Somatic Movement Education Program
with Sonder Movement Project, a licensed organization of The School for Body-Mind Centering®
taught by Sonder’s Director, Amy Matthews, and other BMC® faculty
Various Dates
October 2026 - April 2029
The Somatic Movement Education program explores the richness of the relationship between body, mind, movement and touch in the context of our dynamic Embodied Anatomy and Embodied Developmental Movement approach to Somatic Movement Education.
School for Body-Mind Centering® programs offer an experiential approach to movement, the body, and consciousness. People who study the Body-Mind Centering® approach come from a variety of backgrounds but they all share a common interest in the body-mind relationship and want to learn an in-depth, experiential and embodied approach. Whether you are involved with a movement practice (yoga, dance, athletics, martial arts, etc.), work in a therapeutic setting (occupational therapy, physical therapy, psychotherapy, child development, etc.), or are engaged in other expressive arts (visual arts, music, etc.), our programs offer an opportunity for professional development and/or personal growth.
Most courses in this program may be taken individually or in combination for personal growth or professional enrichment without commitment to the entire program.
You must apply and be accepted to the program before registering.
Please click the button below or visit www.sondermoves.com/apply to apply.
Registration is only for participants who have been accepted via Sonder Movement’s application process.
Please do not register unless you have already been accepted.
Who is it for?
For lovers of movement!
If you teach any kind of movement practices, or simply love moving your body, this program will inspire you to keep going deeper. The knowledge and wisdom imparted in this work is also held in mysteries and questions of what it’s like to embody consciousness. The lessons and explorations will transport you to the depths of self-knowlege and self-inquiry – where the space to keep questioning meets the foundation for agency to act on what you know and feel.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to do the courses in order? – Nope!
Can I take just one course or do I have to do the whole program? – You can take just one, many or all! And you can piece together the full SME program by attending courses at BMC® licensed organizations all over the world!
Do I need any kind of previous movement experience or training? – Nope. All you need is curiosity about exploring movement and touch, and a willingness to reflect on your experiences.
Our senses begin as potential and develop in response to stimulation and experience. The senses of touch and movement are located throughout the body — in every cell. The senses of vision, hearing, taste and smell are located in the head. It is through our senses that we receive information from our internal environment (ourselves) and the external environment (others and the world).
How we filter, modify, distort, accept, reject, and use that information is part of the act of perceiving. Perception is a global experience. It is the psychophysical process of interpreting information based on past experience, present circumstances and future expectations. When we choose to absorb information, we bond to that aspect of our environment. When we block out information, we defend against that aspect. Learning is the process by which we vary our responses to information based on the context of each situation.
- Course length – 4 days
- Arrivals, orientation and welcome dinner Oct 12 evening
- Departures Oct 17 morning
- Oct 17 & 18 are days off if you’re staying for the Skeletal System
This system provides us with our basic supporting structure. It is composed of the bones and the joints. The bones lever us through space and support our weight in relationship to gravity and the shape of our movements through space. The spaces within the joints give us the possibility of movement and provide the axes around which the movement occurs.
- Course length – 9 days + 2 days off
- Arrivals, orientation and welcome dinner Oct 18 evening
- Departures Oct 30 morning
The fluids are the transportation system of the body. They underlie presence and transformation, set the ground for basic communication, and mediate the dynamics of flow between rest and activity, tension and relaxation. The characteristics of each fluid relate to a different quality of movement, touch, voice, and state of mind. These relationships can be approached from the aspects of movement, mind states, or from anatomical and physiological functioning.
- Course length – 6 days + 1 day off
- Arrivals, orientation and welcome dinner Mar 30 evening
- Departures Apr 7 morning
- Apr 7 & 8 are days off if you’re staying for Basic Neurocellular Patterns
The development of these patterns in humans parallels the evolutionary development of movement through the animal kingdom. The Basic Neurocellular Patterns are the words of our movement. They are the building blocks for the phrases and sentences of our activities. They also establish a base for our perceptual relationships (including body image and spatial orientation) and for our learning and communication.
- Course length – 7 days + 1 day off
- Arrivals, orientation and welcome dinner Apr 8 evening
- Departures Apr 17 morning
The Primitive Reflexes, Righting Reactions, and Equilibrium Responses are the fundamental elements, the alphabet, of our movement. Underneath all successful, effortless movement are integrated reflexes, righting reactions and equilibrium responses. The reflexes are the most primitive patterns that occur in response to specific stimuli, and they establish basic survival patterns of function. The righting reactions are important in establishing a vertical or upright posture against gravity and a continuous head-torso axis. The equilibrium responses are patterns which maintain balance of the whole body in the dynamic relationship between the shifting of one’s center of gravity through space and one’s base of support.
- Course length – 6 days + 1 day off
- Arrivals, orientation and welcome dinner Oct 14 evening
- Departures Oct 22 morning
- Oct 22 & 23 are days off if you’re staying for the Organ system
Our organs are vital and alive. They provide us with our sense of self, full-bodiedness, and organic authenticity. Organs are the contents within the skeletal-flesh container and carry on the functions of our internal survival — breathing, nourishment and elimination. Organs are the primary habitats or natural environments of our emotions, aspirations, and the memories of our inner reactions to our personal and social histories. They support our postural tone and our feelings, and give volume to our movement.
- Course length – 7 days + 1 day off
- Arrivals, orientation and welcome dinner Oct 23 evening
- Departures Nov 1 morning
The period from intrauterine life through approximately 12 months of age is an extraordinarily formative time for humans. Our basic movement patterns emerge in utero, are present at birth, and develop through the first year of life. It is during this time that we build the groundwork for our movement and perceptual skills and pass through the milestones by which we mark our development
- Course length – 5 days + 1 day off
- Arrivals, orientation and welcome dinner Mar 23 evening
- Departures Mar 30 morning
- Mar 30 & 31 are days off if you’re staying for the Nervous system
Experience first occurs on the cellular level. The nervous system is the recording system of the body. It records our experiences and organizes them into patterns. It can then recall the experience and modify it by integrating it with patterns of other systems and previous experiences. The nervous system is the last to know, but, once knowing, it becomes a major control center of psychophysical processes. It can initiate the learning of new experience through creativity and play. The nervous system underlies alertness, thought, and precision of coordination and establishes the perceptual base from which we view and interact with our internal and external worlds.
- Course length – 7 days + 1 day off
- Arrivals, orientation and welcome dinner Mar 31 evening
- Departures Apr 9 morning
The endocrine glands are the major chemical governing system of the body and are closely aligned with the nervous system. Their secretions pass directly into the blood stream and their balance or imbalance influences all of the cells in the body. The glands are the keystone between the organs and the nervous system and between the nervous system and the fluids. They create crystalline psychophysical states through which we are able to experience and understand the universal aspect of self. This is the system of internal stillness, surges or explosions of chaos/balance and the crystallization of energy into archetypal experiences. The endocrine glands underlie intuition and the perceiving and understanding of the Universal Mind.
- Course length – 5 days + 1 day off
- Arrivals, orientation and welcome dinner Oct 13 evening
- Departures Oct 20 morning
- Oct 20 & 21 are days off if you’re staying for the Ligamentous & Fascial System
Fascia provides the tensegrity matrix of the whole body. It wraps around all other structures as one continuous spiraling, multilayered, and multidimensional network of expansive sheaths, enclosed containers and specialized attachments. These specialized attachments are the ligaments. The ligaments set the boundaries of movement between the bones. They coordinate and guide muscular responses by directing the path of movement between the bones and provide specificity, clarity, and efficiency for the alignment and movement of the bones. When all of the ligaments of a joint are actively engaged, the movement of that joint becomes highly specific and is carried effortlessly to surrounding and successive joints. Fascia supports the psychophysical quality of micromovements of condensing and expanding consciousness without specific content within the embracing context of unity. The ligaments support the psychophysical quality of detailed specificity.
- Course length – 7 days + 1 day off
- Arrivals, orientation and welcome dinner Oct 21 evening
- Departures Oct 30 morning
The muscles establish a tensile three-dimensional grid for the balanced support and movement of the skeletal structure by providing the elastic forces that move the bones through space. They provide the dynamic contents of the outer envelope of flesh encompassing the skeletal structure. Through this system we embody our vitality, express our power, and engage in the dialogue of resistance and resolution.
- Course length – 9 days + 2 days off
- Arrivals, orientation and welcome dinner Apr 6 evening
- Departures Apr 18 morning
- Apr 18 & 19 are days off if you’re staying for SME Competency & Professional Development
Completion of other SME courses is a prerequisit for Professional Issues. Time is spent considering what it means to be a professional and how do you transition into this role? This course will cover some of the important issues facing professionals in the somatic field.
SME Competency is for those ready to graduate from the SME program.
- Course length – 3 days
- Arrivals, orientation and welcome dinner Apr 19 evening
- Departures Apr 23 morning
For me, Body-Mind Centering® has always been — beyond a fantastic accumulation of experience, information, and imagery that illuminates the states of being human in a body — a radical re-visioning of the learning process. Wisdom wells up from inside the body, literally from within each cell.
– Diane Elliot
The ability to sense, feel and act authentically is primary to the actor’s craft. With Body-Mind Centering®’s rich language of the body and cultivation of embodied states of being, the performer trains in techniques of transformation; developing the capacity for flexible and authentic response to any given circumstance, character, story or choreography.
– Wendell Beavers
Discovering Body-Mind Centering® has been a huge gift. I now know the magic of being human and look forward to integrating this embodiment process for the rest of my life. For me, the permission that you make space for has been the most radically transformative teaching. Thank you for creating this rare and precious space. It taught me that the guru is within – not by ideas, but by knowing in my cells.
– Malia McInerney
About Sonder
SONDER — n. “the awareness that everyone has a story. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.” — John Koenig, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
Sonder Movement Project is licensed to offer School for Body-Mind Centering® Programs in Somatic Movement Education and Infant Developmental Movement Education. Sonder is directed by Amy Matthews (Program & Educational Director) and Theresa Murphy (Administrative Director), with guest BMC® Teachers from around the world.
At Sonder Movement Project we are continually exploring how to create an educational space that is explicitly anti-racist and anti-discriminatory, and inclusive of all genders, sexualities and neuro-types. We actively seek out ways to de-colonize our bodies and unpack hierarchical assumptions and values.
Sonder is woman owned, queer friendly, neurodiversity affirming and anti-racist.
Retreat Location
WildHeart is located on 46+ beautiful acres in the Hudson Valley. Retreatants will have the option to stay in a single room, double room, dorm, or camping in either our main retreat center or in private two-bedroom cabins. All options have access to shared kitchens and bathrooms. Daily events will take place in the studio, shared common spaces, and outdoors. Retreatants are welcome to enjoy the lawns, walk in the forest, and swim and boat in the lake during their stay! More info about directions and transportation options HERE.
A Note on Food
WildHeart is offering a communal food system for participants to join.
All accommodations have access to a full kitchen (separate from the main/commercial kitchen), so you can “opt out” and do your own shopping+cooking if you prefer.
We pride ourselves on accommodating a wide range of diets, serving meat and dairy daily, but always with vegan and gluten-free options available.
By sourcing bulk foods we decrease plastic packaging, and by pooling our resources we support the farms that supply our local/organic produce and humanely raised animal products. Beverages include: coffee and tea, dairy and non-dairy milk, flavored seltzers, lemon and lime juice, beer, red and white wine!
We have found that the communal food system that best supports Sonder programming is:
- DIY breakfasts, with abundant bulk groceries available for your own morning rhythm
- Abundant leftovers lunches, supplemented by any additional foods you choose from the communal pantry
- Cheffed dinners, with participants joining for either “prep” or “clean” shifts.
Cost per person to opt in to the food system is $35 per day
Housing Options
A range of housing options at WildHeart ideally help make this retreat financially accessible. SME participants are also welcome to secure their own housing in the area, without booking through WildHeart.
- Single-occupancy / private room: $100/night
- Double-occupancy room, shared with one other retreat participant: $60/night
- Single bed in our spacious “Dorm,” sharing a big room with a maximum 5 other people: $45/night
- Camping, with shared bathroom / shower / kitchen access (bring your own gear/ bedding) $30/night
For Participants staying for a “Full Module” (Endo+Ligaments, Fluid+BNPs, etc), WildHeart is offering food and housing at no additional charge for the “days off” between the programs within that module.
Already applied and accepted?
Register now:
