Dance movement therapy is one of the types of psychotherapy that uses movement as the basis for the development of a person’s physical, social and spiritual life. Dance movement therapy is applicable to deal with many problems, some of which are emotional and interpersonal conflicts, fear of failure, lack of communication skills, low self-esteem. Also, this type of therapy is applicable to help people who have experienced a severe loss of a loved one, rape, severe mental illness, chronic illness. The psychotherapist with the help of dance helps people forget about problems, relax and assert themselves. The main advantage of dance-movement therapy in comparison with other types of therapy is that it is generally accessible, since when doing this type of therapy, the emphasis is not on the quality of the movements performed, but on the subtleties of a person’s expression of his own emotions during movement, honest expression of feelings and absolute freedom of movement.
During psychotherapist sessions, patients are often unable to talk about their problem to a specialist, as a result of which the session is not useful, since the psychotherapist does not identify the problem and, therefore, cannot offer the patient ways to solve it. If the psychotherapist during the session feels that the situation has reached a dead end and it is not possible to “talk” the patient in any way, he can ask the person to perform several movements to the music. Having traced the main tendencies in the movements of the patient, the psychotherapist with a high degree of probability can tell what his problem is.
A significant contribution to the development of dance movement therapy was made by Wilhelm Reich’s «muscle shell» theory. He proved for the first time that the tightness (“muscle shell”) of a person arises in childhood itself and is directly related to the fear of being punished, misunderstood, alienated, as well as the need for a person to constantly suppress his sexual sensations. As a result, complexes and clamps accumulate in the body and can lead to various mental and physical illnesses. Wilhelm Reich, who is the founder of body psychotherapy, believed that the patient’s spontaneous body movements in combination with even measured breathing can relieve muscle tension and effectively eliminate clamps and blocks that prevent a person from living.
According to one version, the founder of dance-movement therapy as an independent type of psychotherapy is Gabriella Rott, a theater director, researcher of an innovative direction in theatrical art, a world-famous dance teacher, author of the famous “five rhythms” dance. Gabriella Rott’s contribution to the development of dance movement therapy is invaluable — it was she who came up with special exercises that allow you to successfully solve most of the psychological problems of a person with the help of movement. The main idea of the exercises is to divide the human body into seven main zones:
- Zone number 1 — head and neck;
- Zone number 2 — shoulders;
- Zone number 3 — elbow joints;
- Zone number 4 — hands;
- Zone number 5 — the pelvis and spine;
- Zone number 6 — knees;
- Zone number 7 — feet.
Now, based on this division of the body into specific zones, it is easy to identify the problem — if you feel constant tension and tightness in the head and neck, it means that the current speed of your thoughts and actions diverges from the optimal speed with which you are accustomed to think and act. Perhaps the cause of the problem lies in the overly dynamic rhythm of your life or inefficient use of your own time with the subsequent forcing of life events. One way or another, you should stick to your usual pace of life. Feeling uncomfortable in zone number 2 indicates that you have taken on more obligations than you can handle. You should reconsider your life goals and priorities, perhaps you are not doing your true calling. If you feel tightness in your elbows (zone number 3), this indicates your indecision and excessive modesty, a clamp in zone 4 indicates your lack of self-confidence, a feeling of discomfort in the spine and pelvis (zone number 5) may indicate a certain degree of sexual complex. The way a person bends the leg at the patella (zone number 6) indicates a person’s readiness for potential lifestyle changes. And finally, zone number 7 is an indicator of your ambitions, of what place in society you are striving to take. If your foot is completely in contact with the ground when walking, then you are determined to achieve all your life goals, your goals are objective and not contradictory.
Theoretical basis
Dance movement therapy is based on the recognition that the body and mind are interrelated: changes in the emotional, mental or behavioral areas cause changes in all these areas. Body and mind are seen as equal forces in integrated functioning. Dance movement therapist Berger divides psychosomatic relationships into 4 categories: muscle tension and relaxation, kinesthetics, body image, and expressive movement.
Awareness of feelings and the corresponding emotional expression involve the muscle tone of a person. People are usually not aware of their feelings if there is a high degree of bodily tension. In the process of trying to cope with stress, a person can, defending himself from fear, lose control by suppressing, repressing his feelings that exist in the body. By allowing tension to arise and keeping it in the body, one thus protects oneself from direct experience and from coming face to face with one’s conflict. For example, the degree of tension in the shoulders and arms can be unconsciously increased to the point where that part of the body becomes cut off from feelings: it becomes dissociated. With such a person, the dance therapist may choose to work with a swinging arm movement to relax the muscles associated with a particular emotional state that the patient is in denial about. By starting to work with muscle patterns that correlate with emotions, a person experiences (through the musculature) feelings, sharpened, made conscious in movement, and then recognized or clarified at a cognitive level. This connection that develops between physical action and internal emotional state is a consequence of muscle memory associated with feelings. With another client, the therapist can work with bodily sensations and translate their action in such a way that emotion and movement reinforce each other. Thus, movement becomes a direct expression of inner feelings. For clients who are more integrated, the therapist can help focus on a particular part of the body to identify what is being done on the bodily level, perhaps unconsciously, that is causing a particular emotional experience. In such a situation, the therapist can help the client verbally explore the associations, images, fantasies, or memories that arise in the mind in the process of connecting the motor response in the body with its emotional components.
Every thought, action, memory, fantasy or image causes some new muscle tension. People can be helped to discover how they change, remake, redirect, destroy or control those subtle muscle sensations that influence the experience and expression of feelings. This process is similar and corresponds to the defense mechanisms of the ego. In his work on character formation, Reich shows how an identical process becomes apparent in both the physiological and psychological realms. He’s writing:
“In melancholic or depressed patients, speech and expression are frozen, as if every movement overcomes resistance. In a manic state, on the contrary, impulses suddenly cover the whole body, the whole person. In catotonic stupor, mental and muscular rigidity are identical, and only the end of this state returns both mental and muscular mobility.
Some degree of awareness of the body is necessary to be aware of one’s own feelings. The kinesthetic process makes it possible to gain direct experience from muscular activity. Changes in body position and balance, motor coordination, and movement planning involve both the perception of external objects or events and our motor response. This kinesthetic sense, critical to the performance of daily tasks, plays a leading role in shaping our own emotional awareness and responses. There are two ways to develop emotional awareness:
First — learning the correct label or word that corresponds to a given emotional state. This learning begins in infancy and early childhood. To understand how such learning occurs, it is enough to remember how the baby is picked up and asked: “Why are you so sad?” or say, «You’re hungry, aren’t you?» Our non-verbal behavior communicates, says something. Other people recognize our experiences and put them into appropriate words to identify and later talk about them.
Second the way to develop emotional awareness is based on recognizing and interpreting the motor actions of others. In his study of how emotions communicate, Kline points out that each emotion has a specific psychological code and a characteristic brain pattern, controlled by the CNS and biologically coordinated, this process is the same in all people. In addition, the experience of different emotions and their corresponding muscular reactions is also universal, universal. Therefore, we are able to perceive and recognize the emotional states of others. Our emotional responses to other people usually come from our interpretations of the bodily actions and reactions of others, perceived, recognized and experienced by us on a kinesthetic level. Kinesthetic empathy, which is mostly unconscious, plays a role in verbal and non-verbal communication between people.
The next concept is the image of the body, it refers to the relationship of soul and body, that is, to the psychosomatic relationship. In one of his early summaries of body image, Schilder states: “Body image is the image of our own body that we draw in our head, i.e., this is how the body appears to us.” He considers the image of the body as something that is in a state of constant development or change. Movement causes changes in body image. The way body parts are connected, awareness of bodily sensations such as breathing, awareness of muscle activity are just a few examples of how kinesthetic sensations can contribute to awareness and development of body image. Mahler’s work on emotional development and «psychological birth» also supports the notion that it is necessary to recognize the self as a separate physical reality, entity, before the process of individuation can take place.
The image of ourselves that we have affects us and is influenced by all our perceptions, experiences and actions. A person who perceives himself as weak and fragile is different from one who perceives himself as strong. Just as when a child is treated like a fool, his body image will absorb his reactions to people’s impressions and his own. Schilder writes:
“The positional model of our own body is related to the positional model of the body of other people. Positional models of people are interconnected. We feel the body images of other people. Experience, the experience of one’s own body image and experience, the experience of the body of other people are closely intertwined. Just as our emotions and actions are inseparable from the image of the body, so the emotions and actions of others are inseparable from their bodies.
Concentrating in a certain way on the relationship between movement change and psychological change in dance therapy, Chase states: “Since movement affects body image and mental attitude change, if you work with the feeling of body image distortion in action, it will change your mental perception of oneself, attitude towards oneself.
The fourth area that deals with the relationship of mind and body, and on which most dance therapists emphasize, is expressive movement. Emotional expression is expressed through the body. Body position, gestures, breathing patterns are a few examples of movement behavior that is studied within the framework of expressive movement. It is the qualitative aspect of movement, rather how it occurs than static positions, that reflects individual self-expression. Allport and Vernon write:
“… not a single action can be defined as only expressive. Every action has both an inexpressive and an expressive aspect. It has … its own adaptive … character, as well as its own individual character. Opening a door, for example, this task prescribes certain coordinated movements appropriate to this goal, but also allows a certain freedom for the individual’s style in performing the prescribed movements. The confidence, pressure, precision, or patience with which a given task is carried out has its own characteristics. Only these individual features are called expressive.
Expressive behavior is a motor manifestation of emotions interconnected in a functional system. Clines sees expressive movement as an emotional state that is expressed. His exploration of how emotions are experienced and communicated helps explain how dance movement therapy works with feelings and their manifestations in action. If we perform an action or gesture that correlates with an emotion (eg, angrily kicking a rock), we begin to experience the corresponding visceral response generated. If this action is repeated several times, then the intensity of the emotional experience will increase. To encourage the experience and expression of emotion, the dance movement therapist works with movement patterns associated with emotion. For example, to work with anger, the therapist might suggest curling your hands into a fist, clenching them tightly, and shaking them in front of another person. There may be other instructions: to stand firmly in place, straining the whole body. In punching, the movement generates a more specific bodily experience of the emotional state. This provides feedback and a loop of interaction between expressive action and emotional experience.
Emotions can be caused by a real situation (eg, sadness when you lose a friend), perceptions of h.-l. emotional state (e.g., being infected with fear by seeing another person’s fear), in an imaginary fantasy situation (e.g., remembering or imagining being stuck in an elevator), or perceiving a fantasy state in another person (e.g., the experience of pain or guilt is conveyed, demonstrated actor).
The therapist’s use of imagination, action, or emotion thus helps to crystallize and integrate the physiological and the psychological.
Methods of body-oriented therapy
- Body Oriented Therapy
- Wilhelm Reich Therapy
- Bioenergetics by Alexander Lowen
- Moshe Feldenkrais Therapy
- F. Matthias Alexander’s method
- Ida Rolf therapy (rolfing)