What to Expect: The 250 Hr Certificate Program

The 250 hour ASMP program consists of personal and professional work in a group framework. The personal perspective allows students to be the subject matter that they will learn and apply foundations tools for working with others. Our philosophy here is that a person can’t know the professional content unless they have worked with it personally.

A particular focus is helping students understand the credentialing route and its role in helping students take their Expressive Arts skills into various professional settings.

The training covers the exploration of one’s personal, professional and collective development through the lens of the early years of learning as the foundation for one’s professional development. Students will be able integrate their learnings as a professional and personal practice by:

• Using the principles and philosophy in early childhood development as a foundational understanding in human development;

• Exploring the psycho-physical relationship to self, others and nature;

• Applying non-verbal approaches to communication and exploring how Expressive Arts and somatic experiences enhance connections between all people;

• Introducing movement-centered Expressive Arts practices in: healing, creativity, learning and transformation;

• Applying strategies and practices throughout the program to gain understanding of how the concepts of Exploring the Art of Learning and how that practice can become a life-long process of embodied development.

This training lays the foundation for a professional model of an Embodied Expressive Arts practice. It covers the art, science and psychology of movement as experienced by students using Expressive Arts modalities.

The student is primary subject matter. Their study of anatomical and kinetic concepts will result in an expansion of their expressive range. During the program students will be learn to identify and confront important aspects of their personal learning patterns on a physical, emotional and mental level.

By applying these practices students will create space for individual growth, professional integration and healing. Students will acquire foundational skills for working with others: observation, witnessing, reflection and co-creative collaboration. This experiential pathway prepares students with new tools and personal and professional knowledge –using what they already know personally and making use of their gifts. Our intention to incorporate a personal practice is so that they can move along the experiential pathway with an embodied awareness which ensures their ability to sustain their work and balance their needs for ongoing personal and professional development. We don’t live one way all through our lives, we are continuously evolving, thus human development is central to our program’s focus.

Program Goals:

Students will understand parts of the body in isolation and in combinations that articulate function and movement patterns and extend into movement behaviors. Students will create a foundation for understanding:

• General movement principals

• Movement observation and analysis

• Perceptual and motor development

• Neuromuscular, skeletal, and spatial awareness

• Efficient alignment

• Procedural learning based on congenital influences and prior and future choices about movement and its interplay on a physical, emotional, psychological/mental levels.

Students will gain facilitation skills through a balanced combination of touch, movement, and verbal guidance. These include:

• Harmlessness - physical approaches to guiding with non-intrusive touch;

• Verbal skills to guide movement explorations (cueing, use of metaphor);

• Learning to analyze/interpret movement using specific vocabularies of space, time and energy and quality of movement.

High-level Learning Topics:

• Confidentiality and Ethics

• Early years of learning and development

• Early years and how they intersect with individual creativity and the arts

• Expressive Arts and holistic approaches to healing throughout history/culture

• Personal mythology: Definition and application to Expressive Arts

• Primary/primitive movement reflexes, kinesthetic empathy and attunement

• Guided Reflections in Nature (GRIN). Using biology and metaphor in nature; experiencing how nature informs, reflects and teaches us about intersection of life, nature and art.

Body Focus Content:

• Efficiency and fluency in movement

• Tone

• Coordination

• Mechanical demands such as effort and weight

• Functional and practical considerations in ROM (range of movement) .