“Weakness, inflexibility, and lack of coordination are often not due to structural or muscular problems but caused by a lack of process. When that process is actualized, we experience strength, flexibility, and ease in our movement and our mind. The Basic Neurocellular Patterns are an exploration of that process.” – Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
The Basic Neurocellular Patterns (BNP) form the underlying words and phrases in the language of human movement. They have a global influence on our physical, perceptual, emotional, and cognitive functioning. The BNP shape how we bond, defend, learn, organize, and sequence information, and how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world. Done in sequences, they can also form the basis for a deep and ongoing personal movement practice.
Although the BNP normally emerge and ideally integrate throughout infancy, revisiting these patterns and exploring them as adults can be eye-opening, transformational, and life changing. The Basic Neurocellular Patterns can be used as the foundation for a personal movement practice and can be applied to:
- dance
- yoga
- athletics and martial arts
- infant and child development
- occupational and physical therapy
- somatic movement practices
- somatic psychology
This book includes the following:
- Parallels between animal movement and infant developmental movement
- Progression of development from internal movement to external movement and locomotion
- Exquisite drawings to help you get a feeling for the patterns
- Step-by-step exercises to guide your exploration of the patterns
- How to use the vertebrate patterns as a framework for your personal movement practice
- Applications to yoga, dance, sports, music, vision, touch, teaching, aging, psychophysical processing, meditation, and prayer
With this book as a guide, Bonnie invites you to directly experience, embody, and integrate your own developmental movement patterns. In doing so, you can come to know and use this work in deep and meaningful ways with yourself and with others.
First Edition, 2018.
Paperback: 430 pages, 400+ illustrations, 80 explorations
eBook: EPUB format