The Return to Embodiment: consciousness, culture, creativity and flourishing

What a delight to have a conversation about the divine feminine. In this conversation with Cynthia Abulafia, we explore how the body, in all its messy matter, is sacred.

We live in a time that commodifies the female body relentlessly, violence against women fills every news cycle, and the virtual world pulls us into disembodiment, disconnection from the present moment lived experience, away the particular places and people where we move and embed our lives. Even contemporary religious and spiritual practices demand the leaving the body, to transcend the flesh — but the divine feminine calls us back into here, into matter, into relationship, into the ground beneath our feet.

Because the older story, the one that stretches back to when humans organized their lives around the earth, the moon cycle, the harvest, is the feminine as divine source, as fierce, generous and enduring mother.

To honor the sacred feminine — which entwines with the mystery of life itself — is to invoke the goddess: to invite voice into spaces that have been silenced, to step forth to transform spaces that have been inhospitable, and to remind us of what has been buried but never lost.

May we have more and more conversations and dances and songs along these lines.

In this conversation, I am speaking with Amelia Burns. I found Amelia through her masters thesis article, Embodiment and embedment: integrating dance/movement therapy, body psychotherapy, and ecopsychologyAs a body worker, a dancer and a somatic therapist/dance therapist, Amelia has gathered threads of a myriad different experiences and inspirations to create a tapestry of her work exploring embodiment in relationship with onself, others, and the more than human world.

"In writing and reflecting on the themes of embodiment in my life, I feel inspired and excited about continuing to follow the embodied threads of deep listening and embodied conversing through attuning with my body, with others, and with the more-than-human world. Improvisational dance skills of embodyingly following the yes’s have long influenced my ways of being, and I’m sure will persist in guiding me in the future as I cultivate more and more embodied presence in my life and work." ~Amelia Burns

For more information on Amelia's work and writings, visit: https://movingstillnesshealing.com

In this conversation Kristen Mennona is the guest host of the Return to Embodiment Podcast. Kristen interviews Rachel Lewis-Marlow, a somatically integrative psychotherapist dually licensed in counseling and therapeutic massage and bodywork. She is a Certified Advanced Practitioner in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and has advanced training and over twenty five years experience in diverse somatic therapies. Rachel developed a protocol called Embodied Recovery for Eating Disorders as a way to enhance the effectiveness of current best practices in eating disorder treatment.

The conversation is insightful, nuanced and passionate, exploring the connections between attachment, developmental reflects, nourishment and recovery. I am so delighted to share it with you.

Kristen Mennona is a dance therapist, author, speaker and owner of Nurture Family Counseling LLC. Kristen is a licensed professional counselor, a board certified dance/movement therapist, a certified eating disorder specialist (CEDS), a certified specialist in OCD and a yoga instructor.  She has 20 years experience in the counseling field and specializes in the treatment of anxiety-based disorders, life transitions and grief. She is the author of the book titled, Body As Nature, a workbook designed to guide the reader home to the body.

In this conversation, I speak with Jenny Macke about the ways in which dance practice supports how we show up in our lives, relationships and the broader world. We examine some of Jenny's origins and inspirations, and her intentions in facilitation of conscious dance through open floor theories and her spacious capacity for presence with what is.

For more information about Jenny, her facilitation and her educational opportunities, visit https://www.jennymacke.com/ and follow her on instagram at jennymackedance.

In this conversation, I am speaking with Dr. Suzi Tortora, Ed.D, BC-DMT LCAT LMHC CMA, NCC who is a dance/ movement psychotherapist, mental health counselor, author and educator.

Dr. Tortora is a world-renowned specialist in the field of infant mental health, and has written two books, including Dance/Movement Therapy for Infants and Young Children with Medical Illness and The Dancing Dialogue: Using the Communicative Power of Movement with Young Children. She regularly trains, teaches and presents her work, including her two year advanced training program, Ways of Seeing method, all over the world. For more information, please visit her website:

https://www.dancingdialogue.com/

https://www.dancingdialogue.com/ways-of-seeing-international-training

In this conversation, Leslie interviews Kim about embodied speech as a practice that grounds conversation in the phenomenological experience of the body in the present moment, which tunes each of us into the truth as it arises within us and sensitizes us to the lived experience of others. We discuss the origins of this podcast, Kim's own cultural situatedness, and the applications of practices of embodiment which embed us more intimately into our relationships and into the broader world.

Kim Rothwell LCPC, NCC, LMHC, CADC, BC-DMT, GL-CMA is founder and faculty at the Embodied Education Institute of Chicago.  With a professional dance movement therapy background spanning 20 years, Kim integrates dance/movement therapy and ecological belonging, invoking the body’s wisdom and the power of creative process to cultivate individual and collective healing. Kim’s expertise includes addiction, matriscence, body empowerment and somatic countertransference.  Kim utilizes authentic movement as a primary practice of mindfulness, interpersonal connection and healing.

Leslie McCormick (Taravajri) is a licensed somatic psychotherapist, a registered dance/movement therapist, poet and ordained Dharmacharini with the Triratna Buddhist Order. To learn more about ways to connect with Leslie, visit: tucsonsomaticpsychotherapy.com

Elissaveta Iordanova, M.S., MFA, MA is New York State licensed creative arts therapist, and American Dance Therapy Association Board-Certified dance/movement therapist, and ADTA member. She obtained her clinical professional experience as a dance/movement therapist at Maimonides Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry, NY.

Elissaveta opened her full time private practice Inspired Creative Arts Therapy in 2020. https://inspiredcreativeartstherapy.squarespace.com/

With her extensive experience in both traditional, and modern dance, she bridges Eastern and Western aesthetics and practices. She has been a returning presenter at ADTA conferences, as well as DMT student supervisor. Elissaveta also provides training of people who teach movement and exercise for  senior population to apply mental health component and awareness in their classes. 

Elissaveta leads her own dance company ELEA GORANA DANCE COLLECTIVE in NYC and received numerous grants for her creative work. https://goranadance.com/ https://www.facebook.com/GORANADANCE

In the past 6 years she has been learning and practicing Argentinian Tango, and uses walking and weight shifts in her therapy work with partners. She initiated and co-hosts monthly social tango event. 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/943881446772033

In this conversation, I am speaking with Melanie Cooper Pennington. We talk about her own fraught experience of embodiment, how art has allowed her to move pain outside of her body, and how her love of bodies has propelled her sculpture.

Melanie Cooper Pennington is an interdisciplinary artist living in Bloomington, Indiana. Pennington recently had solo exhibitions at the I Fell Gallery, (Bloomington, IN), International Center for the Arts, (Monte Castello, Italy) New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art, (New Harmony, IN) and at Artlink Contemporary (Fort Wayne, IN) and was featured in group shows at Distortion Gallery(Beacon NY), sUgAr Gallery at the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR), ACRE Projects (Chicago, IL), and Manifest Gallery (Cincinnati, OH). She has presented public art projects at Indiana University (Bloomington, IN), Chicago Park District (Chicago, IL), and Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, IN). Pennington teaches as a Lecturer in Sculpture at The Eskenazi School of Art, Indiana University Bloomington.www.melaniepennington.com

@melaniecooperpennington 

an inquiry about how a podcast on embodiment fits within our current time. amidst wars and division. i am wondering. how do our acts of creation, of nurturing, of designing and building of gardening craft a future we long to leave our children?

Cuquis Robledo is a mental health counselor in Houston, TX with a passion for incorporating the arts, movement, and advocacy with her clients. Prior to her work as a counselor, Cuquis was a disability advocate and a documentarian, documenting the lives and empowering the voices of people of disabilities and other marginalized communities. Being disabled herself, specifically Cuquis is a Little Person, Cuquis takes pride in working on guiding those with and without disabilities to find their voices and find ways to create empowerment in their lives. Born in a Cuban-American family, Cuquis grew up learning Latin dance when she was two years old. However, a complication with a spine surgery left her almost paralyzed. Through her recovery she used Latin dance as a form of physical rehabilitation while also healing herself emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Since that moment in her life, she’s been incorporating Latin dance and dancing mindfulness in the work she does, inspiring others to find their sense of freedom, belonging and acceptance through life's circumstances using Latin dance. 

Learn more about's Cuquis story at https://cuquisrobledo.com/ and her storytelling at https://www.cuquisrobledostudios.com/ and connect with her on instagram @standtallcuquis