Founders & Teachers

CO-FOUNDER Amy Matthews

Amy Matthews, CMA, IDME, BMC Teacher, RSMT/RSME, has been teaching movement since 1994. She is a Certified Laban Movement Analyst, a Body-Mind Centering® Teacher, an Infant Developmental Movement Educator, and a yoga therapist and yoga teacher.

Amy is the co-founder and co-director of Babies Project with Sarah Barnaby. Previously she was a director of The Breathing Project, and co-authored with Leslie Kaminoff the best-selling book Yoga Anatomy (published by Human Kinetics).

Amy is a Program Director for the School for Body-Mind Centering, Educational Director of the SME Program for Moving Within in Oregon, and teaches on SME & IDME Programs in the US, Germany and Italy. She taught for four years with Bonnie Bainbridge-Cohen in Berkeley CA, and was on the faculty of the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies for 10 years.

Amy has participated several times in Gil Hedley’s dissection workshops, and has studied kinesthetic anatomy with Irene Dowd and BMC with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. She has studied yoga with a variety of teachers in the Desikachar and Iyengar traditions, and full-contact karate with Sensei Michelle Gay.

Amy is certified as a yoga teacher and as a Motherhand Shiatsu practitioner, is registered with ISMETA as a Somatic Movement Therapist and Educator and has been registered with Yoga Alliance as an E-500 RYT. She teaches embodied anatomy and movement workshops for programs in the US and internationally, and works privately integrating Laban Movement Analysis, Bartenieff Fundamentals, yoga, Body-Mind Centering and Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF).

CONTACT AMY: email | website www.embodiedasana.com

CO-FOUNDER Sarah Barnaby

Sarah is a certified BMC Teacher, Practitioner and Infant Developmental Movement Educator (IDME) through the School for Body-Mind Centering, and is registered as a Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist through ISMETA.

Sarah teaches developmental movement to babies of all ages – from infants to elders – in NYC. She is the co-founder and co-director of Babies Project with Amy Matthews.

Sarah is certified in Embodied Developmental Movement and Yoga (EDMY) and Embodied Anatomy and Yoga (EAY), Body-Mind Centering® programs that teach developmental movement principles and an embodied approach to anatomy in relation to yoga practice.

Sarah is trained in the Newborn Behavioral Observation (NBO) system, which is an infant-focused, family-centered, strength-based, relationship-building tool for a family meeting their new baby, and the practitioner meeting the family.  She is also trained as a post-partum doula.

CONTACT SARAH: email | website www.sarahbarnaby.com

Infant Development Movement Educators (IDMEs) who have volunteered and taught at Babies Project

Ellyce di Paola

Ellyce di Paola is a certified Infant Developmental Movement Educator (IDME), a registered yoga teacher and graduate of the School for Body-Mind Centering’s ® Embodied Developmental Movement and Yoga (EDMY) program. She has worked and studied alongside both of the Preparing for Caring program developers. Ellyce received her masters’ degree in developmental psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University (2014), and received post-graduate training from Drs. Christine Anzieu-Premmereur and Talia Hatzor, directors of the Parent Infant Psychotherapy program at Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, in the Tavistock model of infant observation. The Tavistock model of infant observation was developed by psychoanalysts Esther Bick and Dr. John Bowlby, who was the father of attachment theory.  It was during this training that Ellyce interned at Echo Park Early Head Start as an infant observer and parent-infant counselor. In addition, she is a registered biodynamic craniosacral therapist (RCST), trained in using light touch on the cranial bones and sacrum to enhance the movement of the cerebrospinal fluid– her practice includes mothers and infants.

CONTACT ELLYCE: email

Wendy Hambidge

Wendy is a Body-Mind Centering® Practitioner and Teacher as well as an Infant Development Movement Educator. She teaches on BMC™ Certification Programs throughout the United States and Europe and has served as Board Chair of the Body-Mind Centering Association. She has been excited to experience and support this dynamic new project of Sarah and Amy’s and take home to Portland inspiration to create a program for babies and families there.

CONTACT WENDY: email | website livinginthebody.com

Nisha Kewalramani

Nisha is certified as a Body-Mind Centering® Teacher, Practitioner and Infant Developmental Movement Educator. The School for Body-Mind Centering®, founded by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, is an experiential approach to movement and touch through body, mind and consciousness.

Nisha started her explorations of the mind at NYU, gaining a degree in Psychology. She went on to study Ayurveda with Dr. Vasant Lad at The Ayurvedic Institute in New Mexico. Her desire for hands-on training led her to get a license in massage therapy at The Swedish Institute in 2001. To deepen her practice, she also attended The Sacred Yew Institute, training in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy with Michael Dunning.

Nisha is certified in Embodied Developmental Movement and Yoga and Embodied Anatomy and Yoga, a BMC approach to developmental movement patterns and yoga. Her Infant Developmental Movement Education has been inspired by Sandra Jamrog. Her love for Embryology, as an embodiment of our wholeness, continues to deepen through Bonnie’s teachings. Bonnie has been instrumental in reawakening her to movement and touch as a means for transformation. Her journey with Body Mind Centering® has been a source of connection and ease in her life’s path.

CONTACT NISHA: email | website http://findyourcomfort.com/

Adele Loux-Turner

Adele Loux-Turner has taught yoga and movement since she moved to New York to pursue a dance career in 2001.  Although she is glad to work with anybody, she’s found her calling teaching pregnant and post-partum women.  She has supported women through their births since 2008.  As a labor doula, Adele works both individually and through the Carriage House Birth collective in Brooklyn. Adele recently took a hiatus from doula work to pursue her newest career as a mother. Her son Gerrard has accompanied Adele to her infant classes since he turned six weeks old.

Adele is certified as both an Infant Developmental Movement Educator and Somatic Movement Educator through the School for Body-Mind Centering®, through which she has worked with many inspiring teachers: including extensive study with Amy Matthews and Roxlyn Moret. She is registered as a Somatic Movement Educator through ISMETA. A yoga instructor certified through Integral Yoga Institute, Adele holds additional credentials in baby-and-me yoga and yoga for labor. She is grateful to Beth Donnelly Caban, Jyothi Larson and Lara Kohn Thompson for sharing their knowledge of all things birth and babies. Adele is certified as a prenatal yoga instructor through New York Yoga and as a children’s yoga instructor through Karma Kids. She has a BFA in dance performance from Purchase Conservatory of Dance, where she met her long-time ballet teacher Janet Panetta, who has continued to be an influence on Adele’s approach to movement and teaching.

CONTACT ADELE: email | website http://www.embodiedmother.com/

Maruma Rodríguez

Maruma is a professional registered by The International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association (ISMETA). She is certified as a Somatic Movement Educator and Infant Developmental Movement Educator (IDME) through the School for Body-Mind Centering.

She has a BFA in Performative Arts from the Central University of Venezuela. Her professional training includes studies of contemporary dance, new dance, butoh, theater, poetry and education. She is also certified as a Pilates and Esferokinesis® teacher through the CIEC (Buenos Aires).

As an artist and educator Maruma explores relationships between art, body and nature; and facilitates processes that refine sensitivity; expanding awareness and integrating attention, intention and action.

Maruma teaches developmental movement to babies, adults and pregnant women in Madrid. She also teaches BMC workshops in group classes and private sessions around Europe and Latin America.

CONTACT MARUMA: email | website marumarodriguez.wordpress.com

Lauree Wise

Lauree Wise, MSOT (’00), CMA(’85), IDME holds a Master’s of Science in Occupational Therapy from Columbia University, is a certified Laban Movement Analyst, a Body Mind Centering® Practitioner (’94) and an Infant Developmental Movement Educator, with training in Process Oriented Psychology. She maintains a practice as a pediatric occupational therapist and somatic movement educator and teaches in the Spanda® Yoga Movement Therapy training programs.

CONTACT LAUREE: email

Also Teaching at Babies Project

Elizabeth Plapinger

Elizabeth Plapinger is the director and principal teacher of Yoga for Mental Wellness (YMW) at Babies Project, which has provided low-cost or free therapeutic yoga classes for those living with mental illness in NYC since 2004. Elizabeth and her colleagues, Bess Abrahams, RYT, IMT and L. Ruth Kalvert, RYT, SME, CMT, MA, administer and teach the YMW program and provide yoga to various hospitals and community mental health programs in and around NYC. Elizabeth and her colleagues also assist yoga and mental health professionals interested in exploring yoga’s complementary role in mental health and wellness.

Elizabeth conducts weekly classes at Babies Project and at various hospitals and community mental health centers in and around NYC. She also works one-on-one with students and families, and consults with yoga teachers, researchers, mental health policy makers and clinicians about yoga’s role in mental wellness.

Elizabeth, who is also a lawyer, taught conflict resolution and problem solving at Columbia Law School, is the former director of the Public Policy Projects at the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution, and is the author of numerous policy and research studies, books and articles regarding ethics, mediation and other methods of conflict resolution. Elizabeth brings the values of procedural justice—recognizing and honoring the inherent dignity of all beings—to her yoga work. In her yoga classes, she explores how breath, movement, and awareness of the body in the present moment work together to increase our sense of wellbeing. She is honored to assist people in crisis, their families and the mental health community in discovering the vast resources of the body and mind through yoga. For more on how Elizabeth has integrated her background in law, conflict resolution and mediation with yoga, Body-Mind Centering and mental wellness, read an interview.

CONTACT ELIZABETH: email | website www.yogaformentalwellness.org

Leah Montegut

Leah Thomas Montegut is a yoga teacher/practitioner living in Brooklyn, NY. Originally from Virginia Beach, VA, she came to NYC after receiving her B.F.A. in Dance/Choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University. Shortly after moving to NYC, Leah began practicing yoga and was immediately drawn to the personal, breath-centered approach offered by her first teacher, J. Brown. In 2007, Leah completed 200 hours of advanced training in yoga anatomy at The Breathing Project (NYC), where she studied with Leslie Kaminoff and Amy Matthews. She continued her studies with J. Brown through the professional training program at Abhyasa Yoga Center (500

hours). Leah is certified to teach prenatal yoga through Integral Yoga Institute (2010), where she studied with Beth Donnelly Caban and Lara Kohn Thompson. Since 2009, Leah has been studying vedic chanting with Guta Hedewig, taught in the tradition of T. Krishnamacharya and TKV Desikachar. She continued her study of yoga anatomy through The Breathing Project’s advanced studies program. Leah has profound gratitude for the guidance and support of her teachers and is honored to share with her students the teachings she has received.

CONTACT LEAH: email | website www.yogawithleah.com