“Jamie McHugh is not adequately nor accurately described by words like dancer or movement therapist - he is much more for which there are no good words. Transformative artist may approach his ability to utilize the non-verbal (movement, vocalization, drawing) not only expressively but also conjointly with the psychological/ insightful to promote a healing integration of awareness.”

George F. Solomon, M.D., Psychiatry and Biobehavioral
Sciences, UCLA

About Jamie

	More about Jamie: A personal journey to somatic expression

Jamie McHugh, RMT is a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist (ISMETA), educator, writer and community activist based in San Francisco. He has been teaching movement-based work for the past 25 years. Jamie has developed Somatic Expression, an innovative approach to the body synthesizing elements from both the somatic and expressive arts. Jamie teaches Somatic Expression throughout the United States and Europe.

From 1982 - 86, Jamie was a National Endowment for the Arts Artist-in-Residence and director of children’s dance theater in Wisconsin. He left the performance world in 1986 to apprentice with dance pioneer Anna Halprin at Tamalpa Institute in San Francisco. With Anna, he discovered movement as a healing and transformative somatic art. Jamie has also studied Alexander Technique with Marjorie Barstow, Body-Mind Centering with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Continuum with Emilie Conrad, Insight Meditation with Steven Levine, Zero Balancing with Fritz Smith, and is an ongoing student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh of Plum Village.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Jamie has been on faculty at Tamalpa Institute since 1988 and at John F. Kennedy University since 1991. He has been an annual presenter for the Swiss AIDS Federation since 1995. He has also been affiliated with the Institute for Health and Healing, and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

Jamie has been published in various periodicals, such as Contact Quarterly, Yogi Times and the Monthly Aspectarian. His oral history was documented by the Legacy Project and is housed at the San Francisco Performing Arts Library. Jamie is currently completing work on his first book, "Restoring Original Grace: Movement as Medicine."

See "A Personal Journey to Somatic Expression" for more about Jamie McHugh and the development of his work.

Jamie McHugh.
Photo by Rick Chapman.