Valerie Baadh Garrett

Valerie Baadh Garrett

Under the direction of Valerie Baadh Garrett,The Movement Academy Project works to provide resources and media to support movement education, educators, and therapists. Through live courses and workshops, video and interactive media, we strive to communicate and share best practices and personal coaching for individuals, schools, and organizations.

New projects for 2013-2014 include the book launch of Games Children Sing and Play: singing movement games to play with children 3 – 5 (Hawthorn Press, 2013), Healing the Emotional Body workshops with Heather Lanier, and Movement and Learning conference for parents and educators with Edmund Knighton, PhD.

Valerie is a movement therapist, a movement consultant to schools and businesses, a personal movement coach, and an international teacher trainer.  A certified Spacial Dynamics^® Movement Educator and Registered Somatic Movement Therapist trained by Jaimen McMillan, Valerie was the Movement Education instructor at San Francisco Waldorf School from 1990 through 2006.  During these years, she initiated and taught a comprehensive developmental movement program for grades one through twelve.

On the faculty of Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, Ca, she teaches Movement for the Art of Teaching courses and has frequently been a guest presenter of movement workshops for the Spacial Dynamics Institute, California Coastal Lifeways, RSF Social Finance, and at Waldorf schools around the world (most recently in China).

Valerie served as a choreographer, dancer and movement trainer for the four international children’s Peace Festivals. These festivals took place from 2001 through 2009 in Olympia and Delphi, Greece, Quito, Ecuador, and Beijing, China, as well as the 2010 Hands in Peace Festival in Sacramento, California.

Photo of Valerie Baadh with children at the Hands in Peace Festival 2006 in China by Benno Klandt.

An invitation to lead movement in a Stanford University course on mobility for seniors led to the founding of Agile Aging LLC, a unique movement program designed to maintain mobility and prevent falls. A pilot program for the City of Brisbane, CA has proved immensely popular. Agile Aging is developing mobility programs for both seniors in assisted living facilities and for their eldercare workers. Valerie has twice been a guest presenter for CALA, the California Assisted Living Association. Read more on our Agile Aging website. To take a peek at this class, watch an interview with Valerie, recorded December, 2008.

With her husband and creative partner, theater designer Michael Garrett, Valerie published The Adventures of Uffe the Gnome, an illustrated book of movement imagery for children, and with Joan Carr Shimer Games Children Sing and Play (Hawthorn Press, 2013), a collection of movement games for adults to play with young children, as well as Dance As Movement History (AWSNA, 2001).

Valerie is affiliated with Spacial Dynamics Institute, Fourfold Healing Clinic, City of Brisbane, and is a performing member of the nation’s foremost vintage ballroom ensemble, The Academy of Danse Libre.