Joy Booster Workout

Selen Yilmaz is the founder of Joimove, international author, speaker, former academic and professional ballerina.

She holds a Classical Ballet BA (Hons), an Arts Management MA (Hons). She has also completed her international studies on anatomy, music and dance pedagogy, teaching and babywearing. With 25 years of experience performing and teaching Ballet, Modern Dance, Latin, and Argentine Tango Selen’s students have been accepted to the wo...

Selen Yilmaz is the founder of Joimove, international author, speaker, former academic and professional ballerina.

She holds a Classical Ballet BA (Hons), an Arts Management MA (Hons). She has also completed her international studies on anatomy, music and dance pedagogy, teaching and babywearing. With 25 years of experience performing and teaching Ballet, Modern Dance, Latin, and Argentine Tango Selen’s students have been accepted to the world’s leading schools and companies.

Besides her performing arts career Selen has developed her knowledge of health, well-being, and has utilised remedial dance techniques to work with people of all ages and abilities. She has initiated social responsibility projects for children with special needs and adults with disabilities and care homes.

Selen Yilmaz travels the world, meeting with individuals to share her unique techniques and teachings of joy and movement, holds live and online seminars, talks, lectures, and is happily leading the growing family that makes up the Joimove International Community on 4 continents.

CREATING JOIMOVE:

Selen moved from Istanbul to Glasgow with her 3 month-old baby girl in 2012. As an expat mother, ballet teacher and babywearer she started parent and baby dance classes. Her classes reached 600 families in Scotland within the first 6 months and led her to establish the phenomenal babywearing dance movement with her own baby: Dance with Babies. Inspired by growing demand in her movement, she worked with health, babywearing, and education professionals and developed a safest babywearing dance program and instructor training module which became a leader in the world.

Following her Dance with Babies movement she developed series of programs for toddlers, families, teens, parents, adults and elderly in a multi-cultural, international network. With wonderful team members that has transformed into the global brand and community, JOIMOVE International.

In 2016 Selen co-founded the first International Family Dance Day (IFDD) to spread the beauty of family dancing together with babywearing dance leaders around the world.

Selen has two books. Dance with Babies: The Babywearing Dance Book co-authored with Paula Dumas and team of Joimove experts. The Dance of My Life: Joyful Decision Making to Come Over Life’s Challenges.

Selen lives with her daughter Lydia in Glasgow who is also an author with a kind heart. Her joyful book “I Like To Go to The Hospital” is a collection of Lydia’s bright drawings and thoughts from her journal of “funny things” which she started on her cancer ward at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow, Scotland. She says “Parents should be funny and children shouldn’t be afraid of hospitals. Because…” and she is very excited sharing her words and joyful drawings with children around the world and helping them to feel better!