FREE workshop "Embodiment and Expression" with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen

SF Community Music Center faculty Sonja Riket hosts a FREE educational workshop on the relationship of movement to music making/singing for creative expression and injury prevention/rehabilitation with international guest faculty Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, founder of the groundbreaking, innovative Body-Mind Centering® approach to somatic education.

www.BodyMindCentering.com

The workshop takes place on Sunday September 8, 2013 from 10:30am-5pm at the San Francisco Community Music Center, Auditorium:

544 Capp Street (b/w 20th & 21st Streets) in San Francisco, CA 94110 www.sfcmc.org
Cost is free, but donations are strongly encouraged!

 

REGISTRATION IS MANDATORY by contacting: Sonja Riket at 415.661.1852 or heartofembodiment@earthlink.net

If space permits, non-musicians may be able to participate; please call Sonja.

FOR ALL MUSICIANS, SINGERS, MUSIC FACULTY, COACHES AND MUSIC THERAPISTS:

A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN TOOLS TO FREE YOURSELF FROM TENSION, PAIN AND INJURY & FIND INNOVATIVE SOURCES FOR EXPRESSION, COMPOSITION AND IMPROVISATION.
Bring instruments!

Through movement, sound, touch and mindfulness we will explore:
-How to use the body effectively to produce high quality musical performances, improve breathing, tone, coordination, strength and technical proficiency.
-How to use the 3-dimensionality of the pelvic, thoracic and vocal diaphragms for fuller expression & volume.
-How to enrich the expressiveness of the music and sound through engaging organ mobility and support.
-How to engage the dynamics of perceptual processing.
-How to be fully present and comfortable in your body while performing.

Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, is the developer of Body-Mind Centering and the founder of the School for Body-Mind Centering®. For more than 37 years she has been an innovator and leader in developing this embodied and integrated approach to movement, touch and repatterning, experiential anatomy, developmental principles, perception and psychophysical processes. She is the author of Sensing, Feeling and Action and has created several DVD’s on embodied anatomy, developmental movement, yoga and dance. www.BodyMindCentering.com

TESTIMONIALS 

“I have used Body Mind Centering in my piano playing and teaching for the past 30 years. Body awareness is a crucial element in my art; it is the tool through which I can realize my musical intentions. Without it, I would be prone to injury; with it, I have access to a treasure-cove of artistic possibilities. I like to work with the body systems as a stimulus for generating new interpretations, and I have especially enjoyed Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s work connecting the scapula to the fingers. Amazingly, that work correlates beautifully with Chopin’s ideas about piano playing. Being grounded in my body allows me to be expressive in my soul.”

-Monica Jakuc Leverett
Elsie Irwin Sweeney Professor Emerita of Music
Smith College, Northampton, MA

“Working with Sonja Riket, has been a tremendously rewarding experience. Her teaching which gracefully blends the somatic method of Body-Mind Centering® with elements of the Feldenkrais® Method, has begun to integrate within me a level of dynamic body balance and awareness which I had never known existed, and which I am convinced greatly benefit any music student, teacher, or professional performer. I am finding myself playing with more fluidity, ease, and comfort than ever before, and can finally begin to look beyond my history of music related injuries towards an optimistic future previously difficult to imagine. But far more than injury prevention, Sonja Riket’s “Embodiment and Expression” course at SF’s Community Music Center opens up creative and physical resources which can positively affect nearly every aspect of one’s life. The overall experience has been nothing short of a complete personal paradigm shift.”

-Peter Lee, Bachelor of Music, Classical Guitar
San Francisco Conservatory of Music

“Very few experiences in my sixty plus years have been as rewarding and productive as the Body-Mind Centering® therapy, information, explorations and exercises I have received from Sonja Riket. This for me has been a very powerful healing experience, restoring mobility to my playing (53 years of moving notes on a saxophone) and generally improving my quality of life as I deal with my age related issues and past injuries. No risk, exceptional personal gain, the best and most productive health related sessions of my life.”

-Bill Fiege,Senior Faculty SF Community Music Center
Teaching & Performing in San Francisco since 1968