Dr. Martha Eddy is an international speaker and author, master somatic movement therapist (MSMT/E), registered somatic dance educator (RSDE), and applied physiologist, with a doctorate in movement science/biobehavioral studies from Columbia University. She shares her contemplative and activating movement approaches on The Shift Network with her course “Reset Your Nervous System and Regulate Your Wellbeing With Dynamic Embodiment® Movement.”
She's an innovator dedicated to social justice, and was named the first Geraldine Ferraro Fellow of Social Justice and Movement at Marymount Manhattan College. She spent 10 years as part of the certification faculty at the School for Body-Mind Centering® and the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies. She was inspired to blend these profound disciplines into The Somatic Movement Therapy Training. Once the field of somatic movement became known, she rebranded her own work as Dynamic Embodiment® SMTT, also affiliated with the Moving On Center — Bridging Somatics With Social Change for 30 Years and Moving For Life DanceExercise for Health ®, two nonprofit organizations that she co-founded, the first with Carol Swann.
Her articles and chapters on eco-somatics, movement, the brain, social-emotional learning, and healthy living have been published in research, arts, educational literature, and the news. Martha is the author of Mindful Movement: The Evolution of the Somatic Arts and Conscious Action. The book she co-authored with Shakti Andrea Smith, A Dynamic Embodiment® Approach to the Sun Salutation, guides readers in how to balance their hormonal system through understanding the sacred use of space, vibration, and movement. She has served on numerous boards, including The Yard Choreographic Residency, the National Dance Education Organization, the Congress on Research in Dance, the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association, and the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, the last two of which she has served as president. Clearly, dance is a big part of her expression. She has been training people in her somatic approach to dance for 15 years with Certified Teachers of BodyMind Dancing around the world. Together with Moving For Life Certified Instructors and Dynamic Embodiment Practitioners, there is a robust eco-somatic, social justice, savvy group of somatic movers and shakers applying this work worldwide in hospitals, community centers, libraries, businesses, corporations, and universities.
Her work, especially the dance films and free Moving For Life wellness programs for people going through cancer, has been featured in the NY Times, on National Public Radio, and on almost every national television news network. Media coverage has also covered the healing nature of BodyMind Dancing in releasing pain, tensions, grief, loneliness, and stress and transmuting it into pleasure, joy, relief, ease, creativity, and beauty.
