Christina Bernal has lived a life more fascinating than fiction. When she was 14, she became the youngest dancer to join the San Francisco Ballet Company. Then at 18, she entered the Society of the Sacred Heart to live a contemplative life as a nun. She thought she would never dance again but she was allowed to interpret the Psalms in dance and danced the first Mass at the 1968 National Theology Convention in San Francisco. Time Magazine covered this event with an article titled The Dancing Nun.

After seven years, Christina left the convent when post-Vatican II eliminated semi-cloistered orders. She was invited by Lew Christensen, then Director of the San Francisco Ballet, to “come back home” where she continued her dance career and began teaching. It was at SFB that she met and married a well-known ballet dancer, Laurence Matthews. Christina and Laurence moved to New York City where Christina taught dance for 22 years and began her specialty working with injured dancers including those from Martha Graham and Paul Taylor Dance Companies, Dance Theater of Harlem, New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre. She developed The Bernal Method which instructs dancers how the body works and the alignment that prevents injuries from occurring. She is living proof that her Method works – at age 62, she continues to dance and has never been injured. For the fifth year, Christina will be hosting an International Dance Seminar based on her Bernal Method in Stockholm.

Christina may have left the convent in 1970 but not her faith. Now back in the Bay Area, she serves as a spiritual counselor, educator in scripture and theology and continues the Liturgical Dance Movement that she started as The Dancing Nun. Her spirituality and teaching is Wholeness, Healthfulness and Holiness. She also has a background in home birth midwifery and nutrition and runs Faith & Fashion, an eBay business, which donates a portion of all sales to those most in need in Nigeria, the Sudan and Africa. She has been filmed for a documentary which has not yet been released.