The message on my office voice mail is simple and direct. “I am calling about your work as a dance/movement therapist. I have a specific and unusual problem that affects my whole life. I have a trauma with rhythm. Can you help me? I don’t know what to do.”
I am intrigued. What does a trauma with rhythm actually mean? What does it look like? Working in the field for more then 30 years, I have had many unusual referrals, but this one is unique. Rhythm is certainly a core tool of the trade. And yes, many people have difficulty keeping their actions on the beat. This does cause anxiety, especially when attempting to be in-sync with a partner, whether on the dance floor or sharing a life. But identifying the core of the trauma to be rhythm itself! This is a first for me.
I call Julian (not his real name). His story draws me in deeper. “I’ve been treated for PTSD. I’m interested in dance/movement therapy as a way to complete my treatment. I love music, but I can’t feel it. It’s like my brain is cut off from my body. I cannot feel emotion through my body. I cannot ‘listen’ to my body speak. I’ve been an athlete my whole life, but when I try to dance, I panic. It is tragic because I love music. I go to concerts all the time. But I feel nothing. I’m in my early fifties. I’m not going to learn an instrument now. I’m looking to enhance my life and thought dance therapy might be a way to bring what I love—music—into my life. But I know I will have to deal with rhythm to get there. This thought terrorizes me! I don’t know if you can help me. Can you?”
The quick answer is “yes.” The how, is more involved, for this seemingly simple exploration, e.g., rhythmic awareness, most often leads to much more. It requires a deep listening, sharing, moving and dialoguing process that occurs in relationship within self; between self and other (starting with our patient-therapist relationship); and through body-to-body explorations.
Julian’s acute anguish about his body-feeling disconnect resonates with the current mind-body discussion. When Douglas Chavis, editor of The American Psychoanalyst (TAP), invited me to contribute to this conversation by discussing the role of the body in therapy, from the viewpoint of a dance/movement therapist, I eagerly accepted. My interest is personal and professional, historic and contemporary. I have spent my career supporting patients to explore how to give voice to the creative, expressive and healing potential of their body sensations and expressions.
Some of you may have attended the workshop I spoke at with Larry Sandberg and Beatrice Beebe during the 2013 American Psychoanalytic Association meetings in New York. Though this talk may have been one of the first to include a dance/movement therapist, it rekindled a conversation that began in the 1920s between dancers, recognized as our founding dance/movement therapists, and psychiatrists, medical doctors and psychoanalysts. At that time psychoanalysis was marked by the emergence of the unconscious. It also mirrors a worldwide conversation infused by the demise of Descartes’s mind-body dualism these last few decades. I will summarize this vast topic in the hopes of stimulating your interest in continuing this conversation with my colleagues and me.
First, a definition. The American Dance/Movement Therapy Association (founded in 1966) defines our field as “the psychotherapeutic use of movement as a process which furthers the emotional and physical integration of the individual.”
Now, the number one question. Why dance? This is perhaps the most frequent question we get asked, along with the follow-up statement, “I do dance therapy in my living room every night, it feels so good to let loose.” The answer to this question is primary and essential, because it’s what differentiates dance/movement therapy (DMT) from “living room dancing” and other body/somatic and creative arts psychotherapies.
Dancing for release and relief, self-expression and healing crosses all cultures, ages and centuries. Indeed, dancing is such an innate primal experience that in 2010, Marcel Zentner, a psychologist at the University of York in England and his team of researchers found even babies respond to a beat by dancing. And, the more musically synchronous their movements, the more they smiled. Colwyn Trevarthen uses the term “musicality” to describe the shared consciousness that develops between the mother and weeks-old baby. This musicality is regulated by the emotions of joy and love expressed through the couple’s dialogic natural rhythmic movement interactions and imitative sounds.
We regard the body and our body movements as a metaphor for our sense of self and our experiences. DMT, or dance/movement psychotherapy (my preferred name for the field, established in 2009 by our European colleagues) is a branch of psychotherapy first developed by dancers, who experienced that through dancing they were able to tap into feelings that had no words. DMT goes beyond living room dancing, supporting the patient to create a body-mind-emotion
connection. It is this connection through the lens of the felt-experience of being a dancer that grounds the work of a dance/movement therapist. Our body is a map of all of our experiences, remembered, unconscious and non-conscious. DMT uses the spontaneous, improvisational, imaginative and aesthetic qualities of creative dancing to support the patient in exploring and expanding upon their sensations, thoughts and feelings. Integrating the sensations, feelings and memories, which are held in the body; how these experiences are mentally processed; and how one feels about these experiences, creates an embodied way of learning and self-knowledge that fuels creative expression and healing.
The second most important question. What does it mean to be embodied?
Embodiment, especially in relationship to the body and the mind, is a popular area of study, which emerged within philosophic, academic, scientific, dance and somatic studies circles starting in the 1960s with Maurice Merleau-Ponty. His phenomenological concept that we know we exist because of our experience of existence through our bodily actions and sensations is the common thread within each discipline. The idea that the mind is grounded in the experience of human movement was first explored in science by the biologist Humberto Maturana and his protégé Francisco Varela, a biologist, immunologist and cognitive scientist in the 1970s. Linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson continued to study this concept in the 1980s, and Francisco Vaela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch created the term “embodied cognition” in 1991. Actions, perceptions and cognition are intrinsically interwoven. Although there is much debate about how much the body and body experience contributes, supports, relates and initiates thinking, the disembodied mind no longer exists. In his new book, Embodied: The Psychology of Physical Sensation, Christopher Eccleston, a psychologist, who is adamant that there are 10 unacknowledged senses beyond the familiar five, is clear about embodiment. He states, “Being embodied is how we experience, what we experience and whom we experience.”
In her 2011 book, The Primacy of Movement, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, a dance scholar and a great supporter of DMT, states that a fluid dynamic relationship exists between perception and action, emotion and movement. Aptly stated by my colleagues, Katya Bloom in 2006 and Sabine Koch and Diana Fischman in 2011, in DMT, embodiment emphasizes the relational nature of bodily, cognitive and emotional experience within the context of the environment.
Simply put, for dance/movement therapists it is not a question: We know we are embodied because we feel it. The body and body experience are central.
The term “embodied” deeply resonates with our felt-experience of the expressive power of movement. Entering the field as contemplative movers and dancers, we understand how to use the dynamics of movement as communicative discourse. This discourse can be personal, as a way to explore an emotional feeling, a physical sensation, a way to dialogue with a partner or to speak to an audience through a performance. A dance can start from any vantage point of the body-mind-emotion continuum—moving, thinking, feeling—feeling, moving, thinking—thinking, moving, feeling. In any order, it is the full combination of these aspects of self that bring about healing.
In DMT we view the felt-experience of the body moving as an “embodied narrative” telling the story of a person’s life. Body experience frames how you think about yourself and your experiences in the world around you. Dance/movement therapists are trained to observe the specific qualities of a person’s nonverbal actions to determine the person’s nonverbal signature. Just as we each have our own handwriting signature, we also have our own unique way of holding ourselves and moving ourselves through our life. We pay keen attention to the mover’s overt and subtle nonverbal cues through a listening process that involves witnessing our own reactions through kinesthetic empathy. How we structure the experiential components of the session is based on the information obtained through this embodied countertransference process.
In sessions we teach people to listen deeply to their bodies by attending to sensations and actions. This starting point is followed by having a conversation with and through spontaneous creative actions that arise from this attuned way of listening. The patient develops a moving voice that reveals deeply felt and held experiences. With this information in your mind, we return to Julian as he enters my studio office for his first session.
Immediately I am struck by juxtapositions. His tall figure is contrasted by a descending tilt of his head and a downward curve of his left shoulder. His brisk long strides reach out beyond his body, seemingly scoping out his surroundings while his torso, held as one unarticulated unit, momentarily lingers behind. It is as if he has entered the room but could whisk himself away at any moment. His gait is punctuated by a slightly irregular yet light step. Again this lack of articulation is apparent as he lifts each foot, as one solid block. His gaze belies his affable demeanor. Looking up from under his tilted head, his expressive eyes simultaneously look directly and softly at me, questioning and hesitant, yet friendly and jovial. I find myself wondering if he is present enough in his body to even feel a rhythmic connection. Does he actually feel his body as a moving articulate presence?
It is clear my first task is to help him literally feel grounded and connected within his body. I begin with body awareness activities that focus on physical coordination. I suggest we walk around the room as we listen to music. I put on a song with a medium tempo and even, flowing rhythm.
It is when we start to dance that his internal paradox, portrayed as an anxiety with rhythm, becomes most apparent. As we walk together around the periphery of the room Julian cannot look at me. His body recoils. His gait becomes more irregular. Sometimes his steps are long, other times short. His tempo is hesitant and then rushed. Immediately I sense we have entered into feared territory and I slow it down. He needs to trust me first before going too deeply into his emotional landscape. Luckily, he has a good sense of humor, he has good self-reflective capacity and he is determined.
We first enter into his body experience through his mind. We laugh at his lack of rhythm and break down walking with more detail. I describe the mechanics of walking: the way we momentarily balance on our front leg by shifting our weight from one side to the other as we simultaneously roll through and push off our back foot, swinging the leg forward, and planting it solidly on the ground within a comfortable distance in front of us. We spend the next few months working on connecting core body coordination throughout his body: upper-lower, left-right and contralateral connections. Each week we choreograph a simple movement phrase for homework, complimenting our work in the studio. He proves to be a diligent student. Alone, in the safety of his home he makes discoveries that he reports to me during our weekly sessions. “Wow, I can’t believe how good it feels to be able to move from my left side to my right in one flow. I did our sequence for 15 minutes in the morning and my head felt so much clearer. I had this difficult meeting at work and I didn’t get upset, I just flowed through it.”
Julian continues to make personal discoveries by linking his felt-experience both inside and outside of our sessions. Though he continues to state he cannot feel the music emotionally, music of all kinds is always part of our explorations. During one memorable session early on, we are exploring the range of motion in his shoulders while dancing to Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring. As our improvisational dialogue moves through Copland’s variations of the theme, gay and fluid then strong, slow and powerful, I notice he has much more freedom in his right shoulder then his left. As I take a step reaching toward his left shoulder he is taken off guard. It is subtle, yet profound. Through his felt-experience
a repressed memory surfaces. The sensation of getting hit repeatedly on this shoulder by his parent every time he was off the beat while playing the piano is palpable. He is stopped mid-action. He spontaneously tells me this remembered image. We pause. He looks at me. His eyes fill-up. I hold his gaze softening mine. Silently I assure him that I am with him, I am listening, holding this experience with him, through my presence.
Julian continues to make connections between his feelings, his past experiences, and his current ways of being, both physically and emotionally in his life. We dance through a wide variety of music, from the majestic strength of Bach’s “Zion Hort Die Wachter Singen,” to Gloria Estefan’s quick-paced “Conga.” Through these explorations, he finds his grounding and becomes more physically articulate. He moves more fluidly and confidently from a sitting position to standing, to back down. Traversing these different levels of space, his talk shifts to his need to make major changes in his life. More memories gently unfold as he becomes more embodied. He is able to follow my moves more easily and contributes his own movement ideas with more confidence. I note these advances as they occur. He is also able to look at me as we dance together. I wait to bring up this eye contact connection, fearing this might make him feel self-conscious again. A short while later he comes to this realization on his own.
One recent day he opens our session with a new awareness. “I worked my whole life using my analytic skills, which for better or worse are formidable, unusually efficient and abetted by my skill in visual thinking. But it has given me little joy, and now for the first time in my life I feel joy—that comes from my body.” He requests that we dance to Chris Botti, the jazz musician. We pick “When I Fall in Love.” As the fluid, languid, yet strong sounds of Botti’s trumpet fill the room, I follow Julian’s lead as he places his hands at heart level. Reaching out in front of him, in time with the dreamy rhythm, his arms separate and widen, as if he is parting a curtain. Stepping forward with each new stroke of the air, Julian clearly is entering into a deeper embodied state. His thoughts, felt-experience and emotions are one. He moves into a verbal/nonverbal reverie, shifting between dancing, pausing, reflecting, dancing, pausing and reflecting.
As he dances, he is struck by a realization. “It is like I am ‘coming out.’ I was frozen in my infant/child brain. Frozen in the time frame of the trauma. I became determined not to feel anything. I promised myself in my six-year-old mind that I would never ask anyone to stop hurting me.”
His hand gestures spontaneously change, flicking his wrist making sweeping, brushing actions along his torso and out into space, stating, “I have no interest in being self-deprecating anymore (his solution to not asking people to stop hurting him). I have deflected people from knowing me by creating this false self. I am friendly but don’t let any one get near me.” His outstretched arms soften at the elbows. His palms open as his arms reach up and out creating a gathering gesture, circling forward up and back towards him. His improved full body connection is apparent as his whole torso actively shapes in the space.
As I try on these actions, dancing across from him, the image of beckoning towards a friend, inviting connection comes over me. This is confirmed as he states, “Now I want to meet someone who can know me…who thinks like me. “We dance together exchanging actions. He tries on mine, I try on his, all without speaking a word. As the strong rich tones of Botti’s trumpet fill the room, I mirror Julian’s actions. In these poignant moments it is clear that “When I Fall in Love” is speaking of his experience of himself. His ownership of his true self.
Julian enters our next session with exhilaration. Again, while listening to Botti he has had a visualization. But this time it is three-dimensional and felt. He imagines his body leaping, spiraling and dancing amongst other dancers to the upbeat rhythmic pulse of the trumpet, keyboard and percussive instruments. The image is so clear he feels it. He even mapped out the moves on a piece of paper for us to use as a guide for our dancing today. I ask him for the name of the song so I can put it on.
We begin to dance. His actions flow in poetic, rhythmic time to the music. He freely looks at me as we move together. Sharing with him, in excitement, his first composed choreography, it is clear he has found a resolution of his
fears through the dance. I am also struck by how aptly the song title summarizes his healing. His growing desires to be known and to connect truly to others, through his body, mind and emotions. As we transpose his map into actual moves the glorious energetic rhythms of Bottii’s “Worlds Outside” fill the room.