Feb. 12, 2009
An exploratory response paper on my brief personal and academic experiences with the subject of dance therapy.
“Reflections in Movement: A Synthesis of the Dance Therapy Experience”
Motion, flow, free expression and internal rhythm: all are elements of dance, an art form where the body is foremost, and the mind is second to the spirit. Yet if the mind is so far removed from this creative process, how can the concept of dance as therapy be justified? In this chasm my apprehensions bred. How could such an abstract, individual experience, be qualified as a mode of therapeutic healing, a means by which to connect? No matter how I tried to remove my head from the idea, I just couldn’t seem to become a believer.
I, however, have never been one to judge in ignorance. So I read relevant readings on the matter. Unfortunately, this only frustrated me more. In a chapter entirely dedicated to dance and movement therapy, written by Susan T. Lohman, found in the work Expressive Therapies, the multiple applications and theories of this creative form were discussed. Described as “the integration of the mind, the body, and the spirit…[in a] form of psychotherapy that utilizes movement as the medium of interaction and intervention [to promote] change,” the text details the approaches of all the movement pioneers, from Chase to Winnicott, from Jung and Whitehouse to Laban (Lohman 70). But in the motions of each I was lost. The idea of healing another through internal interpretation or synching of movements, of “meet[ing]…patients…emotionally on a nonverbal, movement level of communication,” just seemed ridiculous to me (Lohman 71). Ridiculous in the abstract sense of the term, for dance had always impressed me as the graceful positioning of the body: of jumping, leaping, and spinning. Luckily for me, though, Whitehouse herself preemptively addressed this disbelief, stressing that in the Authentic Movement approach, there are no preconceptions, and “you can only do it the way it suits your psyche” (N. Seki, 1). In short, it is all relative. “No matter what you’ve learned,” she reiterates, “all the learning has to drop away” (N. Seki, 1). And yet I still could not actively remove the ballet-school-quality of the word, dance. I was trapped by the learning and presumptions of my past. I was immovable.
Never have I encountered a concept so seemingly complex, yet simultaneously simple in idea. Dance therapy is basically founded in the subjective desire to move. All one has to do is feel the rhythms on the inside, either by choosing to follow or ignore the inner impulses down a spontaneous path, as in Authentic Movement, or by attuning to the other, mirroring their actions and creating an empathetic relationship in motion, as in Laban’s Motion Analysis.
But I knew all of that. I had read it, highlighted it, and reread it again. I understood it in theory, on paper. But I still could not feel it in my body, in my soul. I was still apprehensive. The structure and procedure seemed logical and straightforward enough, yet the actual application seemed hit or miss. It just seemed too artsy and too passionate, like it was trying too hard to make one feel good. After all, I thought, how is one person able to watch another move, and transfer their feelings onto the observed motions, and then have this result in healing? It seemed too farfetched to be considered measurable remediation. Nevertheless, it works. Or so the books said. And so, once again, I was paralyzed.
It was only in application and full-bodied experience that I began to move, so to speak. Just as they say seeing is believing, when the theories were put into practice in class, feeling became my source of belief. Truth be told, however, I brought my reservations to the first practice. I sat in the large space, body closed and internally compounded in my container. The shell of doubt in my mind, not the feeling in my core, dominated my motions as we began to move through the cognitive developmental stages of Piaget. But then the gut began to persevere. I began to feel the heaviness in my head, the internal dissatisfaction, tension and difficulty in getting up with the pelvis, when balance and gravity were forcing me down. My feelings became more connected to the experience. With this internal realization, the first in a succession of enlightening waves rushed over me.
The first ripple: warm ups are important. Not only are they clearly essential to get the body and blood flowing, preparing for dance, but there is a psychological, mental preparation dormant there too. In the motions, such as the combinations of flow, shape and effort in Laban’s Motion Analysis, or in the mirroring and transference exercise, not only were common reference points and moods created for the group, but also a personal baseline was developed. I felt my stigmas and disbelief melt away and my spirit open up to the feelings in the motions, the feelings in the subjective grace, in the jumps of the little ballet girl in my own, unique body.
After I began to warm up to the concept, both mentally and physically, the dance therapy experiment commenced. It was two particular schools of motion that struck me the most, however. The first was based on Chase’s mirroring exercise in a client-therapist dyad session. In this exercise, the warm-up had not totally washed away the vulnerability and shyness residing in my mental ego. But as my partner, Carloine, and I began to move, this disbelief dissipated, too. In fact, it was entirely replaced by a beautiful new sentiment. I started to feel the “complete attunement,” which is defined as “mutual empathy…[resulting from] a synchronization of rhythms,” characteristic of Chase’s process of “mirroring” (Lohman 72). Although there was a strange frustration and awkwardness accompanied by constant and continuous mirroring (apparent when I was the client), I felt the positive aspects of the mode too. In fact, I think that because of the anger, and thus the ineffect, I found by being solely mirrored, I approached the client-therapist exercise a bit differently.
Specifically, when I mirrored Caroline, I began with the mirroring concept, due to a lack of better things to do. After syncing our movements, however, I remembered a theory of the therapy that I had read over in the text. It was the notion that, in mirroring, or joining the other in movement, “a deep emotional acceptance and communication” is created due to the intensity of the interpersonal connection (Lohman 72). I was able, by way of association, to understand Caroline’s condition by “kinesthetic identification” and listening to my own body tell me something about hers (Lohman 72). By mimicking her, I could feel her tension and heaviness. It was from this place of understanding that I felt competent enough to show her a new mobile perspective, so to speak. For instance, I began to slowly shift her same actions into lighter, more graceful movements, in order to counterbalance the slow, almost painful, weightiness she was exhibiting. I was careful to make sure my actions were still similar to hers though, so she would not be lost and put off by something totally foreign and inaccessible to her lifestyle. From this I learned that therapy is about meeting halfway, creating a safe and delicate balance for both the therapist and client. It is about moving and listening, dually on the inside and out.
And thus we were like yin and yang, and the connection was beautiful. I only offered her new perspectives or suggested alterative ways to accomplish the movements and goals she was set on pursuing. I merely offered, I did not force or impose; she could take it or leave it. This brought up an interesting question in my mind, however. Namely, as we were moving, nonverbally connecting in a manner much higher than the physical, I began to wonder: who am I to suggest to her that what she is doing is wrong or unhealthy per say? What if she is perfectly comfortable in the heaviness and strength she is living in? It was only after we concluded with grace and ease, both exhausted from the silent exchange, that I realized that I was merely a servant. As a therapist, you don’t make judgments; rather, you only propose new perspectives and open up doors for the client. It is like a new dance hall, in which the therapist merely switches the studio lights on and offers each room to client, in which they can pick and choose the space and styles that appeal to their inner rhythm. It was in this manner that the attunement exercise grounded my belief in the dance therapies, in the universality of motion and of connective synchronization of the mind, body and heart.
However, I soon learned that there is more to dance than the balance between two spirits and the rhythms between them. For example, in another exercise in class, that of Authentic Movement, I experienced a relation which went beyond the linear. More specifically, I was subject to the mysterious collective unconscious based in the theory of Carl Jung. By following the procedures of Whitehouse, myself as the client, I was made to close my eyes, and dance according to my internal images and impulses in my body. My impulses, my internal beats. Just me: no “client” or Laban-istic archetype to hide behind. Yet, I did it. I recalled the last exercise and crippling effects of apprehension, and I just did it.
At first, I was hesitant, wary of the eyes and judgments which I felt were passing over my body. But after listening to my environment, I felt the room warm up in its own way. I could hear the motions of others, and stood up, confident in the fact that I was not alone. I then felt the urge to spin. And so I did, and it felt great. I felt my childhood return to me. I felt reconnected to my past. Every twirl was a celebratory homecoming of my “active imagination” (N. Seki 5). It was only following the exercise, in the debrief, that the theoretical truths became apparent. What I was feeling internally was the goal of authentic movement. I was moving for “the pure joy of moving,” and was thus able to “know [myself] better” (N. Seki 1, 3).
Nevertheless, there was more to it than just a personal revitalization. When my peers began to speak about the dance they had witnessed, it was clear that the whole room experienced, whether stationary or in motion, “movement in the realm of the collective unconscious [which has a] transpersonal quality, a mysterious spiritual quality that is neither personal, nor cultural in nature” (N. Seki 5). It is rather, purely universal, as Jung believes. This “transpersonal”, almost ethereal quality was manifested in the feelings of my witnesses, who stated that they, too, experienced the simple delights of childhood by merely watching me. My motions moved them in the same way that they moved me. I felt the resonance and connection which had traversed the space between us. We were all strangers, yet through nonverbal movements, we all felt the same. Body language equalized us. The collective unconscious united us. And in turn, we were all individually actualized, and I, for one, felt the internal satisfaction of being internally understood and accepted. It is thus that I realized, or rather felt, the therapeutic gratifications of dance and movement therapy once again.
Conclusively, the rhythms of dance therapy shattered the doubts in my head, replacing them with the active theories and practices of success. Though the theories seemed paradoxically complex in their childlike simplicity, an active application proved their therapeutic powers. Through attunement, mirroring, and genuine movement, I was able to warm up, and experience the processes and definitions discussed in the academic sense. It was thus that my mind, and well as my body and spirit, were able to dance with the silent partners present in the collective unconscious, in the healing process, via the motions inside. No longer was I apprehensive; I was conclusively ready to simultaneously be the rhythmic yin as well as the metrical yang, to keep moving and to keep being moved.
Bibliography
Lohman, Susan T.. “Dance/Movement Therapy.” Expressive Therapies. Ed. Cathy A. Malchiodi. New York: The Guildford Press, 2005.
N. Seki (Ed.) K. Jingu (Trans.). Introduciton to Creative Arts Therapies. Tokyo, Japan: Film Art Publishers, 2007.
—-Yasmin Ogale, Feb. 12, 2009
