Resources & Articles
Selected Interviews and Publications
Podcast and Radio Interviews:
Interview on Earth Matters: Ecosomatics in the Anthropocene
Episode 5 - March 21, 2024
on navigating eco-grief with embodied, communal support
Jamie McHugh, MSMT http://somaticexpression.com/
In conversation with: Stefanie Cohen, RSMT Somatic Practitioner & Interdisciplinary Artist & LaUra Schmidt, Founding Director and Facilitator, Good Grief Network https://www.goodgriefnetwork.org/
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Interview on Anxiety Proof Her Podcast with Jennifer Bronsnick,
on navigating anxiety, embodiment, and belonging; March 26, 2021.
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Interview on B Intentional with Ber-Henda Williams,
​on storytelling, embodiment, and creative imagination toward healing; December 2, 2018.
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Interview with Barbra White, Body Mind Spirit Radio: Calling All Leaders and Healers; October 25, 2016:
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Publications:
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Crazy Wisdom Community Journal, Out of My Comfort Zone
Excerpt–
As a somatic therapist, I regularly walk with people to their doors of discomfort. I hold their hands as they peer into, feel into, with compassion and curiosity, what their bodies contain—the sensations, the exquisite, surprising, and unique personal images. The places so tender as to have been expertly bandaged and tucked far away. The resilience, the pleasures, and the joy.
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Not knowing, however, is up there among the universally lesser-tolerated experiences."
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From: Cohen, Stefanie, "Sometimes I Fall: The Discomfort of Asking", Crazy Wisdom Community Journal, Out of My Comfort Zone Column, Issue #84, Fall 2023, pp16-17
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Contact Quarterly
–Excerpt–
"We started our ensemble work with a practice, a question, and an invitation. We began with the intention of ultimately creating a performance piece that stemmed from our experience as parents, and we also had a deep desire to remain connected with our individual processes....
...Our question was, is there a difference between moving with whatever comes up in the moment, and moving specifically focusing on the material of our parenting as source? Often our first dances of the day were about the complex disentanglements and arrangements that had enabled us to make it to rehearsal at all. As we began to move it was invariably our children and our interactions with them that lay just beneath the surface of our skins."
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From: Christenson, Neige; Cohen, Stefanie; Hedlund, Melanie; Broadway, Gene, “They Move Through Us: Exploring pathways from parenting to dancing and back again", Contact Quarterly 26: 2, Summer/Fall 2001, pp. 74-75
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Encounters With Contact
–Excerpt–
"In university settings, as dancers slow down in eyes-closed exploration, they may learn to read and attend their own physical limits and desires--an emphasis that is still, in many ways, foreign in more traditional Dance departments."
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From: Cohen, Stefanie, “Embodied Listening: Teaching Intersections of Contact and Authentic Movement", Encounters With Contact, Edited by Ann Cooper Albright, Oberlin College & Conservatory, 2010, pp. 74-75
Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices
–Excerpt–
"Of the somatic practices I have explored over the last two decades, Authentic Movement and Contact Improvisation are the two disciplines with which I have been most engaged.
.... I have found that my colleagues, students and I have experienced enhanced feelings of both vulnerability and security. We thereby may vastly expand our possibilities with regard to the personal insights and artistic resources we may tap."
From: Cohen, Stefanie, “Sightless touch and touching witnessing: Interplays of Authentic Movement and Contact Improvisation”, Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices 2: 1, 2010, pp. 103-112
Online Resources Organizations and Journals
The word “somatic” derives from the term “soma,” which essentially means:
a body aware of itself through movement....
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Somatic movement educators and therapists work with people to support their well-being and invite them into the process of their own self-care and discovery. We help clients foster a sense of wholeness and of interconnection; of ease, presence, creativity, and vitality; and to gently re-inhabit their bodies through physical exploration.
For more information about some of the practices and influences on my work, please visit any of the following sites:
Somatic Movement Education & Therapy:
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• JDSP – Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices
Authentic Movement:
• Contemplative Dance
• Authentic Movement Wikipedia page
• Authentic Movement Facebook Group
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Integrative Somatic Parts Work/IFSSM
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Crazy Wisdom Journal – Excerpt –
Milagros: ...Stefanie, I have done a lot of work with you and have benefitted in a profound way, mostly emotionally. Are there clients for whom somatic work has really moved them beyond what they've be able to work on in more talk-only therapy?
Stefanie: .... Some clients come to the movement work from talk therapy sessions in which they have felt validated, seen, and acknowledged for the strength they've demonstrated within challenging life circumstances, but are unsure of how to proceed beyond there. Within the movement work, then, they come equipped to experiment, to play, to listen to other possibilities beyond the meanings they have made of their experiences; and to practice — quite literally, taking other kinds of stances. They then sometimes return to talk therapy with new insights from their embodied investigations....
From: Cohen, Stefanie and Paredes, Milagros, “Exploring Whole-Body Healing: A Two-Way Interview Between
Milagros Paredes and Stefanie Cohen”, Crazy Wisdom Community Journal, Vol. 55, Fall, 2013, pp. 52-58
