Dance Movement Therapy

Hello All,

My apologies if this topic has already been mentioned, but I've just been forwarded the below link, but haven't really had the opportunity to look into the therapy...



Has anyone tried or had any experience with this method? I'm keen to know anyone's thoughts.

Thank you

 

Thanks for sharing, enjoyed watching it. Movement is good for TMS'ers who are stuck on the couch. Made me want to do Zumba--or at least watch. Just Do It!

tt/lsmft

 

Yes exactly, I liked how she described the means of feeling her emotions within her body and expressing these as movement.

 

I enjoyed the video, but doubt my ability to do it by myself. On the other hand, I make physical activity a priority each day, so maybe walking, hiking, swimming, and yoga are my versions of dance therapy.

 

Mike,

I used to be a Middle-Eastern dancer and in the years since I officially hung up my hip belt, I have explored many kinds of dance and movement therapy. I find body-oriented ways work like magic because I am very kinaesthetic. Mind-focused methods are too abstract for me and easily lead to emotional inertia and self-deception. I do like practices such as mindfulness but think they suit people who are more digital and cerebral in the first place. I kinda subscribe to the notion that emotions are energy in motion and are essentially dynamic and spontaneous. They *are* the language of the body. By the time we've caged them safely in the mind to deal with we've turned them into an idea, particularly in terms of good/bad or negative/positive.

One of the dance~movement pioneers I love is the late Gabrielle Roth. She was a ballerina who retired wounded believing she would never dance again. But the dance never left her and over time she went on to create the '5 Rythms' that are elemental to dance and movement. She knew that the denial of feelings had medical consequences and that to inhabit your body fully was the key to being fully alive in the here-and-now. She penned a couple of books: "Maps to Ecstasy" and "Sweat Your Prayers". They are fun, soulful reads.

I think it's worth remembering that the original purpose of yoga was to calm the energies within the body enough so that one could enter contemplation with stillness. Yoga has been utterly hijacked.

One of the most powerful healing methods of all is to pop on some headphones and dance, move, boogie, grind and let your body do its wild thing. Who cares what it looks like? It's not a performance. I heartily recommend it.

Plum

 

Thanks plum, I really enjoy reading your post and I'm very glad to see you back

 

Yes! The asanas were for preparing the body for meditation. In the West, it's become another form of just exercising.

 

Mike, thanking you muchly. It's nice to back.

Tom, hey you. I like that when we don't clash swords we still dig each other. It's a funky kinda love.

 

I have built into my exercise routine the Yoga Trance Dance on Shiva Rea's DVD of the same name. The best way I can describe it is like hippies on LSD dancing. It's very freeing and especially good for the cerebral, analytical person that I am. Gets me out of my head and into my body. As does yoga. Love it. Some day I will try Zumba, too.

 

I enjoyed this activity much. My mind and body works well.

 

Absolutely! I know this is an old thread, but I thought I'd bump it up as I've just discovered Gabrielle Roth and her '5 Rythms' and am finding that it's so wonderfully freeing. (For anyone interested there's a lot of her dance music and some of her videos on YouTube; I use this version of the '5 Rythms' quite a lot www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA_RlOzHlSI.) I can't dance like the young and fit people in the videos do, but listening to and feeling the music, swaying and moving around to it as best I can and as I want to, in my living room every evening, is making me so much happier. I generally try to practise 'outcome independence' as much as possible, but I have to say that I can't help but notice that my partially frozen left shoulder has a little more movement and is generally somewhat less painful since I started moving to music on a daily basis (which is a minor miracle as it's been partially frozen to the same degree for many years). I alternate between the '5 Rythms' and just choosing any music that takes my fancy.