breeds Creating. In H. Wentgrower and S. Chaiklin (Eds),  Dance and Creativity Within Da...

In her definition of embodiment, Dr. Angela Grayson connects to rootedness through both African and Native American ancestors as well as each of her grandmothers, highlighting also how embodiment is a manifestation of spirit and ancestory and a culmination of all the experiences that have choreographed into the present moment.   Dr. Angela Grayson is a Clinical Psychologist, a Licensed Professiona...

Chad Alcorn PsyD is the first clinical psychologist with whom I shared my early understandings of dance/movement therapy as a graduate student, which have grown into the deep knowing found in this podcast.  He has been a steadfast encourager of my professional development, and even of this podcast as a practice of inquiry.  Chad's clinical training includes Adlerian psychology, Accelerated Experie...

Sarahi Lay Trigo is a dancer, researcher, and film maker.  After a sudden illness in 2008 left her immobile, with a prognosis that she would never walk again, Sarahi's love of dance provided both inspiration and a concrete practice for reinhabiting and rehabilitating her body.  With the support and love of her family, Sarahi began to move, to speak, and to dance again. Through that experience, Sar...

In this season of the return to embodiment, I welcome you into another season of conversations about embodiment, trusting that learning and knowing in this area is never finished yet many of us dont realize all that we know because we do not take the time to notice.  This year has been one of deceleration, of stalling out, of grieving, of relocating, and retreating from the pressure to create...

There are times when a teacher offers perpective you cannot find on your own.  If one listens, with an open mind, an open body, in this episode, Jeff walks us through his journey into the richest ecosystem on earth, the Amazon River basin.  He describes the dieta, his apprenticeship with the plants and the Shaman, including the hardship as well as the joy, weaving observations of his changing self...

Peggy Hackney is co-founder of Integrated Movement Studies (www.imsmovement.com) and teaches in their Laban/Bartenieff Certificate Program.  As a registered somatic movement therapist (ISMETA), a certified massage therapist, and a teacher of labanotation, Peggy Hackney has been working in the world of movement and embodiment for over fifty years. She teaches globally and has written the seminal bo...