Recent IBMT Diploma Graduate Hannah Buckley shares her personal experience of the training. She heartfully describes how it deepened her commitment to the wisdom of the body through a challenging period in her life. She shares how it has influenced her artistic practice and developing therapeutic work.
When I first began to contemplate studying IBMT it was because I had experienced it from the position of a client. It was also a practical decision – I had been a freelance dancer and choreographer for 10+ years and I hoped that training in IBMT would provide me with some financial security whilst utilising and building on the skills I had developed in my artistic career.
As it turned out, studying on the IBMT Diploma happened for me at a really difficult time in my life, and I experienced studying on the course as a kind of lifeline that helped me navigate that time period. It provided a supportive space that allowed process to unfold, that encouraged curiosity and that held both the group and individual experience. It felt very different from culture at large. For me personally it also provided space for me to learn and be with myself at a time when I was giving out a lot in my personal life.
Ultimately the course deepened my commitment to the wisdom of the body, gave me new skills and deeper self awareness. It was a massive undertaking in terms of time, money and commitment, yet I only started to feel this as I got to the end of the training. Whilst I was doing it felt essential, enriching and a pleasure.
As I move forward I am planning to develop my private one to one therapeutic practice, but I am also excited to discover many ways and contexts to work with IBMT that I haven’t considered yet. IBMT feels full of possibility. Whilst I plan to build my work with IBMT I am still practicing as an artist and almost immediately as I began the training in 2021 it started to influence my artistic practice, bringing new knowledge, imagery or references to my projects and artistic process. Most of the work I have been making in this time has been collaborative and it has also been interesting sharing an IBMT influenced approach with other artists who don’t necessarily even have a movement background. They usually find it meaningful and exciting. For example, my current project is called Learning To Fall and is co created with a visual artist called Kevin Lycett. The project is a response to living with chronic illness and also about us sharing our practices with each other. Kevin and I have been working together since 2022 and quite early on in our process I brought in imagery of the cell – this has led to us using this to inspire paintings and we are working with a filmmaker to create a film where we hum to our cells, hopefully creating a literal resonance in audiences’ bodies.
If I reflect on my practice pre and post IBMT training my current practice feels more grounded and embodied, which feels like a surprising thing to say when I have been working with my body creatively for such a long time. Each artist project requires new ideas, new approaches but I feel confident an IBMT approach will support me in every project moving forward.
Hannah Buckley is a dancer, choreographer, artist and somatic movement therapist, based in Leeds, UK.