What is Dance/Movement Therapy?
The American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA) defines Dance/Movement Therapy as “the psychotherapeutic use of movement to promote emotional, social, cognitive, and physical integration of the individual, for the purpose of improving health and well-being… It is a holistic approach to healing, based on the empirically supported assertion that mind, body, and spirit are inseparable and interconnected…”
How I Use Dance/Movement Therapy in Session
My goal for utilizing Dance/Movement Therapy techniques in therapy sessions is to help my clients cultivate a healthy relationship with their body so they can see their body as a tool and a supportive resource rather than a source of distress. I often utilize different body-based theories and methods to help us anchor into concrete information about the anatomy of the body and how this contributes to, affects, or triggers more abstract experiences or concepts such as symptoms of mental health/behavioral health conditions. With this information, we can then utilize our bodies as a partner in the healing process and identify short-term and long-term interventions to help manage the symptoms that create distress.
Use of Dance/Movement Therapy is not the same thing as a dance class.
Dance/Movement Therapy can be used with people of any age and any ability status
You do not need a history of dance, or any other movement experience, in order to participate in Dance/Movement Therapy
Use of Dance/Movement Therapy techniques as part of your therapeutic work with me is VOLUNTARY and available to you if you are open to it.
“To me, the body says what words cannot. ”
· Use of Dance/Movement Therapy does NOT mean I will make you “Dance”
· Use of Dance/Movement Therapy is NOT a dance class
Our bodies communicate with us, as well as communicate with others (i.e. body language). While we can manipulate the words that we speak, we cannot manipulate our body language. Our body communicates with us to cue us to danger or safety, comfort or discomfort, various emotional reactions to our environment, as well as to help us manage our basic physiological needs (food, water, temperature, elimination, etc.). I operate from a therapeutic perspective that values our body’s communication as a way to sustain recovery and encourage techniques to help my clients re-connect with their bodies as a way to not only restore balance in the self, but as a form of relapse prevention as well. Our bodies cue us to warning signs of relapse and it is one of my goals to help my clients attune to their body’s messages.
