Teachers

All our courses are taught by certified teachers in Body-Mind Centering®.

We may have other BMC teachers to those below delivering the courses, as we are a growing profession and many of us have specialisms.

We welcome BMC graduates as class room assistants (SME/Practitioner) and teaching assistants who undertaking the teacher training.

Dr Katy Dymoke

Program Director, Teacher and Practitioner in Body-Mind Centering®


Katy has been teaching BMC in the UK since 1997 and on other European programs. She integrated BMC into her practice as a Dance Movement Psychotherapist in the NHS where she was a specialist in touch and non-verbal methods in adult learning disability services for 9 years. Currently working with children and adults in education and health settings and in private practice. She has presented at conferences,and has published her writing on touch based working methodology and integrated dance. Katy is completing a PhD on the impact of touch in Movement Psychotherapy and BMC. Katy established the Body-Mind Centering certification programs in the UK and Poland, she believes in the innate intelligence of the body, and the application of BMC in therapeutic contexts and research. As a professional dancer and director of Touchdown Dance Katy creates dance theatre and film. Touchdown Dance is unique for integrating blind and sighted dancers in a professional touring and workshop company based in Contact Improvisation. Collaborating with musicians, actors and dancers for 30 years, she has been an advocate for integrated arts practice.A lover of the outdoors and physical activity she has a 3rd Dan in Jujitsu.

Anne-Marie Zulkahari

Practitioner, Teacher in Body-Mind Centering®


‘I was drawn to Body-Mind Centering® (BMC) with the desire to learn more about developmental movement due to my personal experiences with my own children. On a professional level, I was looking for pedagogic alternatives when teaching Pilates and Yoga student’s anatomy and physiology whose learning styles are usually kinaesthetic. In 2010 I started the BMC Somatic Movement Educator program with Embody Move, I have never looked back, graduating as Practitioner in 2016, now in 2019, as a teacher.

Having been a dancer I trained in Yoga and Pilates. Since 1996 I co-founded the Pilates Foundation UK Ltd and the Pilates Foundation Teacher Training Accreditation and set up Pilates and Yoga Movement in Kilburn in 1994 and Clerkenwell studio in 2012.  I devised a Pilates Teacher Training Programme in 2000.  Body-Mind Centering® now plays a key part in the training.

BMC has transformed my teaching bringing more depth; layering with the different systems.  Because I have personally embodied these, I am better able to teach from a cellular place of understanding.  I feel that I have grown not just a teacher but as a person and communicator.  My goal is to bring BMC to a wider diverse community.’

Janet Amato

Dancer, Choreographer & Certified Teacher of Body-Mind Centering® & Infance Developemental Movement Education


Janet is an established dancer, choreographer, and certified teacher of Body-Mind Centering® and IDME. She also has a diploma in Pilates and Reiki. Janet lives in Paris where she teaches and continues to research and practices as an independent dancer, producing creative performance projects. Her artistic development was influenced strongly by her collaborative and professional encounters with Jérôme Andrews, Solange Mignoton and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. Since 2005 Janet has taught BMC in Germany, Italy and France and joins us in the UK since 2013.

Satu Palokangas

Teacher of Body-Mind Centering®


Satu first came across Body-Mind Centering® while studying contemporary dance and improvisation in the UK and Netherlands in early 1990’s. This initiated her long journey of studying somatic methods and being greatly influenced by the pioneering curriculum of Moving On Center in Berkeley, California, that applies somatic methods and participatory arts with social justice work.

Satu became certified as a Dynamic Embodiment Practitioner with Martha Eddy, Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst with Peggy Hackney and received her MA in Live Art & Performance Studies from the Theatre Academy of Helsinki. She is also a certified massage therapist with additional trainings in myofascial bodywork.

During her MA studies, she begun to create her ecosomatic work, which she has taught at the Academy since 2011. Satu took part in the first UK based BMC® Practitioner cohort – and graduated as a Certified Teacher in 2019. She co-directed and organized the Moving On Center’s Somatic Education & Socially Conscious Body programs in Berlin, and for many years has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Arts in Helsinki and the Dance/Movement Therapy Training in Finland, as well as teaching in Laban/Bartenieff and Body-Mind Centering certification trainings across Europe.

A mother of two children and an activist at heart, her work is an ongoing embodied inquiry into collaborative processes, supporting comfort, agency and change in individuals, families and communities.

Anne Garrigues

Teacher of Body-Mind Centering® and Professional Dancer


Based near Grenoble in France, Anne has been teaching dance and improvisation for 25 years, in professional, amateur, and educational settings including children and teachers. Since 1991 I created divers dance pieces from performance to choreography. Currently Anne directs a group of non-professional dancers in an annual performance piece. Anne has applied BMC® to her dance practice for over 20 years, it nurtured the relationship of movement and the felt sense in my work. She became a practitioner in 2010 and teach BMC in France and Switzerland. Anne works with infant movement development with children including learning disabled children. She has taught in BMC programs since 2013. “I like to experiment, share with others and do movement research in the Laboratoire Corps e-mouvant et pensant E-motional and thinking bodies.”

Karin Fisher Potisk

BMC Teacher and Infant Developmental Movement Educator


Karin was born in Austria and studied at the Mozarteum Academy, where she gained a Teaching Diploma in Clarinet. She subsequently graduated from the London Contemporary Dance School, and also trained in the Scaravelli Method of Yoga. Karin co-founded and directed Ricochet Dance Company, an acclaimed dancer led contemporary company that toured and taught world wide. During the 20 years as Artistic Director and performer of Ricochet her interest in anatomy and movement led her to study at the first European Body Mind Centering Program in Amsterdam, graduating as Practitioner in 1999, becoming an Infant Developmental Movement Educator in 2007 and a BMC Teacher in 2012.
Karin holds an MA (Dist) in Movement/ Directing and Teaching from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where she is now a Visiting Lecturer.
While Body-Mind Centering has been a thread through both her career in dance performance and education and her movement direction in theatre, Karin is particularly fond of teaching for “Embody Move” on the British Body-Mind Centering® Training, which allows her to keep researching and sharing.
She is fluent in German and English.
Karin is mother of Daniel aged almost 7.

Aki Omori

Teacher of Body-Mind Centering®

Aki was born in Tokyo, Japan, moved to UK in 1987, has background in music and physical theatre in her youth, then practiced and taught yoga for over a couple of decades, during which she discovered somatic movement practices, including Body-Mind Centering®.

She completed a 3 year diploma with Linda Hartley (Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy Diploma) and continued to assist on the training for following 5 years, prior to officially coming to study at School of Body-Mind Centering®.

She was certified as a BMC® teacher in 2019.

She is also a certified practitioner of NARM (Neuro Affective Relational Model) which is a relational and developmental trauma therapy working with adult clients.

Her interest in trauma work came out of her own personal history and it is now her on-going research to integrate rich materials of BMC®, Authentic Movement and trauma healing work.  She runs an annual residential training on the nervous system & developmental movement for yoga teachers and therapists and has co-created several trainings with her colleagues, including Somatrauma Education; a short and concise training designed for therapists to work with trauma using movement and hands on practices and Trauma Awareness Training; an online training designed to educate and support staff members / teachers who work in organisations that take care of children with neurodiversity difficulties and/or trauma arising from their domestic environment.

Marina Tsartsara

Certified BMC Somatic Movement Educator and Practitioner

Marina supports Embody-Move with administrative duties. She is a Dance & Visual Artist (MSc), a certified Chinese Acupressure Massage Therapist (TCM London), a Yoga Ashtanga Vinyasa Instructor (Yoga Alliance) and a Holistic Life Coach (Holistic Harmony GR).

She is also a dance-media artist, teaching and performing internationally since 2007.

http://www.somaticwellbeing.info

Mark Rietema

Trainee Psychotherapist, BMC practitioner and Mental Health Social Worker

Mark Rietema has been moving, dancing and exploring the body through martial arts, contact improvisation and other dance forms before he found and focused on Body-Mind Centering™.

He graduated from Goldsmiths University with an MA in Community Arts and has performed and facilitated improvisation, performances and participatory video work mainly in the UK and US. He works in private practice in London as a trainee psychotherapist, as a BMC practitioner and also as a mental health social worker.

Mark teaches Somatics and CI regularly in London and abroad. He offers workshops, lectures and group facilitation around embodiment, communication, mental health, awareness and conflict resolution in different places, such as King’s College, Brunel University, the NHS as well as grassroots and activist groups.

He continues to research and explore embodiment in various ways and is grateful for the depth and vastness of material that BMC brings to this. His approach is influenced by the simple joy of moving and dancing, by bringing awareness and compassion to ourselves and by being continuously curious about the underlying and emerging themes.

www.markrietema.com

Irene Cena

Teacher of Body-Mind Centering®

Irene Cena is a teacher trainee, she graduated as practitioner in 2016 and took part in the Teacher Training 2018-19. She studied as a dancer in Italy and in the UK, completing a BA in dance at TrinityLaban in London.

Her practices include Japanese Martial arts, Buddhism and the Work of Byron Katie, which have fed into her teaching of Somatic Movement. Dance and performance have been and important part of her journey into embodiment.