Bonding – Babies Project

Guiding Principles: Safety, Orientation, Comfort, Bonding and Curiosity

This is the first of four in a series of companion articles and recorded zoom sessions. It is part of our Preparing for Caring Project to build awareness and educate about the importance of handling skills in caring for a baby. Read more about how these ideas play out in practical suggestions.

We have built our work at Babies Project around the progressive states of safety, orientation, comfort, bonding and curiosity. While it is similar to Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs”, this layering of ideas comes out of a Body-Mind Centering® approach to developmental movement.*

Watch a recorded Zoom session

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Our Vision, Mission and Values

Our Vision

To create a world where babies and adults of all ages get the touch, support and movement they need to thrive.

Our Mission

To nurture resilience, healthy interdependence and connection by educating about touch, handling and movement.

We serve babies of all ages: infants, toddlers, parents, caregivers, adults and elders.

We do this by using principles of Body-Mind Centering to support each person’s developmental process of learning, exploration, change and growth. We offer classes and workshops, training for professional caregivers, and writings about our ideas and work.

Our Values

Our core values are AGENCY, COMFORT, CURIOSITY … Read more

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Our Principles

We believe:

Babies come in as whole people, not as blank slates. Babies are fully and intensely immersed in becoming themselves – always whole, and always changing.

A baby’s experience is real and valid, though it might not be comprehensible to us. We can offer comfort without denying their experience, or our own. We can acknowledge and validate their feelings and emotions while also saying “no” to particular behavior.

Babies learn best when they’re led by their curiosity – which comes from a sense of safety and comfort. We are a baby’s environment when we hold and handle them, and … Read more

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Our Values (the long form)

At Babies Project, the principles we teach, play, facilitate, explore and live from arise from our core values of AGENCY, COMFORT, CURIOSITY and MOVEMENT. We believe these values are embedded in developmental movement, and they can guide us to be more responsible, resilient, interdependent, self-regulating and relational.

How do we raise children (of all genders) to respect themselves and others?
How can we model a way of being in the world that encourages self-awareness and awareness of others?
As caregivers, how can we re-pattern what we were taught and no longer value, and find a different way

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Developmental Movement for Babies & Toddlers: A Body-Mind Centering® Approach

The study of developmental movement is the study of how we learn to move in our first years of life. In Body-Mind Centering®, we specifically study the basic movement patterns, reflexive pathways and integration of our senses, as well as the progressive layering of rhythms, experiences and relationships that help an infant find a sense of self, integration and ease.

All of the sessions we offer for babies and toddlers are ‘infant-centered’ and ‘baby-led.’ This means that we engage with babies at their own level of perceptual awareness, and respect their rhythms of attention and rest.

We … Read more

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