CAROL SWANN is a teacher, private practitioner, facilitator, co-director, performer and activist. Her work is focused on contributing to a more socially just and connected world. She is a co-founder (with Martha Eddy), director/faculty of Moving On Center-School of Participatory Arts and Somatic Research, bridging Somatics and the Performing Arts for Social Change (1994-2016). She has been Assistant Director and primary faculty to Martha Eddy in the “Dynamic Embodiement & Somatic Movement Therapy Training (DE-SMTT) since 1994. She has been teaching and performing improvisational movement and vocal related work for over thirty five years in the U.S., Latin America, Russia, Israel and Europe. She has extensive studies in Body Mind Centering, Laban/Bartenieff MovementStudies, Roy Hart Theater, Theater of the Oppressed and Social Somatics which informs everything does. She maintains a private practice in Somatic therapy, (based in Hakomi Method, Somatic Experiencing Trauma Training and Process Work)), Alexander Technique (NASTAT), teaches Voice, Social Somatics, Authentic Movement, Improvisation, Group Process and Conflict facilitation. She currently curates/facilitates a monthly series “Somatics In Action” featuring professionals in every field in Somatics. She co-founded and taught at; A Capella Motion, Island Movement, New Forms Dance and Outfall. She was Admin. Director for Movement Research (N.Y.) from 83′-86′. Her performance history and collaborators has included: Eszter Gal, Kirstie Simson, Jess Curtis, Andrew Harwood, Simone Forti, Anna Halprin, Nancy Stark Smith, Angus Balbernie, Paul Langland, Daniel Lepkoff, Ka Rustler, Brenton Cheng, Vitali Kononov,Julyen Hamilton and others.

MARTHA EDDY, CMA, RSMT, EdD, author of Mindful Movement the Evolution of the Somatic Arts and Conscious Action and lecturer on eco-somatics, neuro-motor & socio-emotional development, & peace education/violence prevention, has advocated for the fields of Somatic Movement Education & Therapy & Somatic Movement Dance Education for over 30 years. She cofounded Moving On Center with Carol Swann in 1994 and Center for Kinesthetic Education (CKE) in NYC. CKE provides professional development and pre-K-12 workshops using self-regulating movement and “healthy dancing” within schools. She's teaches her systems “BodyMind Dancing,” Moving For LIfe and Dynamic Embodiment SMT worldwide and certifies professionals in this work. The underlying course work - Laban Movement Analysis, Body-Mind Centering(R), Perceptual-Motor Development, Bartenieff Fundamentals, and Embodied Anatomy and Physiology are all linked these degree programs: - Montclair State University, St Mary's College in the Bay area and UNC-Greensboro. Since 1981 she has served at LIMS as faculty of special programs, certification programs, President, Executive Director, Advisory Council member and Senior Research Associate. She has also co-founded Moving On Center and Moving For Life, and has served on the boards of CORD, NDEO, and as President of ISMETA, In 2017 she received the National Award for Outstanding Leadership in Dance Education from NDEO. She created Moving For Life DanceExercise for Cancer Recovery in 1999 as part of Moving On Center's community outreach mission. Moving For Life, Inc is now a NYS non-profit providing free dance classes for older adults and people of all ages affected by cancer and has been featured on NPR, NY1, CNN, Fox News, the NBC Today Show and CBS News.

PEGGY HACKNEY holds a B.A. in Psychology from Duke University, an M.F.A. in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College, and is a Certified Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst, a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist (ISMETA), and has a Certificate in Creative Systems Theory and Integral Leadership from The Institute for Creative Development in Seattle, WA. Peggy has completed over 50 years in the Laban work. She has been in the field of Somatics for longer than the field has existed in that name! She began her Laban work in 1963 and worked for nearly 15 years with Irmgard Bartenieff. Currently she teaches for Integrated Movement Studies’ Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis Certificate Programs; and sees private clients. Peggy has toured the USA performing with the Bill Evans Dance Co, and has taught widely internationally in Rome, Milan, Bologna, Berlin, Sydney, Rotterdam, Hong Kong and New York City. Peggy recently completed her many years of teaching at UC Berkeley. She is author of the book, “Making Connections: Total Body Integration through Bartenieff Fundamentals.”

DIANE ELLIOT -For more than thirty years, Diane Elliot, RSMT (Registered Somatic Movement Therapist), has taught integrative somatic bodywork. Diane is a certified practitioner (1990) and certified teacher (1998) of Body-Mind Centering®, who enjoyed an international career as a modern dancer, choreographer, actress, poet, and contact improviser. She has also trained in a number of other somatic modalities, including the Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais Awareness through Movement, Elaine Summers’ Kinetic Awareness work, and Upledger Craniosacral Therapy. A longtime meditator and integrator of ritual and spirituality into movement and performance work, Diane completed a Master of Rabbinic Studies degree and was ordained as a rabbi in 2006, after six years of intensive study at the Academy for Jewish Religion in Los Angeles. Her work as a somatic movement therapist centers on a deep listening, through all the senses, to the movement potentialities inherent in each of the body’s structures and tissues, right down to the sub-cellular level. As a teacher, she integrates the physical, the spiritual, and the emotional streams, seeking to create safe, supportive environments in which people can deeply explore their inner landscapes and cultivate ease and joy. Learn more about her work at www.whollypresent.org

G HOFFMAN SOTO born in 1945, and has spent a lifetime in movement moving through sports, yoga, martial arts and dance. He has been associated with Anna Halprin and the original San Francisco Dancers' Workshop and since 1973. He is one of the original teaching team of the Tamalpa Institute and has taught internationally since 1979 including throughout Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Lebanon, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan. Beginning as a basketball player in high school and university he moved into yoga, contemporary and post modern dance, Butoh, African and Brazilian Dance, Improvisation, Movement Theater, Ideokinesis, Somatics, Feldendrais, Brazilian Capoeira, Japanese Aikido, Chinese Tai Qi Ch'uan, Filipino Martial Arts, and Korean Tae Kwan Do. Additionally he has 47 years of hands on body work including PolarityTherapy, Ideokinesis, Passive Joint Manipulation, Cranial Sacral Therapy! Soto’s draws from the eastern and western approaches to mindfulness movement practices.

KEVIN O'CONNOR is a dance artist and somatic practitioner, working as a choreographer, dancer, and installation artist from Ontario, Canada, now based in the San Francisco Bay area. He is involved with the Strange Strangers collective, a decade-long artistic collective exploring participatory de-colonizing performances within polluted watersheds in Ontario. Over the last few years, he has worked with NAKA dance in Oakland, Skywatchers in the Bay Area, Oncogrrrls feminist art collective in Spain, Nita Little, and collaborated with Inuit hunter and designer Paulette Metuq on a project in Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic. He is currently working with Ishmael Houston Jones, Keith Hennessey, Jose Abad, and Snowflake Calvert exploring experimental improvised dance as a means to subvert traditional notions of race and masculinity. He has been learning with the Axis Syllabus community for over two decades and is a biodynamic CranioSacral practitioner. He holds a Ph.D. at the intersections of performance studies and science and technology studies at the University of California, Davis. His research examines anatomies, body performance capacities, interventions, and imaginations in relation to science studies, including the material-bio-cultural tissue called fascia. His writing can be found at www.ecologicalbodying.com.

SHAI LAVIE, M.A., M.F.T, is a Certified Hakomi Therapist and Trainer with a private practice in San Rafael, CA. He is also certified in the Somatic Experiencing method of working with trauma. Shai serves as adjunct professor at Sofia University (formerly the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology). On the faculty of the Hakomi Institute of California, Shai teaches mindfulness-based psychotherapy throughout California, and has been the Lead Trainer for the Los Angeles Hakomi Professional Training. He has also taught at numerous agencies, conferences, and counseling centers, and has brought his unique teaching style all the way to Helsinki, Finland. Please look for articles from Shai Lavie in the Sept/Oct 2011 issues of Psychotherapy Networker(“In Search of a Lost Self”) and The Therapist (“Mindfulness-Based Family Therapy”), and in the Fall 2015 issue of International Body Psychotherapy Journal(“Held Experience: Using Mindfulness in Psychotherapy to Facilitate Deeper Psychological Repair”). Shai has also written a chapter (“Experiments in Mindfulness”) in the book, Hakomi Mindfulness-Centered Somatic Psychotherapy: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice(W.W. Norton, 2015).

MANUELA MISCHKE_REEDS, M.A., M.F.T, is an international teacher and somatic psychotherapist. She is certified Hakomi Therapist and Trainer, and licensed Somatic Psychotherapist. She trains health professional in the Hakomi Method in San Francisco, Australia and Germany and Israel. She teaches a Hakomi based Trauma & Attachment Training for Clinicians in Germany and leads Trauma Trainings in the Bay Area. Manuela also co-directs and teaches at the Hakomi Institute of California. Manuela specializes in integrating somatic psychotherapy with somatic trauma therapy, attachment therapy, infant mental health and movement therapy. Manuela has a unique understanding of integrating Mindfulness with Somatic Psychology, inspiring her clients towards full embodiment in their lives. She is faculty at JFK University, Campbell, CA & Sofia University, Palo Alto, CA. She holds a M.A. in Somatic Psychology from California Institute of Integral Studies, and a B.A. in Dance Therapy from the Naropa University. In addition she has trained in various methods of working with trauma, counseled survivors of political oppression and torture and victims of trauma. She is an SE Practioner in the Trauma Resolution method developed by Peter Levine. She is a graduate Fellow at the Napa Infant Mental Health Fellowship Program, led by Dr. Ed Tronick. She is a graduate of the Child Trauma Institute of San Francisco and has expanded her practice in working with children and parents suffering the effects of trauma. Manuela has extensive training in the field of movement therapies is an authorized Continuum Movement teacher. She has been a Buddhist meditation practioner for the past 25 years and teaches Embodied Mindfulness in her work. She maintains a private practice in Menlo Park working with individuals, couples and children. Her upcoming book: 8 Keys to Practicing Mindfulness. Practical Strategies for Emotional Health and Well Being." will be published in April 2015.

FREY FAUST is a 56 year old veteran of the New York contemporary dance scene, with a strong European renommée and intercontinental touring circuit. His focus for the last twenty years has shifted to the educational value of applied science in the arts, with an emphasis on anatomy and physics, including aspects of sociology and cognitive science. With the help of colleagues from the arts and sciences, He began consolidating the interdisciplinary movement analysis and reference system called The Axis Syllabus (The AS) in the late 1990's. (www.freyfaust.org)

NURIA BOWART is a movement educator. The main focus of her life has been to cultivate understanding about what it is to be a moving body on a spinning planet. She had more than two decades of experience as a Rolfer (a form of manual therapy focusing on myofascial and structural alignment) a contemporary dancer (she performs locally and internationally) and a Capoeirista (a.k.a. Contramestra Marreta). In 2016 she was approved as a teacher of The Axis Syllabus: a resource of biomechanical, anatomical, and basic physical information compiled by movers for movers. This Syllabus and the community that complies it, has become the place where her love of anatomy and healing weaves together with her path as a mover and performer. Nuria teaches regular classes of The Axis Syllabus and Dance, as well as Capoeira in Berkeley, Ca. She also operates a private practice as a Rolfer. For more info please visit nuriabowart.com

BRENTON CHENG is a teacher, performer, and director of movement-based performance, as well as a faculty member of Integrated Movement Studies, the West Coast Laban/Bartenieff certification program, and the University of San Francisco. In addition to directing his own work, he has performed with internationally-acclaimed Contraband, Zaccho Dance Theater, Angus Balbernie, Kim Epifano, Jo Kreiter & Flyaway Productions, and many others, at such places as Jacob’s Pillow, Bates Dance Festival, and the Festival d’Avignon, France. He teaches Laban Movement Analysis, contact improvisation, and somatically-based performance skills to professional and non-professional movers in classes and workshops around the world. He also created the world’s first Laban mobile app “Moving Space” — a compendium of the Laban Space Harmony scales. Brenton graduated from the Moving On Center program in 2002.

VITALI KONONOV is a movement artist, bodyworker and somatic movement educator, working with improvisation as a performance discipline, therapeutic tool and contemplative practice. He was born in St-Petersburg, Russia, in 1966. He has been teaching contact improvisation since 1997 in Russia, Europe, USA and Mexico. His background includes contemporary dance, physical theater, contact and ensemble improvisation, as well as various somatic disciplines and yoga. Vitali has completed Somatic Educator, Developmental Movement, Embodied Anatomy and Yoga programs from The School for Body-Mind Centering®. He taught at Moving On Center – School for Participatory Arts and Somatic Research since 2002 and was a faculty member of American Dance Festival (2003-04). Recent years artistic collaborations included improvisational works with Brenton Cheng, Carol Swann, Rosemary Hannon, Andrew Wass, Erika Tsimbrovsky and Vadim Puyandaev, Scott Wells, Taja Will, Jo Kreiter and others.

SHIRLEY DVIR, MFT is the founder and lead teacher for Relational Somatic Healing. She is a Certified Hakomi Teacher and a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT 44258). Prior to this, She earned a BA in Social Work from Haifa University in Israel and an MA in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology from John F. Kennedy University. Shirley teaches at John F. Kennedy University and at the California institute for integral studies. She supervises associates on their way to become MFT’s and mentors licensed practitioners as well. She also teaches In Israel at Shiluv Center in Tivon. Shirley has been practicing psychotherapy since 1997 in agencies and private practice, seeing families, children, couples and individuals. She has training in psychodynamic work, attachment, EMDR, Sensorimotor Trauma Therapy, the Enneagram, family therapy, CranioSacral Therapy and Body Mind Centering (Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen). Her main work today focuses on healing relational wounds with safe embodied touch. Her spiritual practice and meditation support how she holds her work and her teaching. She has a private practice at Anam Cara, a holistic healing center in Berkeley, CA.

ERICA BERMAN, LMFT is faculty at Relational Somatic Healing. She is a queer/LBGT somatic therapist who focuses on issues of abandonment, anxiety, grief, trauma, holistic and spiritual health. She is a graduate of the John F. Kennedy University Somatic Psychotherapy Masters program, and is a certified eco-therapist through the Earth Body Institute. She is a student of Hakomi method, Theta Healing, and EMDR. She is grounded in a history of movement organizing, and holds an anti-oppression, intersectional lens. Her Jew (witch) spiritual practice, as well as the tenets of Buddhism are deeply intertwined with her work as a somatic healer. She has a private psychotherapy practice with Axis Mundi Center, and believes whole-heartedly in the healing power of touch for deep systemic change.