Dance/Movement Therapy
Words are not always enough.
Dance/Movement Therapy, like art and music therapy, allows us to express aspects of our life journey that cannot be captured by words alone.
As defined by the American Dance Therapy Association, Dance/Movement Therapy is the psychotherapeutic use of movement as a process that furthers the emotional, social, cognitive, and physical integration of the individual.
"Do I have to dance?"
The shortest answer - no.
You will never find yourself thrust into movement forms or embodiment practices. It is completely your choice to address healing from the "mind down", the "body up", or a combination of the two.
Yet my Dance/Movement Therapy and Embodiment experience will still benefit you. Taking your non-verbal responses into consideration helps guide our verbal explorations. Often, this gets us to the heart of an issue sooner, because our bodies have intelligence that can inform the psychological healing process in countless ways.
More about Dance/Movement Therapy
Dance/Movement Therapy (DMT) is way to access and express the dance that lives "behind the eyes." It elicits internal, authentic movement that originates in our subconscious mind. This information guides intellectual understanding to create healing and integrated "bodymind" wholeness.
DMT is practice that uses our own daily movements – for example, walking – and explores how we use postural patterns to armor ourselves. Discovering how and why we use tension to "brace against the world" leads us to greater self-understanding and increases our power of conscious choice both internally and externally in each and every moment. We open to a body that is "relaxed, aligned and resilient" and are better able to respond to life’s stresses with greater health and ease.. For more than fifty years, we have pioneered the space where body and mind interact to create health or illness. Today, we are graduates of master's degree programs that integrate a dancer’s special knowledge of body and expressive spirit with healing skills of counseling, psychotherapy and rehabilitation.
Learn more about dance/movement therapy on the American Dance Therapy Association site here.
Dance/Movement Therapists are pioneers of the body-mind interface
As a Dance/Movement Therapist, I seek to understand illnesses of the mind that affect the body, and illnesses of the body that impact mental functioning and spirit. Whether the issue is will to live, a search for meaning, or the ability to feel love for life, healing means mobilizing resources from the place within where body and mind meet and are one.
Who Benefits from Dance/Movement Therapy?
A wide spectrum of people can benefit from Dance/Movement Therapies. Clients have found greater self-understanding, relief from physical and emotional pain and healing through Dance/Movement Therapy. Specific examples include:
- People who just have never felt quite at home in their bodies
- Trauma victims, be it physical and/or mental
- Children and teens with adjustment challenges
- Seniors coping with changes in their bodies and minds
- People with mental illness
- Those who have lost touch with their inner truth
In other words, when words are not enough, Dance/Movement Therapists help!
Transformation through Dance/Movement
Dance/Movement Therapies incorporate many aspects of embodiment practices into a unique whole – a whole as creative and unique as the person experiencing it. Examples include:
Natural Movement
A practice that uses our own daily movements – for example, walking – and explores how we use postural patterns to armor ourselves. Discovering how and why we use tension to “brace against the world” leads us to greater self-understanding and increases our power of conscious choice both internally and externally in each and every moment. We open to a body that is “relaxed, aligned and resilient” and are better able to respond to life’s stresses with greater health and ease.
Interally-Guided Dance
A way to access and express the dance that lives “behind the eyes.” It elicits internal, authentic movement that originates in our subconscious mind. This information guides intellectual understanding to create healing and integrated “bodymind” wholeness.