UK IBMT Newsletter September 2024

In this newsletter, read about …

Students Complete Embodied Anatomy & Movement Repatterning Module – and applications open for 2025.
All set for 2024 – 25! The new term begins
IBMT Summer Gathering for current and past students.
New Book from Linda Hartley: Embodied Spirit, Conscious Earth – Out Now.
Online Class from Fabiano Culora – Somatic Resourcing.
Follow us on social media #ibmtuk

Students Complete Embodied Anatomy & Movement Repatterning Module

In July we completed this 2 year module where students explore all the major body systems.

We progressed through the antomy and physiology of skin and connective tissue, muscular-skeletal systems, cardio-vascular, respiratory, digestive and urogenital, fluids, nervous, endocrine and immune systems. Time is given to embodied explorations, through movement, image making and dialogue. Hands-on bodywork techniques are shared.

On the last weekend those completing the 4 modules shared how they were taking the work of the diploma forward, through offering a participatory presentation to the group. It was so moving to witness each individual student’s expertise, passion and personal journey with the IBMT material.

You can read about current Student, Fernanda Munoz Newsome’s experience on the module here.

Applications are now open for you to join us when we being this module again in September 2025. Details here

All set for 2024 – 25

This autumn we begin the modules: Infant Movement Development and Authentic Movement & Therapeutic Presence. We are delighted that we have a full cohort of students, some continuing from last year and others joining for the first time. The groups will include those enrolled on the full diploma programme and some doing an individual module for their personal or professional development .

Paul Paul Beaumont, Teacher on Infant Movement Development, Faculty member/ Co-Director writes:

It is always exciting to begin the new year of teaching. It is touching to see returning students continuing with their studies, as each module interweaves material from previous ones. Our approach layers in the rich curriculum that Linda Hartley developed, that draws on early infant movement, anatomy and physiology and our psychological, felt experience to be human. It is exciting to begin to get to know new students, as they settle in to embodied ways of learning. We all practice ‘beginners mind’ as we explore the material through our own movement, increasing what we notice, developing our awareness and discovering personal meanings. It is wonderful to see people share with each other, developing skills of how to attune to another and facilitate somatic explorations and hands on body work techniques.

Jane Okondo, Teacher on Authentic Movement & Therapeutic Presence, Faculty member/ Co-Director writes:

Having just returned from teaching a CPD workshop in Vilnius, where we also have a branch of the IBMT Diploma, there was a mix of graduates, as well as current students and participants new to the work. I am so moved hearing how the graduates have taken this work out into their life and their communities. The depth and presence of their practice was so rich and left me feeling again how impactful this practice is. It is so common to hear the phrase, ’this work should be taught in schools’ and again, I remember and experience how it supports a clear sense of ground and ease in expression as well as how different it is to meet life’s challenges from an embodied knowing of yourself.

Returning to the UK I am so ready to begin the new cycle with our UK students, entering into the Authentic Movement and Therapeutic Presence Module, I feel excited to be offering this work, to be witnessing the unfolding of each student. How they explore and integrate and embody it in their own way.

Intro Workshops 2025 – Provisional Dates Announced

Each year we run a number of introductory workshops. These are open to all to get a flavour of our approach to Somatic Movement Education and Therapy.

They are also a prerequisite for those interested in joining us for a future module. They give participants an experience of a training day with IBMT, and how we interweave embodied explorations and reflections, theoretical study and partner work.

Please see here for dates. Further details will be available soon.

Summer Gathering, Devon UK, 25-27th July 2025

You are warmly invited to the first ever Summer Gathering for past and present IBMT students, this will be a chance to reconnect with people with whom you have shared your IBMT learning and to meet new folk too.

This is a peer organised initiative, organised by Ali Rose (Dip IBMT) and Laurence Yeoman (recent student). They thought it would be a great idea to have a weekend where they could share and pollinate IBMT practices.

If you have completed at least one module from the Diploma programme you are welcome to join us. For further information and booking visit https://www.summer-gathering.co.uk/ We anticipate this could be a popular event so recommend early booking as places are limited.

Ali Rose writes:

I began the IBMT Diploma in 2019 and graduated in 2022 and have since been assisting on the UK training. Along the way I’ve been privileged to learn and explore alongside many wonderful IBMT peers, all of whom bringing such wealth of personal and professional experience to this work.

It has been my experience that the experiential learning style of IBMT, by its nature, cultivates relationships amongst peers and even after several years I still have embodied memories of whom I explored the nature of Bone with and shared inner body dialogues with my kidneys! When I first began the Diploma training, I felt privileged to study alongside those who had walked this path for longer than I; whilst my training had taken place in Devon, UK under the tutelage of Jane Okondo, Paul Beaumont and Beverly Nolan I delighted in hearing from those who had studied with Linda and in different parts of Europe. What a rich experience it was, each encounter with my peers felt like a thread being woven into a beautifully rich IBMT tapestry.

I also recognised that as students of IBMT we had a shared language and approach to somatic enquiry that transcended the diversity of backgrounds, cultures and native tongues. We shared an intrigue for coming inward to the experience of the body, a curiosity for what the body already knows and a calling to build relationship to body wisdom though awareness, movement and touch. I have come to recognise what a priceless kinship this is. From this desire to rekindle and sustain these relationships as well as build new ones, the idea to create a peer organised event was conceived and together with co-organiser Laurence Yeoman Summer Gathering 2025 was birthed!

For further information and booking visit https://www.summer-gathering.co.uk

Embodied Spirit, Conscious Earth

New Book by Linda Hartley – IBMT Founder

Embodied Spirit, Conscious Earth
From Embryology to Embodied Relational Spiritual Practice

It’s 30 years since Linda Hartley wrote her very widely loved and admired introduction to Body-Mind Centering (BMC): Wisdom of the Body Moving. Since then, her work and practice have taken her deeper into BMC, mindfulness training, embodied awareness, Release Work and the Discipline of Authentic Movement. Her long-awaited new book draws together all these strands, and many others, into a remarkable guide to somatic movement and embodied awareness, specifically written for a time of climate and ecological crisis and with one eye clearly on the beginnings and the endings of life.

As well as condensing her lifetime’s experience, Linda suggests a path:

to explore our own embodied awareness
to understand the patterned impact of conception, embryological development, birth and infant development
to rediscover our connection with the consciousness of the Earth and the more-than-human world
to find a healthier relationship with our planetary home and the collective body
to explore the relationship between the matter of body and the mystery of Spirit, through the arc of human development from conception to the end of life.

Embodied Spirit, Conscious Earth ~ Linda Hartley
September 2024 ~ 264pp. ~ £22.50 ~ 978-1-913743-99-4
20% discount from the publishers Triarchy Press www.triarchypress.net/esce

Somatic Resourcing – Online class with Fabiano Culora

IBMT Graduate, former Faculty Member and Master ISMETA Somatic Movement Practitioner is offering 2 series of online sessions this autumn.

September-October

https://mobiusdance.org/atelier/morning-class-with-fabiano-culora

November-December

https://mobiusdance.org/atelier/morning-class-with-fabiano-culora-86rha

He writes:

These sessions will help enliven sense-imagining and encourage particular attention to ubiquitous and reliable resources within and around us. There is an inherent orientation to health in our system if we follow and allow this.

These organising principle is where we will begin. Refreshing this integrative possibility encourages the development of a strong inner witness to embrace our selves fully. The contents of these sessions are influenced by the following somatic practices; Body Mind Centring, Authentic Movement, Somatic Psychology, Body and Earth, Yoga, Pilates, Biodynamic Cranioscral Therapy. Experiential anatomical and physiological noticing will guide the way and help us recognise systemic regulation.

IBMT on Social Media

Please link up with us on our new accounts to connect with IBMT and the wider somatic field. Get advanced notice and reminders of workshops, details of events and other items of interest for somatic practitioners. Follow the hashtag #ibmtuk

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