I LOVE Dance Therapy class. We spend over half of the class moving to music and reflecting on what the experience feels like and what it might mean. It makes us all wake up and leave the class glowing. It makes us feel such love and warmth toward each other, even though we really know nothing about each other except the little we've shared and how we each move.
I don't know why I'm in this class. I have no intention of ever becoming a therapist, dance therapist, or creative arts therapist. In fact the idea is particularly unpleasant. I say, "I'm interested in the mind/body connection." And that is entirely true, but what does it mean? I don't know. I really don't. But nonetheless, there are a few ideas that I would like to think more about, and so I'm recording them here:
1. Dance in some other cultures serves the function of working through everything, such as birth, coming of age, hunting, death.
2. Dance therapy's roots came from modern dance.
3. Who we are is reflected in how we inhabit our body.
4. You won't think clearly if the mind is disconnected from the body. This is just as true for academics as it is for people with psychotic issues.
5. The fundamental principle of dance therapy is for the therapist to pick up on peoples' movement and reflect that back to them and then to orchestrate that movement into the group. (The group might be the group gathered for therapy or society at large. Often patients cannot coordinate their movements to society's movements. Dance therapy tries to guide patients into new movement/cultural movements and help them bridge the gap. This therapy has been particularly effective with people with autism or Alzheimer's.)
6. How we move reflects our culture, our sub-culture, and our personal experiences.
This past Thursday, we practiced moving from different centers of our bodies. For example, we'd try to lead our movement from our belly buttons, then our chests, then our knees, the back of our knees, etc. We imagined there was a light shining from that place of our bodies and we were suppose to share that light with the other dancers. It made people very self-aware and at times embarrassed. It was interesting how different parts of our body liked to shine light and others didn't. It was interesting how when we moved into this exercise, instead of simply doing free dancing, we quickly fell into a linear circle moving around the room. And then when we stopped to analyze the activity, we slipped out of our bodies, and we had to take some time to dance freely to get back in our previous space of experiencing our bodies energetically. When we were talking, I would get tired again. When I was moving, I wasn't tired, or even if I was aware of fatigue, I could find other energy within myself.
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1 comment:
Have you gone and looked at Anne's blog? She uses the slowed motion of the tango as a metaphor for the slowed firing of the synapses that results from MS. There is a sense in which MS does precisely what number 4 of your blog warns against--it disconnects the mind and the body. It is interesting to me to think about the way that language can regrow that connection--which seems like a feature of this class as much as the movement itself--giving words to movement and thereby constructing meaning and connection. I admire the way Anne is doing this in the most challenging of circumstances--seeking and articulating new metaphors, recreating mindful connection to a body that presents unfamiliar motions and changes as the myelin sheath of her nerves deteriorates. Having a body is complicated business. I can understand why so many spiritual paths include body-denial as an institutionalized discipline. But, like you, I certainly prefer the idea of dancing to fasting!
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