DISCIPLINE OF AUTHENTIC MOVEMENT - Key Persons
Ania Kowalska-Catalano began to open spaces for groups of movers and witnesses in 2002, in a form that had emerged organically from her meditation, dance, and healing practices. In 2009, during her Dance Movement Psychotherapy studies, she discovered Authentic Movement and felt at home because the natural healing process of body and soul moving was already a crucial focus in her life.
In 2014 Ania started her Discipline of Authentic Movement practice with Jane Bacon in a regular group and individually. In 2015 she entered the Circles of Four program, embarking on annual retreats with Janet Adler and supervision with Fran Lavendel. In 2018 she completed the program, and in 2022 became a faculty member.
In 2017, in Warsaw, Ania collaborated with Joan Chodorow, offering the space for embodied, transgenerational memories from the Holocaust. Ania practices regularly with her fellow teachers in peer groups and retreats. She offers individual sessions, groups, and retreats in Poland and Italy in the Discipline of Authentic Movement.
Her main commitment is to the intimacy of the studio practice, where she relishes the embodied union of simplicity and mystery, intimateness and boundlessness, as well as the constant search for the language that speaks the unfolding truth. Her major guides in this work are a trust in the warmth of relationship, intuitive knowing, and the innate sense of unity of all that is.
Ania is also strongly drawn to the collective and ecological implications of the practice. She is particularly interested in how it can support the organic building of the collectives that respect diverse individuals and our Earth, invite consciousness and kindness, and make space for the unknown.
The Discipline of Authentic Movement is an embracing vessel for Ania's own spiritual and personal growth, influencing her everyday presence, her being a mother, living between Poland and Italy, and her being a part of this Earth's community.
Ania is a certified Dance Movement Psychotherapist registered with the Polish DMP Association. She has completed a two-year formation in the Polish Association for Jungian Analysis. She has been working therapeutically in private practice and in various institutions. She collaborates with the Polish Dance Movement Psychotherapy Institute, introducing Authentic Movement in training future therapists and inviting bridges between the discipline and psychotherapy work. Ania translated into Polish Janet Adler's book Offering from the Conscious Body, published in 2022 by Raven.
Anke Teigeler has a Diplom/Master in Pedagogue and a post-graduate degree in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy for children and adolescents. She is authorized by the German Association for Dancetherapy (BTD) as a Trainer, Supervisor and Training Therapist in Dance Therapy. She is a Laban/Bartenieff Certified Movement Analyst (CMA) and a Jazz-Moderndance Teacher. Anke is the author of "Authentische Bewegung & die spirituelle Dimension in der Tanztherapie," published in the congress journal Tanz und Therapie im Wandel, Düsseldorf, 2010.
Ann Stevenson began her exploration of the Discipline of Authentic Movement in 2008 with a colleague. In 2010, she began annual group retreats with Janet Adler. She participated for 5 years in the Internship Program of the Discipline of Authentic Movement with annual retreats on Galiano Island with Janet (2013-2017) and completed the Circles of Four program in 2019. The relational, embodied, and mystical aspects of the Discipline of Authentic Movement inform Ann's orientation as a psychotherapist.
Ann offers the Discipline of Authentic Movement to individuals and small groups on an ongoing basis and in retreat settings. She supports people in making deeper connections with self, community, and nature.
Ann is a licensed professional counselor in a private group psychotherapy practice in Missoula, Montana. She holds a master's degree with an emphasis in somatic-informed modalities from Prescott College. She has training in Circle of Security, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Reiki. Other influences are Ann's years of practice in meditation and Argentine Tango.
Betina Waissman first practiced Authentic Movement with Marcia Plevin from 1995 until 2001. Feeling she "arrived home" in this practice, she pursued deepening her understanding with the approaches of other teachers: Neala Haze, Joan Chodorow, Zoe Avstreih and Tina Stromsted.
Since the year 2000 in a retreat in Greece, she has been working regularly with Janet Adler. A Peer Group that formed in this same retreat continues to meet, sharing questions and experiences, especially concerning the Discipline of Authentic Movement as a mystical practice. Her deep commitment to the discipline is the center of her own path for personal and spiritual development.
Very honored to participate in the Circles of Four community, Betina is currently offering on-going groups, workshops, training, supervision and retreats in Spain, Mexico and Brazil. She is especially interested in the transformative possibilities of embodiment and witness consciousness in the Discipline of Authentic Movement.
Betina is Brazilian and moved to Spain when marrying her husband in 1997. Her main focus during the first part of her professional life was in theater and acting. She belonged for almost 20 years to a committed professional street theater group in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In Spain, her love for theater and artistic expression has shifted toward teaching in the Corazza Studio for Actors, in Madrid. She is currently exploring the use of elements of the Discipline of Authentic Movement for investigation and creation in acting with advanced students and in professional productions.
Betina began learning with Claudio Naranjo in 1985, becoming his collaborator in the SAT Program in Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Italy, Australia, France, Germany. In the first level of this program she has been developing a personal way of using Authentic Movement in service of big groups working towards consciousness and development. She also collaborates in several therapy trainings and expressive arts programs in Spain.
Betina Waissman has a degree in Sociology. She has long term training in Reichian-oriented psychotherapy, Rio Abierto System (dance movement approach toward health created in Argentina), Eneagram and SAT Integrative Psychotherapy Program, Gestalt, Hoffman Quadrinity Process, EMDR, and is a registered member of ADMTE (Spanish Dance Movement Therapy Association).
Her article "Authentic Movement: Moving the Body, Moving the Soul" was published in the AETG Gestalt Journal, Spain 2008.
Bonnie Morrissey first met and studied with Janet Adler in 1981. Throughout the years, Janet has offered consistent presence as her teacher and mentor, as Bonnie practiced the Discipline of Authentic Movement in groups, solo retreats, and supervision of her own teaching practice. Bonnie is deeply grateful for her experience of the unlimited potential of the practice of the discipline, which continues to guide and orient her personal and professional development.
Bonnie was a faculty member at Burlington College 1982-2000, where she taught Authentic Movement, psychology, and movement courses, and assisted students in designing independent learning programs. As a member of the Board of Directors, Bonnie helped orient curriculum towards a transpersonal psychology program honoring embodied awareness and spirituality.
From 1982 through 1990, Bonnie founded and directed The Center for Therapy and the Arts, a studio for therapists and artists to practice, collaborate, and perform. In 1999, she co-founded CornerStone Psychotherapy, a private practice offering outpatient psychotherapy.
Bonnie teaches ongoing groups in the Discipline of Authentic Movement in Vermont, and retreats in the USA and Canada. As a faculty member of Circles of Four, she is available as Primary, Retreat, or Supervision teacher. Her teaching practice is grounded in 40 years of experience as a licensed clinical psychologist offering psychodynamic depth therapy.
In her teaching and psychotherapy practices, Bonnie aspires to foster inner qualities of presence through relational inquiry. She is deeply interested in the cultivation of intuitive knowing, and in the arising of words as a manifestation of emergent consciousness. Her poetry has been published in journals nationally. Whether in stillness or moving, whether listening, speaking or writing, Bonnie longs to participate in the development of a more clear and compassionate Witness Consciousness in our world. Currently, Bonnie is co-editing a book with the working title Intimacy in Emptiness: The Collected Writings of Janet Adler, forthcoming in 2021.
Bonnie Morrissey, M.Ed., graduated from the Dance Therapy Program at Antioch/ New England Graduate School. She engaged in post-graduate research in Consciousness Studies with Stanley Krippner at Saybrook Institute. Her essay "Umbanda Ceremonies and Mediumship in Brazil" is a cross-cultural study of spirit-based healing using dance and mediumship techniques, published in Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy (1990). Bonnie's essay "Authentic Movement and Embodied Consciousness: Deconstructing the Hierarchies that Sustain Oppression and Domination in Human and Nonhuman Animal Life", is published in ReVision: A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation (2006).
Cornelia Schmitz began to practice Authentic Movement in 1990 as a student of Linda Hartley and then in 1998 she began practicing the Discipline of Authentic Movement with Janet Adler. The practice has become central to her work and life, bringing her a deep sense of recognition and the longing to be as close as possible to her truth as an embodied human being.
Cornelia has taught Authentic Movement for individuals and groups in Europe since 1997, both in German and in English. She receives individuals and groups in her studio in Braunschweig, offering the Discipline of Authentic Movement, psychodynamic-oriented body-based psychotherapy, supervision and Bewegungsgewebe (her own approach to supporting the unfolding of movement and the refinement of embodied awareness, combining body-work and the Discipline of Authentic Movement). She also teaches at different psychotherapy institutes.
Her commitment to the Discipline of Authentic Movement, under Janet‘s guidance, is essential for her orientation in life, together with her profound interest in the anatomy and physiology of the subtle and material processes and tissues that form us. She is devoted to the mystery of human embodied presence and its development toward consciousness. A playful mind is seriously essential to the unfolding of her work.
Cornelia has worked in hospitals (psychosomatic as well as psychiatric) and in counseling centers. She did three years of scientific research in the Lower Saxon Instutiute for Criminology. She holds lectures and courses concerning the immune, endocrine, and nervous systems. She also finds expression in visual arts and writing and has followed a healing tradition of inner guidance since 1983.
Cornelia Schmitz has a diploma in Psychology, in Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy and has completed training programs as a Gestalt Therapist and Bodyworker, a Client-centered Psychotherapist and as a Psychodynamic Psychotherapist. She has done extensive studies of various forms of Somatics since 1981, particularly Creative Dance, Contact Improvisation, Cranio-Sacral Movement Therapy, Vocal Expression, Aikido, Qi Gong.
Céline Gimbrère experienced the first layers of Authentic Movement in workshops and retreats guided by Constance Cook and Kedzie Penfield in the 1980s and early 1990s. Céline discovered the depth of the Discipline of Authentic Movement in her meeting with Janet Adler in 1995. She became deeply fascinated by the work and has been a student of Janet's in individual and group retreats since then.
Celine has been a consultant for movement and dance in primary education. As a choreographer, she created performances with non-professional dancers. She was director of the school for dance improvisation at the Theaterschool in Amsterdam from 1992 - 1995. From 2004 - 2011, she worked at the International Criminal Court at The Hague as a Senior Support Assistant of the Victims and Witnesses Unit where she worked for victims of the conflicts in Darfur, Congo, and Kenya.
Celine is a dance improvisation teacher, psychomotor therapist, and body-oriented psychotherapist. Since 2008 she has been teaching the Discipline of Authentic Movement in the Master program for Dance Therapy at CODARTS, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Céline Gimbrère has a Master's degree in Educational Dance, a post-graduate degree in Psycho-motor Therapy and a post-graduate degree in Body-Oriented Psychotherapy (Amsterdam).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Stump Sprouts Authentic Movement Collective
Diana Levy was a freshman at Hampshire College when she met Janet Adler. While at Hampshire, Diana studied with Janet individually, in groups, and then assisted her in a year-long weekly group. Ever since this first exposure to Authentic Movement in 1971, the Discipline of Authentic Movement has been central to Diana's life, and her practice has deepened from Janet Adler's evolution of the discipline. Diana has continued to study with Janet in retreats periodically over the years. She also completed a one-year teacher training program with Zoe Avstreih in 1989.
Diana has been a member of the Stump Sprouts Authentic Movement Collective for 27 years. Her participation has shaped Diana's understanding and respect for the ground form as a powerful resource for creating a conscious collective. Diana's passion for collective leadership is nourished by the Authentic Movement groups she has taught collaboratively with Circles of Four faculty member Lisa Tsetse since 2014.
Diana currently offers individual, group, and retreat work in the Discipline of Authentic Movement. She supports students to open to what is present within, to cultivate their inner witness, to learn to hold both their own experience and that of another, and in moments of grace to know them as one.
Diana has provided psychotherapy, clinical supervision, and organizational leadership in multiple educational and clinical settings serving adults and children. She currently serves as the Associate Clinic Director, Family and Children's Service of Ithaca, New York. She encourages clinicians, educators, and administrators to bring witness consciousness and relational practice to those whom they serve. Diana uses her skills and understandings from the Discipline of Authentic Movement to build emotionally responsive environments where both clients and staff feel seen and accompanied.
Diana's commitment to Authentic Movement as a spiritual practice is grounded in her practice of Judaism. She engages in the study of contemplative practices with her Rabbi, Brian Walt. She also regularly participates in a collective studying Authentic Movement and Jewish mystical practice.
Diana Levy, MSW, LMSW is a Licensed Master Social Worker in New York State. She was a founder of the Laban/Bartenieff Institute for Movement Studies in New York City in 1978 and is a Certified Laban Movement Analyst. She co-authored "Continuing the Work without a Leader," A Moving Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring, 1994.
began her study of Authentic Movement in 1993. She continued her studies at the Authentic Movement Institute (AMI) in Berkeley, CA from 1995-1998, with Tina Stromsted, Neala Haze, Joan Chodorow and Janet Adler. In 1996, Forest joined Janet's Authentic Movement and Mystical Dance group and, from 1999 to 2005, trained with Janet individually and in groups. She participated in an Authentic Movement and Zen retreat and in a three-year mentorship program with a focus on studying energetic phenomena within the discipline. Since 2005, Forest has continued to practice and study Authentic Movement as a peer and as a teacher, returning to her studies with Janet in 2014.
Forest has been teaching the Discipline of Authentic Movement for the past eight years in ongoing individual and group formats as well as intensives. In addition to her weekly, bi-monthly, and monthly teaching practice, she offers day-long introductions to the discipline and has been invited as a guest teacher from various centers and universities in the United States and in Seoul, South Korea. Her current questions involve exploration of the discipline as a vehicle for creative work, for containing and expressing life changes/losses related to the body, and, as a mystical practice.
Forest is a Board Certified Dance/Movement Therapist (BC-DMT #941), a Center for Movement Education and Research (CMER) faculty member, a founding member of The Creative Medicine Collective (CMC) and a choreographer. Her clinical work as a dance/movement therapist spans thirteen years in inpatient psychiatric hospitals, intensive outpatient programs, and rehabilitation facilities. From 2001-2008, she worked at UCSF/Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital where, as inpatient supervisor to chaplain interns, she explored the integration of spirituality and dance/movement therapy. In facilitating pain management groups, Forest focused on the application of dance/movement therapy and Authentic Movement principles. And as a rehabilitation therapist, she presented hospital wide seminars including: "The Discipline of Authentic Movement: Principles and Applications of an Embodied Mindfulness Practice."
Currently, Forest teaches CMER's Graduate DMT course, "Dance/Movement Therapy Group Process," a course that includes significant focus on the teaching of Authentic Movement and has been approved by the American Dance Therapy Association as meeting requirements for the Alternate Route R-DMT credential.
Forest's personal journey from dancer to dance/movement therapist to Authentic Movement practitioner is featured in the book: "Art and Courage: Stories to Inspire the Artist-Warrior Within" by John Paul Thornton (2009) and documented in Ingrid Ammondson's dissertation, "Beyond Coping: Transformation in the Face of Living with Nonmalignant Chronic Pain," submitted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology Palo Alto, California (2009).
Forest received both her MA in dance/movement therapy (1995) and her MFA in choreography (2003) from UCLA. She served as the Government Affairs Chair (GAC) for the Southern California Chapter of the American Dance Therapy Association (SCCADTA) from 2009-2010.
Heli-Maija Rajaniemi's training in Authentic Movement began with Marcia Plevin in 1994. Heli-Maija has been Janet Adler's student in Europe, California, and Canada from 1997 until 2019.
She has been teaching the Discipline of Authentic Movement in Finland since 2010 in her private practice and in retreats for individuals and groups. She has also been an assistant to Marcia Plevin in Authentic Movement retreats in Finland (2000-2002). Heli-Maija belongs to a supervisory Authentic Movement peer group that is committed to the evolution of the Discipline of Authentic Movement (1998- present).
Her long-time practice of the discipline has deepened her work as a therapist and as a teacher with special interest in the effects of the relationship between energetic phenomena and traumatic material in the body, with deepening questions of healing. Heli-Maija currently works as a psychophysical physiotherapist along side her teaching practice of the Discipline of Authentic Movement.
Heli-Maija finds the depth, the silent presence, and the development of embodied witness consciousness in the Discipline of Authentic Movement to be natural ways for personal growth. Over the years of work and study, her initial interest in the body and movement has grown into a holistic understanding of human beings, where the body, psyche, and spirit cannot be separated.
Heli-Maija Rajaniemi received a post graduate diploma in Dance/Movement Therapy at the Eino Roiha Institute, Jyväskylä (2014) and a degree in Physiotherapy from the University of Applied Sciences, Jyväskylä (1983) with additional studies in psychology at the University of Jyväskylä (1988). She has completed trainings in: Sensorimotor psychotherapy level 1 and 2 at Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute (2019-2022), Mind-Body Bridging, Finnish mental health association (2016), Psychotherapeutic Relationships at the University of Applied Sciences (2009), NDT, Bobath Therapist and Tutor, European Bobath Tutors Association (2007), and Creative Movement, Garcia-Plevin method, Finland (2001).
Jane Bacon began her study of Authentic Movement in 2001, first working with Helen Payne, then Tina Stromsted. First traveling to Canada to work with Janet Adler in 2010 - in solo and then group retreats - Jane continues to deepen her practice of the Discipline of Authentic Movement with Janet as her primary teacher. This annual commitment to her own in depth work with embodied consciousness nourishes Jane's teaching of the discipline and her psychotherapy practice.
Jane has been offering individual Authentic Movement sessions and a regular monthly group in her Northampton, UK studio since 2009. She also sometimes teaches the Discipline of Authentic Movement in London in the beautiful and peaceful Northamptonshire countryside.
Jane incorporates the Discipline of Authentic Movement in her psychotherapy practice and Jung's ideas about ‘active imagination' in movement into her teaching practice. She continues to question how we track direct experience in Authentic Movement and find language for these experiences. She finds Gendlin's ‘Thinking at the Edge', based on his ‘felt sense' approach (1978), a valuable perspective for questions about the mystery of direct experience and embodied consciousness. She works with the Discipline of Authentic Movement as both therapeutic and mystical practice.
Jane Bacon has over 15 years of coaching and psychotherapeutic experience and over 35 years of teaching experience. She is a Jungian Analyst trained with the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists London, UK and UKCP and IAAP registered; a Focusing Trainer (Focusing Institute, USA); and Professor of Dance and Somatics at the University of Chichester, UK. She first trained as a dancer and has spent many years working in Higher Education teaching choreography, dance ethnography, and movement/somatic practices.
Jane has supervised many PhD students whose work has been informed by Authentic Movement as a creative resource. Authentic Movement is also a crucial part of her academic research and she hopes to offer a wider range of written resources to the Authentic Movement community through her publications. A complete list of her written and creative work can be viewed at https://chi.academia.edu/JaneBacon.
Jane Okondo first met Authentic Movement in 2008, as part of her master's program at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. Being touched by the richness of the practice, she entered a deep study of the Discipline of Authentic Movement in 2010, firstly with Linda Hartley and later with Jane Bacon and Cornelia Schmitz in the Circle of Four program. From 2018 to 2020 she studied with Janet Adler as her mentor, and in 2020 Jane received her blessing as a teacher of the discipline, joining the faculty of Circles of Four in 2023.
In her teaching of the discipline, Jane offers individual sessions and solo retreats, as well as regular group retreats throughout the year at her studio located in London, UK. She also is a guest teacher for annual retreats in Denmark. As a Circles of Four faculty member, she is available as a primary teacher and retreat teacher.
Jane's inspiration, and the ground for all her work, comes from connections to the mystery and unknown through experiencing the moving body. Her ongoing passion is witnessing the profound impact of developing inner witness presence and how this ripples outward into all aspects of the lived experience.
Core to Jane's private practice is somatically based trauma work. She has a strong interest in how conscious movement is foundational for this work and first began to integrate movement into her practice in 2000, with Emily Conrad as her mentor. She was authorized to teach Continuum in 2007.
Jane continues to integrate these practices into her work as a Somatic Movement therapist. She is co-director and faculty for the Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy Diploma, where she teaches Authentic Movement and Therapeutic Presence, Somatic Psychology, Embodied Anatomy, and Movement Development. Jane is a member of the Continuum Teacher Association offering retreats in the UK and guest faculty on the Continuum programme at the Somatic Akademie in Berlin.
Jane is originally trained as an Integrative Arts Psychotherapist and has a postgraduate diploma in Biodynamic Cranial Sacral therapy and a Master's in Somatic Movement, from UCLan, UK. She is a registered Somatic Movement Therapist (MSMT/E), registered by the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association and her post-graduate studies in Somatic Trauma are with Somatic Experiencing ® and NeuroAffective Touch ®.
Janet Adler, founder of the Discipline of Authentic Movement, was introduced to movement as a manifestation of the unconscious by Marian Chace, to authentic movement becoming conscious by Mary Whitehouse, and to somatic epistemology by John Weir. Janet has explored authentic movement in the presence of a witness since 1969, discovering an inherent order within the development of mover consciousness, witness consciousness, and the relationship between the two. The inner witness, the thread of connection between and among these phenomena, is the core of her lifelong inquiry into the study and practice of the discipline, of the evolution of embodied consciousness.
As guest teacher and senior faculty since 1970, Janet has offered lectures, seminars, and retreats concerning the development of the Discipline of Authentic Movement in private and public institutions, retreat centers, universities, and clinics in North America and Europe.
Beginning in 2006, Janet received international teachers for advanced study and practice of the discipline into her kiva studio on Galiano Island, BC, Canada. In 2013 she founded Circles of Four, a post-graduate program guiding people who wish to teach the discipline. She eventually stepped back from teaching in order to focus on her writing practice as well as her participation as a grief counselor and interfaith chaplain at Transitions in Dying and Grieving, a volunteer hospice program that she co-created and directed since 2007 on Galiano.
Janet's teaching practice in Northern California (1986-2006) welcomed individuals and groups into a full engagement of the practice of the Discipline of Authentic Movement. Her work during those decades focused on the relationship between the discipline and the distinct realms of mystical text, mystical dance, kundalini, the process of initiation, Jewish Mysticism, Zen, and the practice of psychotherapy. During those years she also traveled to her students in European countries (1992-2001), seeding a strong, intercontinental collective of participants which continues to further the development of the Discipline of Authentic Movement. Janet received a Doctorate in Mysticism from the Union Institute in 1992. She produced and directed "Still Looking," a film about her early work in Authentic Movement, in 1988. She engaged in hospice work in Santa Rosa, California, as a volunteer caregiver (1988-1999) and then as an interfaith chaplain (1999-2005).
Janet's teaching practice in Northampton, Massachusetts (1971-1987) included her work as founder and director of the Mary Starks Whitehouse Institute, the first school devoted to the study and practice of Authentic Movement. She also taught Authentic Movement to dancers and choreographers in the Dance Gallery Performing Arts Company. In 2019 she returned to Northampton to be honored for 50 years of devoted work within the field of Somatics.
Janet's experience as a board-certified dance/movement therapist (1963-1973) involved work in differential diagnosis at the nursery at Gallaudet College, the first college for deaf students in the United States, work with psychotic young adults at Austin Riggs Center, directed by Erik and Joan Erikson in Stockbridge MA, and work with autistic children at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh. Phenomenological research with the autistic children at that institute is documented in her film "Looking for Me" (1968).
Janet's final and most recent book, a comprehensive collection of her writings is Intimacy in Emptiness: an Evolution of Embodied Consciousness, edited by Bonnie Morrissey and Paula Sager (Inner Traditions, 2022). Janet's other books include Offering from the Conscious Body: The Discipline of Authentic Movement (2002), translated into Italian, German, Chinese, French, Russian, and Polish, and Arching Backward: The Mystical Initiation of a Contemporary Woman (1995). Her essays and interviews (1972-2004) are published in Authentic Movement: Essays by Mary Starks Whitehouse, Janet Adler, and Joan Chodorow: Volume One (1999) and Authentic Movement: Moving the Body, Moving the Self, Being Moved: A Collection of Essays: Volume Two (2007), both edited by Patrizia Pallaro. Essays, interviews, and book reviews are published in the following journals: Parabola, A Moving Journal, Contact Quarterly, Journal for Authentic Movement and Somatic Inquiry, The American Journal of Dance Therapy, and in the book, Therapy in Motion, edited by Maureen Needham Costonis (1978).
Her archives are housed and available at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Jillian Froebe has practiced and studied Authentic Movement for over thirty years, with her first encounter experienced as a "homecoming." Jillian considers Janet Adler to be her primary teacher, particularly in relationship to Jillian's direct experience of the Discipline as a ceremonial and mystical practice. Janet became Jillian's mentor in 2006 when they became "Northwest neighbors."
Jillian is an Expressive Arts and Interspiritual mentor, with a focus on the practice of the discipline. She is graced to have relationships with dedicated students who embrace the discipline through long-term commitments. Jillian is particularly devoted to sharing Authentic Movement as a path in cultivating and honoring daily w consciousness while inviting the presence of mystery, energetic phenomenon, and the ineffable. She guides individuals and groups, offering retreats at Turtle Haven Sanctuary where she resides. The foundation of Jillian's teaching is the ground form continually returning to "beginner's mind and body." She guides others in the cultivation of the compassionate witness while deepening reciprocal connections between "Self and Other," in intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal relationships. Jillian is interested in the relationship between personal and collective evolution and how a strong witnessing practice fortifies the cultivation of effective spiritual, social, and environmental activism. Her work often takes place outdoors, honoring the presence of kinship with "other than human" beings who dwell in the nearby river and forest. Jillian actively accompanies others in cultivating a witnessing practice to grieve and respond with agency to escalating global crises.
Authentic Movement is coupled with Jillian's passion for tending dreams, which she sees as gifts arising from the Mystery. The synchronicity that emerges in community through movement, visual image, and word and reflects the truth of our interdependence is central to Jillian's passion for these intersections. Jillian's teaching is focused on weaving ritual and contemplative practices that honor playful, emotive, creative, energetic, and silent expression.
Jillian holds a BS degree in Theatre Arts, Communications, and Education from Syracuse University and an MA degree in Psychology, with a concentration in Depth Psychology and Expressive Arts from California State University, Sonoma. She has pursued postgraduate studies in Expressive Arts, Psychotherapeutic, and Jungian practices at various institutions and has taught Authentic Movement within Expressive Arts Therapy undergraduate and graduate level seminars and university courses. Deepening her studies of wisdom and mystical traditions and spiritual care, Jillian was ordained as an Interfaith Chaplain in 2012 at the Chaplaincy Institute in Berkeley, California.
Joan Webb began studying Authentic Movement in 1990, with Diana Levy. In 1992-93 she completed a year-long teacher training with Zoe Avstreih. Joan began to participate in annual 5-day group retreats with Janet Adler in 1995. One of these groups studied the relationship between the Discipline of Authentic Movement and Jewish mysticism; that group continues to meet annually as a peer group. Since 1993, Joan has been teaching the Discipline of Authentic Movement to groups and individuals in her barn studio in Seekonk, Massachusetts, just outside Providence, Rhode Island.
Joan was a founding co-editor of A Moving Journal, an international publication devoted to writings and art relating to Authentic Movement, during its thirteen years of publication (1994-2006). Editing and laying out the many writings and drawings from all over the world gave Joan an in-depth understanding of the power of Authentic Movement and the many ways it transforms lives. Joan was pleased and privileged to be a part of the growing worldwide community that A Moving Journal grew out of and helped to sustain.
Joan began a daily yoga practice in 1987, received a teaching certificate from the Kripalu Center in 1992, and has been teaching yoga since then. Her interest in Jewish mysticism led her to study Kabbalah with Jason Shulman and to complete a four-year training in Integrated Kabbalistic Healing in 2007. She continues advanced studies, including Impersonal Movement and the MAGI process for conflict resolution, with the Society of Souls. This training gives Joan experience and tools for working with personal and inter-personal psychological issues and with the processes of healing and personal growth. Both the Society of Souls and the Discipline of Authentic Movement recognize the centrality of being in the body, non-duality, relationship, and transference.
Joan Webb received a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Oberlin College and a master's degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of Wisconsin.
Julia Gombos has been engaged in the Discipline of Authentic Movement for 25 years, contributing to and witnessing the practice as it has evolved. She has worked with Janet Adler in one-on-one and group practice in experiential studies in the discipline as it relates to: Jewish Mysticism (2003 - 2013), psychodynamic theory (1999 - 2003), and advanced study of theory and practice (1989 - 1995). She was Janet's assistant in Northern California and Massachusetts (1995 -2002) in retreats focused on Mystical Text and Mystical Dance.
Julia has been teaching the discipline in individual and group formats in Northern California for 20 years and is now a faculty member of Circles of Four as a Primary, Retreat, and Supervision teacher. She provides studio sessions as well as works by phone and Skype. Julia has been a licensed psychotherapist for 30 years, maintaining a private practice in Northern California. She supervises interns and works with individuals, couples, families, and groups integrating relational, psychodynamic, and somatic perspectives. Embodiment, psychology, and spirituality infuse Julia's teaching as a body-oriented psychotherapist (1989-current), Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (1996- current), and Trauma Specialist (1998- current). She includes the Discipline of Authentic Movement and embodied inquiry in her psychotherapy practice as well as in her personal studies in the Diamond Heart Approach (2010-present).
Julia has treated and taught somatically based trauma work in disaster areas such as post-Katrina New Orleans (2005) and in Haiti with the Trauma Resource Institute (2005-current). She was adjunct professor in the masters program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (2003-2006) where she supervised students and included the Discipline of Authentic Movement in her curriculum in the Somatic Psychology Department. She participated in the Advanced Training in Active Imagination and Authentic Movement and Psychotherapy Consultation Group with Joan Chodorow (1996- 2002).
Julia has always considered the Discipline of Authentic Movement as her primary spiritual practice. She deeply values her relationships with her family, friends and community and revels in time on the land where there is always an invitation toward presence. Moving and communing with the elements and her direct experience of oneness of the beauty of the earth informs her witness consciousness and nourishes her soul.
Julia Gombos, MS, MFT, SEP, received her Masters Degree at California State University, San Francisco and an undergraduate degree in Psychology and Child Development at California State University, Bakersfield.
Marcia Plevin, an American from Brooklyn, has lived and worked in Italy since 1986. She began studying with Janet Adler when Janet first taught retreats in Europe in 1991. Marcia also enriched her knowledge and practice of Authentic Movement through her studies with Joan Chodorow and Tina Stromsted in the 1990s.
In 1973 while performing "Shirah," a dance choreographed by Pearl Lang, on a New York City concert stage, Marcia encountered what she understands now was a mystical experience. She has searched ever since to uncover the mystery of "what had happened." In the Discipline of Authentic Movement, she has found a place where that question can possibly be answered. Today that practice keeps her in touch with the Eastern spiritual tradition's "beginner's mind," which encourages and honors recognition of not-knowing and being present to what simply is.
Marcia has been teaching Authentic Movement to individuals and groups since 1995. During the 1990s she was both a Dance Movement Therapist and a contemporary dance teacher at the Accademia Nazionale di Danza in Rome. She taught Authentic Movement to groups in Italy, Finland, Spain, and Turkey, and she is currently introducing the practice in China through the Inspirees Institute. In 1997 she guided members of the first Finnish Authentic Movement circle to form a peer group, which still exists today. She introduced Authentic Movement in Claudio Naranjo's program in Spain in the middle 1990s and brought Authentic Movement practice to Turkey in 2005 through Bilgi University, Istanbul. Within the Creative Movement- method Garcia-Plevin® training programs in Italy and China, Authentic Movement is taught as a creative process and a mover/witness resource. Marcia holds an international retreat in northern Italy every summer, bringing together experienced practitioners of the Discipline from various countries. She offers individual, group, and supervision work from her studio in Rovereto, Italy.
Marcia holds a BS degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in dance and a post-graduate art psychotherapist diploma from Goldsmith College, London. She is a Dance Movement Therapist-BC-DMT clinician and supervisor for the Expressive Psychotherapy Institute, Art Therapy Italiana, Bologna and for the Inspirees Institute in Beijing. She has studied Vipassana Meditation with Corrado Penza in Rome. Her articles on Authentic Movement have appeared in A Moving Journal, Contact Quarterly, Authentic Movement Vol. II, ed. Patrizia Pallaro, and The Handbook of Dance and Wellbeing, ed. Vicky Karkou, Sue Oliver, Sophia Lycouris.
Moriah Moser began her work in the Discipline of Authentic Movement with Janet Adler in 1978. Beginning with four years of individual sessions before attending group sessions and retreats, Moriah has continued to study with Janet at intervals over the last 40 years as the discipline has evolved. Although Janet was her primary teacher, Moriah has also studied authentic movement with Alton Wasson and Joan Chodorow. Moriah currently attends retreats with her faculty colleagues from Circles of Four.
Other important teachers include Mara Capy, a Jungian Movement Therapist; Zuleikah Bethane, a Sufi Dancer and teacher; Nikki Costello, an Iyengar Yoga Teacher; Christopher Bamford, an Anthroposophical author and meditation teacher; and Oh Shinnah Fastwolf, a Native American Elder. In 1993, Moriah was initiated into the Sisters of the Violet Flame, a Mystery School dedicated to the study and teaching of spiritual healing and wisdom practices.
Moriah offers private sessions in the Discipline of Authentic Movement and is available to be a primary teacher, supervision, or retreat teacher within the program. After retiring from twenty years as a Waldorf Teacher, Moriah created the Indigomoon Healing Arts Center where she practices movement therapy and teaches yoga and The Discipline of Authentic Movement. Moriah also offers The Inner Dance, a class she first developed in 1980, which includes the ground form of the Discipline of Authentic Movement, somatic wisdom practices, art, and song.
Mystical practice, somatic healing arts, and pastel painting inform Moriah, as her own inner work and study of the sacred continue. She has found that painting in nature integrates her work with the invisible. Moriah draws on her study with teachers in spiritual traditions to guide her students to practice presence, listening within, and self-compassion. Here, the discovery of the indwelling of the sacred is possible, and her students can develop the capacity within themselves towards integration, balance, and presence. Moriah strives to create an atmosphere where wonder, creativity, and spirit are welcome.
Moriah Moser received her BA from Trinity College, a Master's Degree in Dance Movement Therapy, and a Waldorf Teacher training degree from Antioch/New England. For seven years, beginning in 2005, she was a student at The New Chartres School of Wisdom University in Chartres, France. Moriah has completed yoga teacher trainings through Boston Yoga School and a training in Yin Yoga. Her Master thesis, "A Phenomenological Study of Guided Imagery," can be obtained from Antioch/New England.
Paula Sager, as a dancer and choreographer, came to embodied awareness and somatic inquiry through her studies and training with Aileen Crow (1984-89). Her practice of the Discipline of Authentic Movement began in 1990 in a group led by Diana Levy. The group was a creative wellspring for numerous endeavors including A Moving Journal, an international publication devoted to Authentic Movement and the diverse perspectives, questions, and offerings of its practitioners. Paula, Joan Webb, and Annie Geissinger co-edited AMJ from 1994 to 2006.
Paula began studying with Janet Adler in 1994, as a member of one of the East Coast collectives at Stump Sprouts. Since then Paula's work with Janet and fellow students of the Discipline of Authentic Movement has informed and infused her life with nourishment and guidance.
In her teaching of the Discipline, Paula offers individual sessions and solo retreats as well as group retreats at her studio located in rural Rhode Island. She also teaches at Voice Body Mind Healing Collaborative in Providence, RI and leads retreats and on-going groups in a variety of settings, including New York City. As a Circles of Four faculty member, she is available as a primary teacher and retreat teacher.
Paula brings her experience as a somatic educator, her long-time study of Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy, and her passion for supporting the development of witness consciousness to her work with individuals, groups and organizations, which have included the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and the Mariposa Center, a social justice initiative focused on early childhood education.
Paula Sager, BA, MLS, has a degree in Dance from Bennington College and a graduate degree from the Barfield School at Sunbridge College, where her research with thesis mentors, Janet Adler and Arthur Zajonc focused on the development of the inner witness. Her thesis, Witness Consciousness in the Development of the Individual, can be found on her website. She studied the Alexander Technique with Eva Karczag and Aileen Crow, becoming certified as an Alexander teacher in 1989.
Paula's articles and interviews have appeared in A Moving Journal, Contact Quarterly, Journal for Authentic Movement and Somatic Inquiry, and Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices. She has presented at American Dance Therapy and Body-Mind Centering conferences. She is co-author with Lizbeth Hamlin of Red Thread, Two Women, a long-distance experiment in moving, witnessing, and word.
Rosa Maria Govoni is a Psychotherapist since 1989, BC-DMT since 1992, and a DMT teacher and supervisor. Her Psychotherapy practice is psychodynamically oriented, integrating Authentic Movement, Sensory Motor Therapy, and Restorative Resources for trauma work. She has written articles and publications about DMT, Psychotherapy, and Supervision. She assisted in editing the Italian translation of Joan Chodorow's Dance Therapy and Depth Psychology, Patrizia Pallaro's Authentic Movement, and Janet Adler's Offering from the Conscious Body. Rosa Maria wrote the Italian introduction to Janet's book with colleague A.P. Weatherhogg.
Soraya Jorge had her first contact with Authentic Movement in 1993 at the Authentic Movement Institute. She studied with Neala Haze, whom she assisted for two years, Tina Stromsted, Joan Chodorow, and Janet Adler. Between 1994 and 2003, she attended the Mystical Practice, Mystical Dance research retreats facilitated by Janet. Also in 2003, she participated in A Special Program, a series of small group and individual encounters with Janet. From 2015 - 2019, Soraya participated in retreats with Julia Gombos.
In 1996, Soraya taught the first Authentic Movement workshop in Rio de Janeiro and in1999, she began a continuous teaching in Brasil. There she still offers individual and group sessions, supervisions and retreats in many cities including Lisbon (PT) and Vienna (AUT). Since August 2017, under the supervision of Julia Gombos, she teaches The Discipline of Authentic Movement.
Soraya explores the questions of how Authentic Movement develops an incarnation of consciousness (bodyfullness) and how spirituality is embodied in a political, ecological, and ethical way in the process of witnessing the world. She wants to find new and traditional venues to be in conscious relationship with everyday life in Brazil and the world. She researches ways in which Authentic Movement contributes to the emergence of consciousness: Authentic Movement as a Somatic Relational Approach, the Practice of Witnessing, the Contemporary Terreiro (Brazilian/African earthy circle), and Human Ecology.
Susan Cahill began her studies of Authentic Movement in her dance movement therapy/counseling training in the 1980s. She later took workshops led by Joan Chodorow, Tina Stromsted, and other dance/movement therapists. She furthered her learning by participating in a weekly study group with colleagues for over 30 years, incorporating readings from articles, Janet Adler's book, Offering from the Conscious Body, and moving.
Her commitment to the Discipline of Authentic Movement as a mystical practice led her to study formally with Janet Adler beginning in 2004. She worked with Janet in solo, dyad work, annual group retreats, and in monthly supervision. In 2013 she was invited to assist Janet in her 5-year international internship program, which transformed into Circles of Four (COF). Since the inception of COF, Susan has been a primary and supervision teacher. She also holds retreats for students interested in COF, as well as for others who are interested in healing and transformation.
Susan co-creates with her students a path of learning that bridges their previous training with the Discipline. She guides students into the depth of their experience as a mover, silent witness, and with time into speaking witnessing. Her capacity to hold a safe container for deep personal work as well as for realms of energetic phenomena come from her direct experience as a mover, student, colleague, and teacher in her own right. Being seen, heard and understood with love and compassion are at the center of her teaching and facilitation as a clinician.
Susan earned her BA in dance, Spanish, and psychology at Dension University. She then studied dance and dance therapy at Harvard University and later received her MA in Counseling and Dance/Movement Therapy at Columbia College in Chicago.
After completing post-graduate training at the Family Institute at Northwestern University in Internal Family Systems (IFS), she became certified as an IFS therapist. Susan incorporates IFS and the Discipline of Authentic Movement in her private practice, with groups, and in trainings and conferences throughout the US. She is licensed in Illinois and Washington State in counseling and is a board-certified dance movement therapist. For over 25 years, she has supervised psychotherapists, as they incorporate embodied practices into their therapy work.
In 2015, she wrote "A Tapestry of a Clinician: Blending Authentic Movement and the Internal Family Systems Model," which was included in the British Journal of Dance & Somatics Practices.
Susanne Hofler-Resch, a student of Janet Adler since 2000, entered the wide space of Authentic Movement for the first time with Cary Rick in her dance therapy training in the late 1980´s. Since then she has been following a study of embodiment as it manifests in different ways in her personal and professional life. Susanne feels grateful for the generous space of the ritual form of the Discipline of Authentic Movement. It invites personal experience of egoic and collective material as well as of the mystical realm, helping to connect these dimensions in a developmental process of personal growth.
Susanne teaches the Discipline of Authentic Movement in her private studio in Salzburg / Austria and in other locations in Austria, Germany, and Italy. She offers individual sessions, supervision and group work. Susanne has been teaching the Discipline of Authentic Movement since 1989 in workshops for dance improvisation, in trainings for people working in psychosocial fields, and in professional problem-solving groups.
Elements of the Discipline of Authentic Movement contribute to her work as a psychotherapist as she follows the principles of relation and body-oriented depth psychology. Susanne also works as a visual artist, using the phenomenon of embodiment for creating objects and paintings in her atelier as well as in her performances and exhibitions. As autodidact in the visual arts, her most relevant teacher for many years has been Jacobo Borges from Venezuela at the International Summer Academy for visual arts at Salzburg. She is very interested in working with artists, accompanying those who wish to deepen their personal work by touching the source of creativity for authentic artistic expression.
Mag. Phil. Susanne Hofler-Resch holds a degree in Psychology from the University of Salzburg and is an acknowledged psychotherapist by the Austrian ministry. She is a practitioner of Somatic Experiencing (Peter Levine) and a teacher for Dance-Improvisation and Sacred Dance (Gabriele Wosien).
Uta Büchler discovered Authentic Movement as a home for her body and soul in 1991. She has practiced it passionately ever since and began teaching in 1995, after completing the one-year training at the Authentic Movement Institute with Neala Haze, Tina Stromstead, and Janet Adler. Uta has assisted Anke Teigeler in a 3-year Discipline of Authentic Movement training and has translated literature by Janet Adler and Paula Sager into German.
Uta Büchler is a certified Body-Psychotherapist in private practice, practitioner of the trauma releasing method Somatic Experiencing® (SE) and NARM, Body-Mind Centering® practitioner, dancer, and Occupational Therapist. Other influences of her work are a deep immersion in non-violent communication and many years of meditation. She also loves Contact Improvisation and Argentine Tango.
Uta supports people in deepening an honest and compassionate relationship with themselves and an open, curious, and trusting attitude toward life.