Rewiring the Brain for More Freedom of Movement

Presenter: Denise Skinner, RN, ABMNMP

Class Format: In-person, experiential

About the Class: Don’t we all want more freedom?

This presentation explores how targeted, awareness-based movement supports neuroplastic change, leading to greater freedom in movement, perception, and habitual patterns of thought and belief. Drawing from core principles of NeuroMovement®, Denise will highlight the conditions that support lasting nervous system change, including novelty, variation, attention, and reduced effort.

Participants will engage in gentle, experiential movement designed to clarify the relationship between the nervous system and movement patterns. While manual input can provide valuable information to the nervous system, lasting change ultimately depends on the brain’s ability to integrate sensation with self-generated movement. Movement becomes the bridge between what the nervous system receives through touch and what it learns to organize, integrate, and sustain beyond the treatment table.

Through slow, mindful movement, and simple movement sequences influenced by conscious dance, participants will experience how movement can deepen sensory awareness, refine motor organization, and expand functional options. These approaches offer manual therapists additional tools for supporting integration, carryover, and self-regulation beyond the treatment table.

The intention of this presentation is to offer a practical, embodied understanding of how movement-based learning can enhance manual therapy outcomes and support greater ease, adaptability, and freedom in the body.

What to Bring: Comfortable clothes, Yoga mat WITH a blanket (to slide feet easier). If you only have a blanket that is fine. Some small rolled up towel for your head. (possibly for under knees if you need as well).

About the Presenter: Denise is a longtime community Registered Nurse with over 30 years of experience and a deep fascination with the human body and its capacity for healing and adaptation. Her clinical background, combined with a growing curiosity about how the nervous system shapes movement, pain, and recovery, led her to explore more holistic and body-based approaches to healing.

In 2015, Denise began her professional training as an Anat Baniel NeuroMovement® Practitioner, completing her certification in 2019. Since then, she has worked primarily with adults experiencing chronic pain, limited movement, and long-standing physical restrictions. Her work focuses on supporting improved function and ease through gentle, awareness-based movement and the principles of neuroplasticity.

Alongside her clinical and neuro-based work, Denise has a strong passion for movement and dance as pathways to embodied awareness and emotional integration. This led her to complete teacher training in Azul Conscious Movement in 2023. She currently teaches local, in-person classes with the Bellingham Embodiment Collective, guiding participants through music-led movement journeys that invite deeper connection to the body. Through these experiences, participants are supported in sensing, expressing, and releasing emotional patterns held within the body, using movement and dance as tools for regulation, exploration, and transformation.

Denise’s work weaves together her medical background, neuro-based movement training, and embodied dance practice to support greater ease, presence, and resilience in the body.

Learn more about Denise's work HERE