The bio-medical approach to treating mental illness, disabilities,
offending behaviour and addictive personalities works largely on a model
of diagnosis and medication. The social or psychoanalytical approach
takes a different, more holistic view of the individual. Sociologist
Jerry Tew explains that the social model looks at the conditioning of
the patient that has led to her belief systems, mores and lived
experiences, in order to find the underlying causes of her symptoms, and
to approach them in an understanding, supportive way. This can operate
in very different ways, from dialogical analysis to creative analysis
therapies such as art therapy or Dance Movement Therapy.
Carl Gustav Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst, argued that talking
therapy helps the individual to examine her unconscious life patterns
and the traumas that have created them. Through this process of
recognising the key elements of the self, recovery can take place. The
process can be painstaking and gradual, but it is almost always
liberating.
Moving Away from the Medicalisation of Addiction and Mental Illness
Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) sets itself apart from both the
diagnostic approach to mental illness and the dialogical or verbal
approach of talking therapy. It unites and invigorates the interface
between mind, body and spirit. It connects them through a creative
expression that releases the emotions and liberates the self.
Professionals who work with what are seen as marginalised, disabled or
dysfunctional groups-criminals, the mentally ill, and people with
addictions-will testify to how difficult these people can find it to
communicate those deeper aspects of themselves that may have gone
unexpressed for years. It is one thing to offer help; it is another
matter altogether to expect the recipient to know how to respond, or to
be able to.
Dance Movement Therapy opens up expression that does not require
words - it can provide outlets where words are not even possible. The
clients who partake in it, because of their marginalising circumstances,
are often coming from a place of social isolation, and Dance Movement
Therapy can fill that empty space in a way that is simultaneously
healing and sociable. The feeling of liberation comes partly from being
able to take part in a group activity without having to find the right
words for a conversation.
The Benefits of Dance Movement Therapy
Psychological and physical trauma cause tension in the muscles and
joints of the body. Jim Folk, a writer for an anxiety awareness website,
explains how anxiety and stress create physical aches and pains, spasm
and stiffness in the body, because these symptoms function as physical
outlets for negative emotions. During a Dance Movement Therapy session,
this tension is expended through the body's free movements and its
growing awareness of itself as a moving, breathing object that has a
connection with the physical space around it. Everyone has unique,
individual patterns of moving, and these sessions allow the individual
to tune into her body's potential, and become at ease with herself
through free dance and movement.
The body is a complex creation of infinite detail, strong and yet
vulnerable and prone to breakage, emotionally and physically. While it
breathes, it contains a bottomless reservoir of energy that is expressed
in every movement - a wink, a sneeze, a sob. If we could see through
the skin, muscle and bone, we would see these energy impulses twinkling
and connecting, a macrocosm of emotional and physical communication.
This wonderful, internal dance of potential energy is recreated and
reflected in the movement of the therapeutic dance — a joining of mind,
spirit, the unplanned and the unknown in a physical, bodily work of art.
How does Dance Movement Therapy Heal?
Marian Chace, a key figure in the evolution of modem dance, worked
with a group of non-speaking patients at a nearby psychiatric hospital
in 1942. She had noticed that her own students' sense of wellness
increased when they were training, and that what was taking place was
the expression of emotion rather than intense concentration on the
techniques of the various dances. Chace remained convinced about the
benefits
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