Bonnie Morrissey

Bonnie Morrissey first met and studied with Janet Adler in 1981. Throughout the years, Janet has offered consistent presence as her teacher and mentor, as Bonnie practiced the Discipline of Authentic Movement in groups, solo retreats, and supervision of her own teaching practice. Bonnie is deeply grateful for her experience of the unlimited potential of the practice of the discipline, which continues to guide and orient her personal and professional development.

Bonnie was a faculty member at Burlington College 1982-2000, where she taught Authentic Movement, psychology, and movement courses, and assisted students in designing independent learning programs. As a member of the Board of Directors, Bonnie helped orient curriculum towards a transpersonal psychology program honoring embodied awareness and spirituality.

From 1982 through 1990, Bonnie founded and directed The Center for Therapy and the Arts, a studio for therapists and artists to practice, collaborate, and perform. In 1999, she co-founded CornerStone Psychotherapy, a private practice offering outpatient psychotherapy.

Bonnie teaches ongoing groups in the Discipline of Authentic Movement in Vermont, and retreats in the USA and Canada. As a faculty member of Circles of Four, she is available as Primary, Retreat, or Supervision teacher. Her teaching practice is grounded in 40 years of experience as a licensed clinical psychologist offering psychodynamic depth therapy.

In her teaching and psychotherapy practices, Bonnie aspires to foster inner qualities of presence through relational inquiry. She is deeply interested in the cultivation of intuitive knowing, and in the arising of words as a manifestation of emergent consciousness. Her poetry has been published in journals nationally. Whether in stillness or moving, whether listening, speaking or writing, Bonnie longs to participate in the development of a more clear and compassionate Witness Consciousness in our world. Currently, Bonnie is co-editing a book with the working title Intimacy in Emptiness: The Collected Writings of Janet Adler, forthcoming in 2021.

Bonnie Morrissey, M.Ed., graduated from the Dance Therapy Program at Antioch/ New England Graduate School. She engaged in post-graduate research in Consciousness Studies with Stanley Krippner at Saybrook Institute. Her essay “Umbanda Ceremonies and Mediumship in Brazil” is a cross-cultural study of spirit-based healing using dance and mediumship techniques, published in Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy (1990). Bonnie’s essay “Authentic Movement and Embodied Consciousness: Deconstructing the Hierarchies that Sustain Oppression and Domination in Human and Nonhuman Animal Life”, is published in ReVision: A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation (2006).