Why Does Dance Therapy Feel So Different?

Somatic Therapy Francisco—Observations About Dance Therapy

As a board-certified dance therapist and someone who has worked in a variety of psychiatric settings over the years, I observed firsthand how people respond to the treatment modality of dance therapy. Often responses vary based on individual preferences, diagnoses, and whether someone is in group or individual therapy, etc.

For instance, often in psychiatric hospitals, many clients, due to their diagnoses, are less inhibited about moving in front of other people. The lack of inhibition means that they may be more open to moving and thus the benefits than dance therapy provides.

When working at the men’s psychiatric hospital on prison grounds, surprisingly, I found the men open to dance therapy groups after I built a certain rapport and trust with them. Although not 100% of the patients wanted to move, especially together and in a group, the vast majority were willing to see what benefits dance therapy offered. Their willingness to try dance therapy and to trust, even in the harshest of settings, allowed them to experience emotions and cope in ways that they otherwise would not have been able to access with traditional talk therapy.

However, my experience with dance therapy in private practice tends to fall into two categories. I often receive two groups of clients: 1) clients that are dancers and already know the healing potential that movement and especially dance offers and 2) people that tried other therapy modalities or are curious about dance therapy but do not have a dance background. For this second group, dance therapy can prove a bit mystifying and even a slightly frustrating.

Here are some of the reasons why dance therapy is different and why you should give it a chance.

1) Dance Therapy Requires Trusting Your Body

Our whole lives, in Western culture especially, we are taught to use our minds. The mind is viewed as superior to the body and we should make calm, logical decisions with our brains and ignore everything else. Our bodies are meant to be tamed, to look and perform a certain way; We view bodies as objects that we must have complete mastery over at all times—or at least that has been the messaging since the Enlightenment era. Though popular culture may be shifting to acknowledge the wisdom the body holds, many of us have a hard time trusting our bodies. They communicate emotion and intuition, which traditionally have been seen as less than the logical, practical thinking brain. They may not look or act perfectly or reliably. Dance therapy requires the participant to take a leap and TRUST. Even if you don’t know why you are moving a certain way or how to move a certain way, dance therapy asks that you trust what your body knows and that it is moving in a way that contains wisdom.

2) Dance Therapy Believes There is Meaning In Movement

If we consider how much of our communication is non-verbal, we already know that there is meaning in movement. There is a whole field of non-verbal communication—studies, research, etc. and dance therapy draws from some of these communication fields to extrapolate on what movement might mean. Rather than assuming what we say is more valuable than what we express though movement, dance therapy weighs both verbal and non-verbal expression. A dance therapist, who is trained in movement observation, may see something in movement and bring it to the attention of the client. The dance therapist then checks in with the client about the accuracy of her observation and together they make meaning from movement. Dance therapist also may suggest movements as ways to elicit new feelings and thoughts. . .changing how we move changes how we feel and think and thus how we relate to our world.

3) Dance Therapy Requires Drawing Attention to What We Do Unconsciously.

Dance therapy has us observe our movement and how we move, which is not often something that we do. We bring how we move into conscious awareness and also look at the why of movement. Take a simple example. . .brushing your hair. How do you brush your hair? Is it fast or slow? Which hand do you use? Does how you brush your hair change if you are in a hurry? If someone else is in the room? A simple act that we do every day can be broken down into a series of movements, each movement providing us with more information. Although the example of brushing hair is not a meaningful one, when seen through a dance therapy lens it offers us a chance to examine our movement patterns. We believe as dance therapists that how we move reflects how we feel and how we cope with the world. If we alter these movement patterns we can improve how we deal with the world and thus change our lives.

4) For Those Completely New To Dance Therapy, Dance Therapy May Require TIME.

The reason that dance therapy may require time for the client to adjust is twofold: 1) The therapist is asking the client to be vulnerable moving with them and being observed moving. For many people, that is not something that they do every day. The client may need to learn to trust the therapist in order to even START moving in front of them and thus begin their healing journey. 2) The client is taking something they do every day, moving, and learning to relate to it in a therapeutic way. Using movement for healing and not just utility may be a challenge for those that have never done it. For example, if you learned a new language like French only at work. You would use French for work purposes but never expand your vocabulary and repertoire. However, say you met and married a French speaker, all of the sudden you would find yourself using French in a completely different way than you ever had before. The same is true for movement. We all use movement everyday without thinking twice about it—dance therapy simply asks us to use movement for healing purposes rather than to simply get through our lives.

If you are open to new experiences and willing to be patient with yourself, dance therapy can allow you to develop a more profound relationship to your emotions, your body, your spirit, and your life! If you have questions about dance therapy please contact me at lisa@lisamanca.com. I am happy to help you find out if dance therapy is right for you!