Did you know that babies speak to us right from the beginning? They tell us how they are feeling through their facial expressions and how they move their whole body. They first learn about the world around them by exploring their bodies moving alone and with others. And our nonverbal responses tell the baby how we are feeling too: in fact, how we respond to them plays a significant role in their growing emotional and social development.
In this workshop, Dr. Suzi Tortora introduces her Embodied Parenting method. Based on dance/movement therapy principles and infant mental health, Embodied Parenting teaches parents and professionals how to attune to, engage and support the baby’s self-regulatory capacity and the co-regulatory relationship using a nine-step process called Lullaby Circles. Participants will learn how to understand the nonverbal cues expressed by infants and young children to create a dancing dialogue with baby using play, songs, dance, movement and breathing activities to enrich the parent-baby, body-to-body connection and enhance and strengthen the attachment relationship. These activities can be used with families or in groups and in dyadic and individual therapeutic, hospital, preventative, and childcare settings.
This event is presented by the National Centre for Dance Therapy and supported by the RBC Foundation. It is dedicated to all the dance professionals and health care professionals working with babies and families or to the parents who wish to better understand their baby’s needs.
We are only accepting a small number of participants. Please reserve your spot below and, if you cannot make it, let us know in advance, so we can free your space for someone on the waiting list.
Dr. Suzi Tortora has a full-time private practice in Cold Spring, NY, specializing in parent-infant/child and family therapy, trauma and medical illness. She is the International Medical Creative Arts Spokesperson for the Andréa Rizzo Foundation, having created and continuing to be the senior dance/movement therapist for pediatric patients at Integrative Medicine Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, NYC, since 2003. She received the 2010 Marian Chace Distinguished Dance Therapist award from the American Dance Therapy Association. She teaches in Europe, South America, New Zealand, Israel and Asia; holds faculty positions in the USA, The Netherlands, Czech Republic, Argentina and China; offers the Ways of Seeing International Webinar Training Program for dance/movement therapists and allied professionals; has published numerous papers about her work; and her book, The Dancing Dialogue: Using the Communicative Power of Movement With Young Children is used extensively in dance/movement therapy training programs internationally.
