what Moves Me

Music ✧ Emotions ✧ Beauty ✧ Learning ✧ Being in relationship ✧ Being outdoors ✧ Being real rather than right ✧ Breath ✧ Bodies ✧ The need for Social Justice, Equity, and Inclusion ✧ Laundry ✧Children ✧ Love ✧ Teaching ✧ Listening ✧ Excel Spread Sheets ✧ Witnessing ✧ Reading ✧  Daring feats of kindness ✧ Grace ✧ Gardening ✧ Climate Change ✧ DOGS, especially our dog, 🐕 Felipe ✧ My wonderful life with Vic Cooper, my husband of 34 years ✧ The tight knit family bubble we share with our son and daughter-in-law and our two exceedingly cute grandchildren ✧ Living in Big Sur, California.

what Moves You?

Becoming an attuned and skillful inhabitant of a human body has always fascinated me

Embodiment as a path of study and devotion holds the felt sense of life as we live it, the creative qualities of imagination, inspiration, and art and the transcendent qualities of presence, compassion, love and Union with Spirit.
I have approached embodiment through every doorway I could find: Bodywork, Yoga, dance of all kinds, hiking, living life, being a mother, a lover, Somatic psychotherapy, meditation, thru professional trainings, academic programs, and constant dedicated practice.

Highlights from my work experience include:

  • I have 40+ years experience in the field of somatic psychotherapy, bodywork, dance, yoga, and mindful movement practices.
  • I have trained hundreds of movement teachers, psychotherapists, and health care professionals in the fundamentals of body awareness and embodied movement practice.
  • I am a licensed Marriage and Family Psychotherapist and have a Ph.D. in Dance and Movement Therapy
  • I am a co-founder of Open Floor International, a non-profit organization that is committed to sharing conscious movement and dance to ignite creativity, community, social justice, health, and well-being.

The words I hear the most about my style of teaching are: clear, kind, insightful, and courageous. This means a lot to me as so many of my teachers have held me in the same way.

Teaching Around the World

For decades, I have had the good fortune to be invited to teach Embodied Movement Programs around the world. Organizers who are themselves movement teachers and/or run schools for Embodied Psychotherapy and Movement hire me to teach both open weekend workshops, ongoing two-year programs, and trainings for professionals.

Before the Pandemic, the countries I have frequented are Switzerland, The Netherlands, Scotland, Austria, Ireland, England, Belgium, France, Germany, Israel, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and cities up and down the West Coast of the USA.

Until countries open up and it is once again safe to dance together, I have no in-person programs scheduled.

Programs that I have enjoyed designing and teaching are: