Emilie Conrad is the pioneer and founder of Continuum movement, a world-renowned self-discovery and movement method based on her insight that we find within our bodies an expression of our profound rapport with our environment, a rapport that is revealed and can be explored through movement. The principles of Conrad’s Continuum movement are incorporated by an international audience of professionals in such fields as Rolfing, physical therapy, psychoneuroimmunology, craniosacral therapy, dance, yoga, therapeutic massage, and physical fitness.
Emilie Conrad was born and raised in New York City, where she studied ballet and primitive dance. Her early influences were Sevilla Fort, Katherine Dunham, and Pearl Primus. She spent five years as a choreographer with a folklore company in Haiti furthering her interest in primitive dance. Her love for primitive movement helped her to discover the essential, primary movements common to all life forms that lie beneath cultural influence. Conrad is interested in our biological legacy, not as creatures upright and apart, but as integral to the swell of creation in which all life is in subtle biomorphic “play,” resilient, dissolving, and shaping itself anew.
From 1974 to 1979, Conrad was the movement specialist in a research study conducted by Dr. Valerie Hunt at UCLA. This groundbreaking study demonstrated that fluid, primary movement is essential in our ability to initiate new neural pathways. This movement has a potential to create a complex intrinsic environment that can affect disease processes as well as mediate aging. In 1974, Conrad began developing a pioneering protocol for spinal cord injury, and her further innovations in the development of Continuum movement have had profound influence in the fields of somatics, movement education, and physical fitness.
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